Sunteți pe pagina 1din 21

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

IT WERE WORTH WHILE TO DIE, IF THEREBY A SOUL COULD BE BORN AGAIN. - THE FEARLESS MISSIONS APPROACH OF MARY SLESSOR

A PAPER SUBMITTED TO DR. DANIEL SHEARD IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE COURSE CHHI 657

LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

BY ELKE SPELIOPOULOS

DOWNINGTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA SUNDAY, MAY 6, 2012

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 MARY SLESSOR .......................................................................................................................... 1 A YOUNG WOMANS JOURNEY .............................................................................................. 4 INTO AFRICA ............................................................................................................................... 6 DISRUPTING THE STATUS QUO .............................................................................................. 8 IMPACTING CALABAR AND AREAS BEYOND ................................................................... 10 COLONIALISM AND MISSION ................................................................................................ 12 A LEGACY .................................................................................................................................. 13 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 15 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 17

iii

INTRODUCTION Women missionaries working alone in Africa was an unheard-of concept when Mary Slessor arrived in Africa to serve. It was not that it was impossible, but that it was deemed too dangerous. Yet at five feet tall and with bright red hair ensuring she would stand out in an African setting, this twenty-eight year old Scottish woman set out to do just that in 1876, starting at the Calabar River of modern-day Nigeria and pushing further and further into the African interior to tribes deemed too dangerous to interact with, even by the indigenous people Slessor encountered. Showing uncommon bravery and challenging tribal traditions propelled Mary Slessor to a legendary status even during her lifetime. Her approach to missions shows that hands-on, fearless love of those deemed unapproachable can bear Kingdom results and in turn serves as a model to a new generation of missionaries who face the threat of death from other sources than cannibals. MARY SLESSOR Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1848 as the daughter of a shoemaker and the second of seven children1, Mary Slessor would counter her upbringing through the transforming love of Christ in her life, and she would bring the peace of God to the people of Nigeria in West Africa. Born into a family with a father who would turn each paycheck into a Saturday spent drinking, thereby leaving the family destitute and impacting her childhood significantly, Slessor would learn from early youth what hard work looked like. At the age of eleven, Slessor moved with her family to Dundee, where there would be more ample work opportunities for her father, who was unable to continue working as a shoemaker. Rather he found work as a mill laborer. Her fathers drinking continued even in this new setting. Her mother was a skilled weaver, and she augmented the familys income.
Ruth A. Tucker, Black Africa - Mary Slessor, in From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983, 2004), 170.
1

Slessor began working at the age of eleven as a half timer in Baxter Brothers Mill in Dundee. At first, she would go to school for half a day at a school provided by the owners of the mill, then work half a day at the mill. By age fourteen, she had become a skilled worker like her mother and began working shifts as a weaver in the mill, working from six am to six pm, up at 5 am to do homework with an hour for breakfast and lunch.2 Hiding her meager earnings from her father angered him, but ensured the familys survival. Money was running out from selling the furniture from their house in Aberdeen, but Slessors mother was determined to teach the children the Bible, the stories of Jesus and with it the power of His redemption. While they might be poor in earthly good, they were blessed beyond measure in the treasures found in the pages of the family Bible. 3 When not working, Slessor spent time with books, teaching herself to read, and even managed to read while working by propping her book on the loom in front of her. It was in her world of reading that she first learned of Calabar in British Colonial Africa (modern-day Nigeria) in the Missionary Journal, a magazine eagerly read by hundreds of Scottish Presbyerians to learn about missionary comings and goings, progress, problems and needs.4 Nigeria was then deemed an unhealthy, mysterious, terrible land ruled by witchcraft and secret societies.5 Just two years prior a Presbyterian mission had been founded in Calabar in this part of West Africa.6
Local History Centre, Dundee, UK, Mary Slessor: Early Life, http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/index.htm (accessed May 5, 2012).
3 4 2

Basil Miller, Women of Faith: Mary Slessor (Ada, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 1985), 9.

Jeanette Hardage, The Legacy of Mary Slessor, in International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, no (4 (October 1, 2002): 178-181, n.d.), 178, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed April 20, 2012). Robert J. Morgan, On This Day: 365 Amazing and Inspiring Stories about Saints, Martyrs & Heroes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000).
6 5

Janet Benge and Geoff Benge, Mary Slessor: Forward Into Calabar (Seattle, WA: YWAM Publishing,

1999), 20.

Learning about this strange and foreign world convinced Slessor that the Lord had directed her to go to the people of Calabar and take the good news of Jesus Christ to them. The familys life was hard indeed, and Slessor knew hunger growing up in the slums of Dundee. Her father and both brothers died, leaving Slessor, her mother and two sisters. Two other siblings had died before already. Out of seven children, only four survived childhood.7 Salvation came for Slessor at the hands of an old widow who lived nearby. Slessor, who would later describe herself as a wild lassie, listened to this woman with strong Calvinistic beliefs tell them about the fires of hell they would encounter if they did not repent and believe. Slessor made the decision then and there, and she never looked back. 8 Her faith provided an escape to this young girl. Mary Rosetta Parkman, writing three years after Slessors death in Africa, observed about the young Mary, Heaven was very near to Mary Slessor, and the stars seemed more real than the street lamps of the town. She had come to feel that the troubles and trials of her days were just steps on the path that she would travel.9 Her mother had hoped that her surviving son John would become a missionary, but he contracted tuberculosis. At a doctors advice, John left for New Zealand to recover from his illness, after the family had pooled their money and pawned their furniture. Praying for his recovery and return to missionary training, the family awaited his recuperation, however, a week after arriving in New Zealand, John died, half a world away from his family and leaving
HyperHistory.net, Mary Slessor: The White Ma of Africa, http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b1maryslessor.htm (accessed May 5, 2012). Jeanette Hardage, Mary Slessor - Everybody's Mother: The Era and Impact of a Victorian Missionary (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2010), 5.
9 8 7

Mary Rosetta Parkman, Heroines of Service (New York, NY: Century, 1918), 237.

Slessors mother with shattered dreams.10 This event, however, opened the door for Slessor to enter the mission field in place of her brother.11 A YOUNG WOMANS JOURNEY Mary Slessors involvement at Wishart Church in Dundee in an area of tenements and slums was a solace to that soul, striving against almost overwhelming tragedy of its surroundings.12 She volunteered to teach children about missions as a teenager which brought her much joy in the midst of the hard work she performed. It was during this time that Slessor learned from a frightening encounter the type of resolve that would later serve her so well in Africa. The area around the church, which met in an upstairs floor of a large brick building, was filled with bullying boys who lacked supervision. They were sometimes accompanied by unemployed young men who would chime in the taunts laid on those attending the church. Mission workers were even advised to travel in pairs.13 Slessor had dodged the bullies successfully until that point, taught through the experience with her alcoholic father. Yet on one occasion, she was cornered by a gang of boys, whose leader had a lead weight attached to a cord, which he was swinging above his head, threatening to strike her with it if she did not back away. He came closer and closer to her with the swinging weight, almost grazing her forehead. When Slessor didnt flinch, the leader exclaimed, Shes game, boys!, and he and the others followed her into the prayer meeting. Later, this boy would send
10 11 12

Benge and Benge, Mary Slessor: Forward Into Calabar, 37-38. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, 171. Cuthbert McEvoy, Mary Slessor (Glasgow: Publications Offices, United Free Church of Scotland, 1922), Hardage, Mary Slessor - Everybody's Mother: The Era and Impact of a Victorian Missionary, 8.

10.
13

her a letter to the mission field with a picture of himself and his family, sharing with her how this had been a turning point in his life.14 Slessor taught the children about her passion, missions. In notes for a lesson she taught at Wishart Church, Slessor wrote, Thank God! For such men & women here & everywhere, who in the face of scorn, & persecution...dare to stand firmly & fearlessly for their Master. Their commission is today what it was yesterday. 'Go ye into all the world, & preach the Gospel to every creature.' ... not the nice easy places only, but the dark places, the distant places.15 Her heart for missions having been shaped by her mothers influence and the constant reading of missionary reports, Slessor let her own challenge not ring hollow when at the age of twenty-five she followed the call after David Livingstone died in 1874, and the news of his death reached England. Her heart had been touched by the story of the Calabar Mission in West Africa, which her mother had told her about growing up. After Livingstones death, Slessor approached the Foreign Mission Board to offer her services in May 1875, expressing her readiness to go anywhere they would ask her to go. She was accepted by the Board, but was asked to remain in Dundee to continue her studies for a few months. In December of 1875, the Board sent her to Edinburgh for preparatory training. On August 5, 1876, Slessor sailed for Africa, twenty-eight years old. Observing the casks of alcohol being loaded for the West Coast of Africa, Slessor remarked, There are scores of casks, only one missionary! On September 11, 1876, Mary Slessor landed at Calabar.16
14 15 16

Ibid. Hardage, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, 178.

E. E. Enock and J. Chappell, "Ma", the Missionary Heroine of Calabar: A Brief Biography of Mary Slessor (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1930), 6, http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/bioslessor5.pdf (accessed May 6, 2012).

INTO AFRICA A Presbyterian mission station had been founded in Calabar, located near the southeastern coast of what today is Nigeria, in 1846 by a group of missionaries spurred on by Hope Masterton Waddell, an Irish clergyman working in Jamaica, who was convinced that God was calling freed slaves from the West Indies to return to their homelands in Africa to share the Good News of Jesus Christ after reading Sir T. Fowell Buxtons book The Slave Trade and Its Remedy. He experienced pushback from the Foreign Mission Board in Edinburgh at first, but persisted and finally received permission to sail.17 Thirty years later, Mary Slessor arrived at Calabar. In one of her first letters home, she described her impressions of the land where she had landed. From initial impressions reflecting her amazement at the world she had entered to the matter-of-fact reporting of the bloody sacrificial system encountered in the tribal palaver house, it is clear that this world would prove to be challenging: Mr Edgerley took me up one day to a station called Adiabo & to another. At the latter place the women & children crowded round to see the white 'Ma' and their gesticulations wd. have frightened me had not Mr E. told me they only wished to make friends with me. It is a rare thing for a white person to visit them, & specially so to have a white lady visitor. And for once in my life I felt it difficult to tell the 'Old,Old Story.' Going on further we came to a palaver house: the blood of their latest Sacrifice was still fresh on the altar. Some fierce looking men were sitting beside it, but in less than five minutes they were sitting beside me in the house of the Chief, who received me with great kindness. Scarcely had we been seated, when a crowd of men, women & children almost smothered us. The Chief drove them off with a whip & made them stand at a respectful distance.18 Slessor was determined to learn and master the language of the people, and with the help of a language expert, the Reverend Hugh Goldie, she learned Efik, based on Goldies Efik
17 18

Hardage, 178.

Mary Slessor, GD.X.260.18, Letters and Articles (Dundee City Archives), http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/letters.htm (accessed May 5, 2012).

dictionary and Bible. She was a quick learner and was praised by the locals for having been blessed with an Efik mouth.19 This language skill would become one of the most useful tools for Slessor. Not only was there a certain level of novelty to a white woman coming to visit them, but there was also a deep effect on Slessor as she observed the suffering of the people. It was only her deep abiding faith that kept her from despairing of the scenes she witnessed. On entering the first town, we met a woman who told us, so and so's child is dead, and there, sure enough, were the mourning women round the door, and the little grave dug at the door-step. Pushing in among the sweating, howling crowd, I asked for the mother; then the wailing ceased. I found her in a dark corner. She had fainted. After a little she recovered, and her first conscious wail was my boy, my boy! By-and-by the wee laddie was brought out, just held in his mat. I opened it to see him, and there was the poor emaciated body with swollen head in all the hideousness of disease and dirt, to be hidden from the sight of the people. The grave was far too short, and rather than desecrate the poor wee body, I made them make it longer, and they laid him down to do this just as if he had been a piece of goods; then they laid him in, and threw on the earth less than a foot from the top soil. There was no want of tenderness either, for the women again burst forth with wailing. His own father threw on the earth, and the women after we had gone took the poor mother away to cheer her and remove the grave from her sight. It was all they could do. As I went from village to village the memory of this scene coloured all my outlook. It led me to take as my subject Revelation xxi, 4: no more pain, no more sorrow, no more death; God wiping the tears from all eyes. But even that great assurance could not lift the sadness, the terrible squalor, the utter hopelessness of these crowds of sisterhearts. Then there came comfort. It was if He said, I do not wish you to be ignorant of what I am working out in all the mystery of sin and suffering. It is not My fault that you do not know, it is your own capacity that is wanting, but that too is coming. You do not need to wait for heaven, it is coming daily as your horizon widens, and day by day you will know better and more.20 At the same time, Slessor saw much of the ill effects of society directly attributable to something she was painfully familiar with: the abuse of alcohol. Much of the violent behavior displayed by the tribal leaders, including warfare with other tribes and brutal judgments on
19 20

Elizabeth Robertson, Mary Slessor (Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2002), 17.

Mary Slessor, GD.X.260.19xiii, in Letters and Articles (Dundee City Archives), http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/letters.htm (accessed May 5, 2012).

women and slaves for seemingly minor infractions, was directly attributable to the large amounts of alcohol consumed by all, including the women.21 DISRUPTING THE STATUS QUO Slessor found a world very much unlike the one she came from. Little by little, Slessor learned of the apparently unending horrors of living the life of a tribal member in this part of West Africa. When an important chief died, his wife and children as well as his slaves would be strangled to accompany him into the afterlife. In 1849, King Eyamba died, leading to his thirty wives and concubines as well as fifty slaves being lowered into a pit in the place, where they were murdered according to a macabre funeral rite, leading to the forming of the Society for the Suppression of Human Sacrifice the following year.22 Twins were considered unworthy of living because one of them was the devils spawn based on a secret mating, which also meant the twin-mother had to be killed. This judgment was later changed under increasing missionary influence to banishment. The twins themselves were strangled or left to die in the forest. Mission chronicler Donald McFarlan reported, In the country districts round about all the superstitious practices still continued. Even in the town they persisted in secret. The tiny bodies of twins were broken and crushed into clay pots or cast on to ant heaps in the bush to be eaten alive.23 Mammy Anderson told Slessor, They believe that the father of one of the twins is an evil spirit or devil. But they don't know which one's father was a devil, so they kill both to be sure of getting the right one.24
21 22 23 24

Robertson, Mary Slessor, 45. Ibid., 14. Hardage, Mary Slessor - Everybody's Mother: The Era and Impact of a Victorian Missionary, 34. A. J. Bueltman, White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor (Charleston, SC: CreateSpace,

2012), 15.

Eme, the son of a witch doctor, became a Christian at a Scottish mission school, and after much persecution from his family, he married a twin, who had been rescued as an infant. His marriage was cursed by tribal people that no children would be born, however healthy children were born to them; in turn leading many of those who had cursed the marriage to become Christians themselves.25 For more than a quarter century, missionaries had been attempting to save these children, and Slessor also found herself taking in children. Orphans, likewise, needed her care, as they were simply abandoned when there was nobody to take care of them. She fearlessly fought for the lives of these unwanted or cursed children. Slessor eventually adopted ten children, taking several of them back to Scotland on her furloughs.26 Time and again, Slessor fearlessly fought the status quo of tribal rituals. In doing so, she often had to display wisdom similar to King Solomon. In one example, two young wives of Chief Okon had snuck away from the compound in the dark of night and gone to another where a young man slept. Two other wives knew about this breach of Efik law, but did nothing to alert the chief. According to the customs, the wives had to be punished, and the sentence was to be hundred lashes with a crocodile whip, a certain death sentence. Slessor tried to change the outcome by talking with the chief, but he told her, If you say we must not flog, we must listen to you as our mother and our guest. But they will say that Gods word be no good if it destroy the power of the law to punish evildoers.27 Slessor addressed a council meeting which she had asked the chief to gather. At first speaking to the young women, she chastised them that they had brought punishment on themselves by running away and disobeying their laws. The men,
25 26 27

Hardage, Mary Slessor - Everybody's Mother: The Era and Impact of a Victorian Missionary, 36. Ibid., 313. Ibid., 38.

10

nodding in agreement, were astonished to hear her address them next, telling them that the womens behavior was their fault for locking up young women, really girls, in the compound under polygamous conditions. The men were unhappy with this charge, but after much discussion, agreed to reduce the punishment to ten lashes, without further punishments of strewing salt in the wounds and cutting off fingers to cause mutilation. Slessor nursed the girls back to health, giving them laudanum for the pain and bandaging their wounds.28 IMPACTING CALABAR AND AREAS BEYOND Not content to simply stay at the Calabar Mission, Slessor had pleaded with the missions organization to allow her to go to a different station and was assigned to Old Town, a couple of miles up the Calabar River. By 1882, Slessor was exploring along the river by visiting different villages, bringing medicine to treat peoples ailments and preaching the gospel informally. Upon her return from furlough in Scotland, she pleaded to let her go to the Okoyong territory. There were fearsome reports of guns and drunkenness, trial by ordeal with poison beans, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and skulls on display.29 She was finally allowed to go and managed to secure a place to live among the Okoyong. Mary Slessors effect on the people in the Calabar region of Nigeria was visible to those she came in contact with. Slow progress was made in how the people of this region reacted to events in their village lives. Where before, there unfailingly would be blood shed when a prominent member of the family died, after Slessors taking a stance against such violence and sharing of the love of Christ, some of the indigenous population came to a saving faith. This deeply affected the way they lived their lives, as can be seen in Slessors letter home:
28 29

Ibid. Jeanette Hardage, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, 179.

11 Things progress slowly, but I think surely here. Our old chief has died, and instead of a week of drinking and flogging, the town was quiet, but for the mourning women, and the Egbo drum for one night. Most of the male members of the chief's house are Christians, and they came to ask what they should do in regard to the funeral - the drink, and the goat sacrifice, etc., and all were firm for the right. The wife, who is left, is a candidate for baptism, and they asked about her and the time of mourning; she will not be prohibited from coming to Church, even on the first Sabbath, so I thank God and take courage.30 The progress Slessor saw was indeed slow. The effort to convince tribal members to renounce their traditional religions was much greater than could have been anticipated. While Slessor was held in high esteem and was viewed as a fearless and wise woman, the relationships built in this manner did not translate into conversions easily. If her success was to be measured by the number of her converts, it would have to be deemed slight. In Okoyong, the first baptisms did not take place until fifteen years after she began her work there. The number of baptism candidates was also small: seven adults and eleven children were baptized. In her final home in the Aro tribal region, the results were similar.31 Slessors interests and priorities were primarily geared toward the improvement of the lives of the members of the tribes she worked with to protect those who were most vulnerable, and to reduce injustice, cruelty, and suffering,32 rather than on solely evangelizing the tribal people, even though she lived out her faith prayerfully and shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those she encountered. In this manner, she served both God and the Empire.33 Her colleague Jessie Hogg wrote after Slessors death, And let no one think that spiritual adviser was lost in the law-giver. I am safe in saying that in no Court of Justice in the world was the Gospel preached so habitually and with such a pitying insight into the human soul.34
Mary Slessor, GD.X.260.19xv, in Letters and Articles (Dundee City Archives), http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/letters.htm (accessed May 5, 2012). J. H. Proctor, Serving God and the Empire: Mary Slessor in South-Eastern Nigeria, 1876-1915, Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 1 (January 2000): 58.
32 33 34 31 30

Ibid., 59. Ibid. Ibid., 56.

12

COLONIALISM AND MISSION The colonial government played a large role in Mary Slessors world. During her service in the Calabar region, there were both positive and negative relationships formed with the colonial administrators. She would accept assistance from the colonial administration when she needed help, such as when fighting the barbarism encountered in the tribes. Likewise, she would give back in an informal partnership manner. Many times, the officials at the colonial headquarters would attempt to make her life more pleasant by providing her with luxuries such as items not typically available to her, but rather brought on the ships reaching Calabar. On one occasion, District Commissioner Charles Partridge, to whom she had a very warm relationship, brought her a phonograph, capable of producing and recording sound on which she recorded the story of the Prodigal Son in Efik, allowing him to take the recording with him on official trips and playing it to the tribal people.35 Her unusual report with and insights into the local tribal people led the British Consul General, Major Claude MacDonald, to appoint Slessor vice consul of the Okoyong territory. Much of this was based on Slessors insistence that the Okoyong were not ready for British administration, and so it was a natural fit for her to engage in such a role, where she would make decisions in tribal affairs. Serving several years in the role, she resigned after a strong disagreement with a district commissioner to whom she had a strained relationship. After clarification of the situation a few years later, she resumed her role, this time as vice president of the native court, in 1905. She was known for her highly practical and fair - albeit sometimes legally questionable - decision-making.36
35 36

Ibid., 58. Hardage, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, 180.

13

Slessor saw the relationship between the missionaries and the colonial administration and believed that the synergies between the two would ultimately prove beneficial to those involved. She saw her role as opening unexplored areas to allow others to come after her to evangelize the people thus reached. She also saw that by doing so, she cleared the path for the colonial powers: It is almost impossible for a European magistrate to hold this horde of people.... Just now I am the feet of the Church, as it were, and I am to go with shoes of peace. What a preparation for the Government that is-to pave the transition roads with Gospel peace!37 Having worked with the Okoyong for many years, Slessor decided to leave her home there to go further inland to the Aro people, known for continued slaving expeditions, taking of skulls, and cannibalism.38 To those concerned about the cannibalism, Slessor conveyed that she believed God would bless her work, and that He would protect her.39 Having made her way there safely, she continued to exhibit her fearless and firm behavior in working with the tribal people she encountered there. Slessor settled in a village near the junction of the Cross River with the Enyong Creek in 1904.40 For the next eleven years, Slessor worked among and ministered to the Aro people. A LEGACY Even during her lifetime, Mary Slessor had taken on legendary fame, and it is against this background that Livingstone describes the request posed to her to write down her story: Towards the end of her days she was urged to write her autobiography, but was surprised at the proposal, and asked what she had done to merit the distinction of being put in a book. She was so humble-minded that she could not discern any special virtue in her life of self-sacrifice and heroism; and she disliked publicity and was shamed by praise. When
37 38 39 40

Proctor, Serving God and the Empire: Mary Slessor in South-Eastern Nigeria, 1876-1915, 47. Hardage, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, 180. Bueltman, White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor, 65. Ibid.

14 the matter was pressed upon her in view of the inspiration which a narrative of her experiences and adventures would be for others, she began to consider whether it might not be a duty, and she never shrank from any duty however unpleasant.41 On January, 13, 1915, Mary Slessor died at her remote station near Use Ikot Oku. She had served over thirty-eight years in south-eastern Nigeria as a Scottish Presbyterian missionary. The funeral held for her was the colonial equivalent of a state funeral.42 Proctor describes the proceedings after her body had been transported to Duke Town down the Cross River: The Provincial Commissioner and other senior British officials stood in full uniform at the jetty as her coffin, wrapped in the Union Jack, was lifted from the launch by four soldiers of the Nigeria Regiment and borne under an arch of swords held aloft by their officers while the regimental band played the National Anthem. Troops lined the route to the cemetery and snapped to attention as the coffin passed. Flags at government buildings had been lowered to half-mast; schools and offices had been closed; and the GovernorGeneral of Nigeria, Sir Frederick Lugard, had telegraphed his 'deepest regret' from Lagos and had published a warm tribute in the Government Gazette.43 While Mary Slessor managed to often alienate those around her in colonial government, in 1950, Partridge, who had served as a colonial administrator and at one point District Commissioner in the area where Mary Slessor worked, paid her a great compliment in a letter accompanying a collection of letters containing her correspondence with him between 1905 and 1914. He wrote, During my long life, I have had intercourse with many distinguished people, chiefly men. Of the women, I place first Mary Slessor, whom you call the White Queen of Okoyong! She was a very remarkable woman. I look back on her friendship with reverence one of the greatest honours that have befallen me and I had and still have a superstitious feeling that she has been and still is one of my Guardian Angels. (I have been twice seized by cannibals, thrice shipwrecked, etc., etc.!) This belief exists in spite of my being agnostic (non-knower) and non-religious, though, as we all are, thoroughly imbued with the ethics of Christianity. Excepting Miss Slessor, I thoroughly disapprove of all missionaries!44
William Pringle Livingstone, Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary (New York, NY: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916), iii-iv.
42 43 44 41

Proctor, Serving God and the Empire, 45.Mary Slessor in South-Eastern Nigeria, 1876-1915, 47. Ibid.

Local History Centre, Dundee, UK, Mary Slessor 1848-1915: Books and Letters, http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/books.htm (accessed May 6, 2012).

15

Mary Slessor had managed to have an impact not just on the Africans she encountered and learned to love, but had a profound effect also on those from her own cultural background that she came in contact with. Without a doubt, she was a woman that left a lasting impression on those whom she engaged with. Vocational ministry offered few opportunities for women in their homelands during Mary Slessors days. She is one of the women missionaries worth remembering (and emulating) who did not let a poverty-ridden upbringing or a wrong gender stop them from serving the Lord. While missionary service offered adventure and served as a way to raise their station in life, more than any other reason these women had in common that they sensed a calling from God and that by following that calling, they could make a difference.45 CONCLUSION Today, serving in missions is still an area of service for single younger and older women. The lessons of those who have gone before embolden women to face the unknown and go. While modern conveniences have made it easier to communicate with the world back home and to come home on furlough, going into the mission field still requires the type of fearlessness that Mary Slessor displayed. One cannot help but notice the training course God set her on to prepare for the level of boldness required to be successful in her ministry in Africa. From feeling hunger to working hard to having to face bullies, Slessor could have not had a more applicable training ground in her childhood and youth. Like Joseph, she experienced that what others may have intended to cause her harm, God intended for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (Genesis 50:20, NIV) Mary Slessors challenge still stands to take the Gospel to the low as well as the high, the poor as well as the rich, the ignorant as well as the
45

Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, 289.

16

learned, the degraded as well as the refined, to those who will mock as well as to those who will receive us, to those who will hate as well as to those who will love us.46

46

Hardage, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26, 178.

17

BIBLIOGRAPHY Benge, Janet, and Geoff Benge. Mary Slessor: Forward Into Calabar. Seattle, WA: YWAM Publishing, 1999. Bueltman, A. J. White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012. Enock, E. E., and J. Chappell. "Ma", the Missionary Heroine of Calabar: A Brief Biography of Mary Slessor. London: Pickering & Inglis, 1930. http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/bioslessor5.pdf (accessed May 6, 2012). Hardage, Jeanette. The Legacy of Mary Slessor. In International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26. no. 4 (October 1, 2002): 178-181, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed April 20, 2012). . Mary Slessor - Everybody's Mother: The Era and Impact of a Victorian Missionary. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2010. HyperHistory.net. Mary Slessor: The White Ma of Africa. http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b1Slessorslessor.htm (accessed May 5, 2012). Livingstone, William Pringle. Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary. New York, NY: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916. Local History Centre, Dundee City, UK. Mary Slessor 1848 - 1915: Early Life. http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/index.htm (accessed May 5, 2012). , Dundee City, UK. Mary Slessor 1848-1915: Books and Letters. http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/books.htm (accessed May 6, 2012). McEvoy, Cuthbert. Mary Slessor. Glasgow: Publications Offices, United Free Church of Scotland, 1922. Miller, Basil. Women of Faith: Mary Slessor. Ada, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 1985. Morgan, Robert J. On This Day: 365 Amazing and Inspiring Stories about Saints, Martyrs & Heroes. Electronic ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000. Parkman, Mary Rosetta. Heroines of Service. New York, NY: Century, 1918. Proctor, J. H. Serving God and the Empire: Mary Slessor in South-Eastern Nigeria, 1876-1915. Journal of Religion in Africa 30, no. 1 (January 2000): 45-61. Robertson, Elizabeth. Mary Slessor. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2002. Slessor, Slessor. GD.X.260.18. Letters and Articles (Dundee City Archives), http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/letters.htm (accessed May 5, 2012).

18 . GD.X.260.19x. In Letters and Articles. Dundee City Archives, http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/letters.htm (accessed May 5, 2012). . GD.X.260.19xv. In Letters and Articles. Dundee City Archives, http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/letters.htm (accessed May 5, 2012). . GD.X.260.19xiii. In Letters and Articles. Dundee City Archives, http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/library/slessor/letters.htm (accessed May 5, 2012 Tucker, Ruth A. Black Africa - Mary Slessor. In From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, 170-75. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983, 2004.

S-ar putea să vă placă și