American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions


The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the first American Christian missionary organization. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most important of American missionary organizations and consisted of participants from Protestant Reformed traditions such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and German Reformed churches.
Before 1870, the ABCFM consisted of Protestants of several denominations, including Congregationalists and Presbyterians. However, due to secessions caused by the issue of slavery and by the fact that New School Presbyterian-affiliated missionaries had begun to support the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, after 1870 the ABCFM became a Congregationalist body.
The American Board continued to operate as a largely Congregationalist entity until the 1950s. In 1957, the Congregational Christian church merged with the German Evangelical and Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ. As a part of the organizational merger associated with this new denomination, the ABCFM ceased to be independent. In 1961, it merged operations with other missions organizations to form the United Church Board for World Ministries, an agency of the United Church of Christ. Organizations that draw inspiration from the ABCFM include InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, and the Missionary Society of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches.
During the period of its existence from 1810 to 1961, the ABCFM sent almost 5,000 missionaries to 34 countries around the globe. It also sent missionaries to Christianize Indian tribes in North America.

Organization and functioning

The ABCFM conducted an annual meeting with a Prudential Committee that took care of day-to-day business. It elected a Corresponding Secretary to produce written documents, and a Treasurer to receive donations. It also had board members.
The ABCFM held its first meeting on September 5, 1810, and elected Samuel Worcester as corresponding secretary.

Corresponding Secretaries and other key leaders

  • Samuel Worcester was the first corresponding secretary, starting in 1810.
  • Jeremiah Evarts, corresponding secretary of the ABCFM from 1821 to 1831
  • At the 1822 annual meeting, board members elected officers: Evarts as corresponding secretary, John Treadwell as president, and Rev. Joseph Lyman as vice president. The Prudential Committee consisted of William Reed, Rev. Leonard Woods, Jeremiah Evarts, Samuel Hubbard, and Rev. Warren Fay.
  • Elias Cornelius became corresponding secretary, serving Dec 1831 – February 1832
  • Benjamin B. Wisner, Rufus Anderson and David Greene became "coequal" secretaries in 1832. When Wisner died, William Jessup Armstrong took his place.
  • Anderson, Greene, and Armstrong led as coequals from 1835 to 1846, with Anderson as foreign secretary, Armstrong as domestic secretary, and David Greene as secretary for American Indian missions and editor of the Missionary Herald Rufus Anderson continued as foreign secretary until 1866. Armstrong died in a shipwreck between Boston and New Jersey in 1846.
  • Selah B. Treat was elected in 1843 as recording secretary. Rufus Anderson, Rev. David Greene, and Rev. William J. Armstrong were listed as "Secretaries for Correspondence."
  • By 1858, George Warren Wood was sole corresponding secretary, with Rev. Mark Hopkins as President and abolitionist William Jessup as Vice-President. Hopkins had been the President of Williams College since 1836.
  • By 1866, Rev. Nathan George Clark and Rev G. W. Wood had joined Rufus Anderson and Selah Treat as corresponding secretaries. Wood, as ABCFM Secretary in New York City, held his position from 1850 to 1871. Clark assumed the position of Foreign Secretary when Anderson left in 1866 and remained Foreign Secretary until 1894.
  • In 1896, James Levi Barton became secretary when N.G. Clark died, and he retired in 1927.
  • In 1899, James L. Barton, Judson Smith, and Charles H. Daniels are the three Corresponding Secretaries of the ABCFM according to The Congregational Yearbook. It also lists Charles M. Lamson and D. Willis James as ABCFM president and vice president, respectively.
  • Henry H. Riggs' brother Ernest Wilson Riggs joined James Levi Barton as associate secretary and corresponding secretary of the ABCFM from 1921 to 1932.
  • Dr. Frank Field Goodsell was the first Executive Vice-President of the ABCFM, which he led from 1930 to 1948.
  • Alford Carleton served as executive vice president of the board from 1954 to 1970.

    Board members

  • Timothy Dwight
In 1826, the American Board absorbed 26 members of the United Foreign Missionary Society into its board.

Early history

In 1806, five students from Williams College in western Massachusetts took shelter from a thunderstorm in a haystack. At the Haystack Prayer Meeting, they came to the common conviction that "the field is the world" and inspired the creation of the ABCFM four years later. The objective of the ABCFM was to spread Christianity worldwide. Congregationalist in origin, the ABCFM also accepted missionaries from Presbyterian, Dutch-Reformed and other denominations.
In 1812, the ABCFM sent its first missionaries – Adoniram and Ann Hasseltine Judson; Samuel and Roxana Peck Nott; Samuel and Harriet Newell; Gordon Hall, and Luther Rice—to British India. Between 1812 and 1840, they were followed by missionaries to the following people and places: Tennessee to the Cherokee Indians, India, northern Ceylon, the Sandwich Islands ; east Asia: China, Singapore and Siam ; the Middle East: ; and Africa: Western Africa—Cape Palmas—and Southern Africa—among the Zulus.

The fight against Indian removal

served as treasurer, 1812–20, and as corresponding secretary from 1821 until his death in 1831. Under his leadership, the board in 1821 expanded the role of women: it authorized Ellen Stetson, the first unmarried female missionary to the American Indians, and Betsey Stockton, the first unmarried female overseas missionary and the first African-American missionary.
In 1826, the ABCFM merged with the United Foreign Mission Society, which had been formed in 1817 by members of Presbyterian and Reformed churches.
Evarts led the organization's efforts to place missionaries with American Indian tribes in the Southeastern United States. He also led the ABCFM's extensive fight against Indian removal policies in general and the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in particular.

1830 through 1860

By the 1830s, based on its experiences, the ABCFM prohibited unmarried people from entering the mission field. They required couples to have been engaged at least two months prior to setting sail. To help the missionaries find wives, they maintained a list of women who were "missionary-minded": "young, pious, educated, fit and reasonably good-looking." The policy against sending single women as missionaries was not strictly followed and was reversed in 1868.
The secretary post was offered to Elias Cornelius in October 1831, but he became ill and died in February 1832. Rufus Anderson was the General Secretary of the Board from 1832 through the mid-1860s. His legacy included administrative gifts, setting of policy, visiting around the world, and chronicling the work of the ABCFM in books.
Between 1810 and 1840, the ABCFM sought firstly to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At home and abroad, the Board and its supporters undertook every effort to exhort the evangelical community, to train a cadre of agents, and to send forth laborers into the mission field. As a leader in the United Front and early federal American voluntary associations, the Board influenced the nineteenth-century mission movement.

Missionary stations in 1855

By 1850, the American Board had sent 157 ordained, male missionaries to foreign posts.
The January 1855 issue of the Missionary Herald listed the Current missions of the Board as follow:

Africa

  • Mission to Gaboon
  • Mission to Zulus
  • Mission to Angola

    Europe

  • Mission to Greece
  • Mission to Jews

    Western Asia

  • Mission to Armenians station, Pera station, Hass-keuy station, Koom-kapoo
  • Mission to Syria
  • Mission to Assyria
  • Mission to Nestorians

    Southern Asia

  • Mission to Bombay
  • Mission to Ahmednagar
  • Mission to Satara
  • Mission to Kolapoor
  • Mission to Madras
  • Mission to Madura
  • Mission to Ceylon (Tillipally station, Baticotta station, Oodooville station, Manepy station, Panditeripo station, Chavagacherry station, Oodoopitty station, Varany station, and outstations at Caradive, Valany, Poongerdive, Kaits, and Atchoovaley

    Eastern Asia

  • Mission to Canton
  • Mission to Amoy
  • Mission to Fuh-Chau
  • Mission to Shanghai
  • Mission to Hong Kong/South China

    North Pacific Ocean

  • Mission to Micronesia, Shalong Point station
  • Mission to Hawaii
  • Mission to Maui
  • Mission to Molokai
  • Mission to Oahu
  • Mission to Kauai

    North American Indians

  • Mission to Choctaws
  • Mission to Dakotas Also Lake Harriet, Shakopee, Lac qui Parle stations.
  • Mission to Ojibwas
  • Mission to Senecas
  • Mission to Tuscaroras
  • Mission to Abenaquis

    Recruitment efforts

Orthodox, Trinitarian and evangelical in their theology, speakers to the annual meetings of the Board challenged their audiences to give of their time, talent and treasure in moving forward the global project of spreading Christianity. At first reflective of late colonial "occasional" sermons, the annual meeting addresses gradually took on the quality of "anniversary" sermons. The optimism and cooperation of post-millennialism held a major place in the scheme of the Board sermons.
After having listened to such sermons and been influenced at colleges, college and seminary students prepared to proclaim the gospel in foreign cultures. Their short dissertations and pre-departure sermons reflected both the outlook of annual Board sermons and sensitivity to host cultures. Once the missionaries entered the field, optimism remained yet was tempered by the realities of pioneering mission work in a different milieu. Many of the Board agents sought—through eclectic dialogue and opportunities as they presented themselves, as well as itinerant preaching—to bring the cultures they met, observed, and lived in to bear upon the message they shared. The missionaries found the audiences to be similar to Americans in their responses to the gospel message. Some rejected it outright, others accepted it, and a few became Christian proclaimers themselves.