Jack Voelkel
John Eliot: Apostle to Native Americans
Guest writer: J. Christy Wilson, Ph.D. Adapted from More To Be Desired Than Gold
Christianity in America owes much to the early missionaries who came to these shores. One of them was John Eliot, who was born in England in 1604. He was a schoolmate and friend of Oliver Cromwell. He studied Greek and Hebrew at Cambridge University and came to New England in 1631, eleven years after the Pilgrims. His goal was to share the Gospel with the native Americans.
The original seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a native on it with these words coming out of his mouth, “Come over and help us” from Acts 16:9. Their charter stated that their principal purpose for the plantation was to win the Indian people “to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind and the Christian faith.” The Massachusetts seal today still has the picture of the same man, but because it has become a secular state, the original words from the Scriptures have been blotted out.
John Eliot pastured the church in Roxbury for 58 years, from 1632 to his death in 1690. He and two other pastors translated the Psalms from Hebrew into English poetry for use in their churches and printed The Bay Psalm Book in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1640. This was the first book ever published in North America.
As a pastor, Eliot had a heart of compassion for the poor. Because he was known for giving away much of his salary before he got home to his wife, the church treasurer tied up the coins in a handkerchief, knotting the ends as hard as he could. On the way, Eliot made a pastoral call on a poor widow and her children. He took out the money from his pocket to give her something but could not untie the knots. He therefore gave her the whole handkerchief with all his salary, saying that the Lord must have meant her to have it.
Since his main calling was to reach the native Americans, John Eliot learned the Massachusetts language which belonged to the Algonquin linguistic family. He reduced it to writing, worked out its grammar, and then translated the whole Bible into it. This was published in 1663 as the first Bible printed in the New World.
In 1645 he started the Roxbury Latin School, which is still operating today. In 1989 the alumni purchased a copy of Eliot’s Massachusetts Indian Bible for $300,000 and presented it to the school in honor of their founder.
Cotton Mather, another famous New England pastor, wrote Eliot’s biography called, The Life of the Renowned John Eliot. This was published in Boston in 1691, the year after his death. In this, he wrote that Eliot firmly believed that the Indians would be eternally lost if the Gospel were hidden from them. This is what drove him to finish translating the Scriptures into their language [the first Bible to be printed in North America]. “The Bible is the Word of life. They must have it,” he would say.
Eliot led thousands of native Americans to Christ, and trained some of them as pastors and teachers. After he preached to them in their own language, he would give them an opportunity to ask questions. One of them inquired, “Does God understand the Indians’ prayer?” He answered, “God made Indians. He knows all about you. Of course He knows your language and understands every word. He definitely hears your prayers.”
Another asked him about faith in God. “How do we believe what eyes cannot see?” He replied, “When you see a big wigwam, do you think the raccoons built it? Or the foxes? Or that it built itself? Certainly not. Look at the house of this great world. Look at the sun, the moon, the stars. Doesn’t it look as though a very powerful wise Being built it? We cannot see Him with our eyes, but we look at His word.”
John Eliot gathered the converted Indians into fourteen “Praying Towns” in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He organized these towns [away from the white towns, in areas where they could preserve their own language and culture and live by their own laws] on the Biblical model of the children of Israel in the wilderness, where Moses appointed leaders of tens, fifties, and of hundreds. He had the Indians elect their own leaders. [Daniel Takawambpait was the first Indian minister in New England, being ordained at Natick, Massachusetts, in 1681.]
They also had their own schools and churches. Instead of church bells, they announced their services with Indian drums. No wonder Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his book, Grandfather’s Chair, “Since the first days of Christianity, there has been no man more worthy to be numbered in the brotherhood of the Apostles than Eliot.”
Through John Eliot’s friendship with Oliver Cromwell and others, the English Parliament passed an act establishing the first Protestant Missionary Society in 1649. This helped support Eliot’s work among the Indians as well as publishing the books he wrote for them. In 1650 he wrote The Christian Commonwealth, on which the United States Constitution is based.
In 1990, for the tricentennial anniversary of his death, we had a Vision Conference in Roxbury, where he is buried. Hundreds attended it in the Twelfth Baptist Church there. Then we had a prayer march through Roxbury to one of three churches that are named in memory of John Eliot. The City of Boston gave us a police escort. The prayer march then continued to the old cemetery, where we found his tomb. At the celebration we had an evangelical Christian Indian leader, Jonathan Maracle, from the Mohawk Tribe who marched in his native American Indian outfit. He led in prayer beside the grave asking the Lord to raise many more like John Eliot to take the Gospel to the unreached native Americans as well as others who haven't heard the Gospel.
Following his prayer, an African-American woman from Roxbury came up and talked personally to Jonathan Maracle. She had followed the crowd into the cemetery. Chief Maracle then put his arm around her and led her in private prayer. Afterwards I asked him if he wouldn’t mind sharing what this was about. He said that her son had just been shot and killed in Roxbury three days before. And he had prayed for her, asking God’s comfort on her. What a sight this way to see a Christian Indian leader with his arm around a grief-stricken mother, comforting her!
I wonder whether John Eliot saw this from heaven and rejoiced.
Some Reflection Questions
1) What impresses you about the life of John Eliot?
2) What positive missionary principles do we see in his way of working with the Indians?
3) How would you apply these principles to university student work today?
Source: Chow, Ivan (compiler); Helen S. Mooradkanian (editor). More to be Desired Than Gold. A Collection of True Stories as Told by J. Christy Wilson, Jr. South Hamilton, MA: Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, pp 103-105. Permission requested. For more information, note the website: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/164.html, written by James E. Kiefer. The sentences within brackets come from this site.
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