Jessie M. Trout | |
---|---|
Born | Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada | July 26, 1895
Died | 1990 (aged 94–95) |
Occupation | Missionary to Japan & church leader |
Years active | 1921–1961 |
Employer | Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) |
Jessie M. Trout (July 26, 1895 – 1990) was a Canadian missionary to Japan for nearly 20 years until she left Japan during World War II. [1] She was a leader in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), including being the first woman to serve as vice president of the denomination's United Christian Missionary Society. She co-founded the Christian Women's Fellowship (1950) and the International Christian Women's Fellowship (1953), both Disciples groups for women. She also was a writer and translator.
She received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Bethany College in 1955. [2]
Jessie Mary Trout was born to Archibald Trout [3] on July 26, 1895 [1] [4] at Owen Sound off of Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada. [5] [4] She graduated from Owen Sound Collegiate Institute and studied at the teachers college, Toronto Normal School. [6] She was a school teacher, when she traveled to Indianapolis in 1920. [3] She also studied at The College of Missions in Indianapolis, which trained missionaries for the Disciples. [7] The school was founded by the Christian Woman's Board of Missions. [8]
Inspired by a church member, [5] Trout served as a missionary in Japan for the Disciples from 1921 to 1940, [9] [10] spending the first two years learning Japanese. [5] The she served women and girls in Akita. [5] She taught at the Margaret K. Long for Girls (Japanese: Joshi Se Gakun, meaning Girl’s Holy School) in Tokyo beginning in 1931. [5] She worked from 1935 to 1940 in an ecumenical program in Kagawa, [1] under Toyohiko Kagawa. She entertained notable people and translated his works. She took a leave in 1940 and due to increased nationalism was unable to return to Japan, losing her belongings, including an extensive print collection. [5]
While in Japan, she met and mentored Itoko Maeda, a young girl attending the Christian school. Trout aided Maeda in getting scholarships to continue her Christian education, both in Japan and the United States. Itoko Maeda would later go on to become an important missionary in her own right. [11]
During World War II, Trout left Japan and returned to the United States. She was one of the church leaders who visited Japanese Internment camps during World War II to conduct "mass meetings, seminars, open forums, ministers' conferences, [and] Bible study sessions," [12] [13] serving the Emergency Million Movement as Associate Director. [9] [14] The Disciples of Christ was outspoken in its opposition to the internment of Japanese Americans and as Conner writes, "[It] took a leading role in a well-coordinated, national public and private effort to move Japanese Americans out of internment camps and resettle them in towns and cities across the nation’s heartland." Trout, as a Disciples missionary, aided in this effort by touring rural Indiana communities to determine the availability of employment for, and sentiments towards, the internees. [15]
In the 1940s, she was the national secretary of World Call, the magazine of the United Christian Missionary Society. [16] In January 1946, she became the executive secretary of the department of missionary education; in that role she oversaw a large field staff and worked with 5,000 organizations throughout the United States. [5] From 1950 to 1961, [17] she was vice president of the United Christian Missionary Society in Indianapolis; [9] [18] [19] The first woman to assume that position. [20] Trout worked for the Division of World Missions as a field liaison. [1] Over her career, she traveled to 35 countries, some of which were during revolutionary control. [21] She was a leader in the Disciples of Christ (Campbell Movement) of Thomas and Alexander Campbell. [22] [23]
Trout helped co-found the Christian Women's Fellowship in 1950 and served as chief executive of the Christian Women's Fellowship. [1] Throughout United States and Canada, there were about 250,000 members in more than 4,200 groups. [9] This was a significant effort to organize efforts of women and make their efforts more meaningful during a conservative period when women's leadership roles within the Christian Church was limited. [16] It merged local women's guilds and missionary organizations. [17] She founded the International Christian Women's Fellowship (1953). [1] Trout also helped establish women's groups in Britain and visited women's groups in Thailand, Germany, Japan, the Philippines, Britain, and Pakistan. [9] [5]
She returned to missionary work in Japan 1961 and retired in 1963, intending to continue her efforts as a translator and a speaker and living in Indianapolis in the winter and Owen Sound in the summer. [21]
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th century as a loose association of churches working towards Christian unity, then slowly forming quasi-denominational structures through missionary societies, regional associations, and an international convention. In 1968, the Disciples of Christ officially adopted a denominational structure at which time a group of churches left to remain nondenominational.
The Restoration Movement is a Christian movement that began on the United States frontier during the Second Great Awakening (1790–1840) of the early 19th century. The pioneers of this movement were seeking to reform the church from within and sought "the unification of all Christians in a single body patterned after the church of the New Testament."
Alexander Campbell was a Scots-Irish immigrant who became an ordained minister in the United States and joined his father Thomas Campbell as a leader of a reform effort that is historically known as the Restoration Movement, and by some as the "Stone-Campbell Movement." It resulted in the development of non-denominational Christian churches, which stressed reliance on scripture and few essentials. Campbell was influenced by similar efforts in Scotland, in particular, by James and Robert Haldane, who emphasized their interpretation of Christianity as found in the New Testament. In 1832, the group of reformers led by the Campbells merged with a similar movement that began under the leadership of Barton W. Stone in Kentucky. Their congregations identified as Disciples of Christ or Christian churches.
David Lipscomb was a minister, editor, and educator in the American Restoration Movement and one of the leaders of that movement, which, by 1906, had formalized a division into the Church of Christ and the Christian Church. James A. Harding and David Lipscomb founded the Nashville Bible School, now known as Lipscomb University in honor of the latter.
The Springfield Presbytery was an independent presbytery that became one of the earliest expressions of the Stone-Campbell Movement. It was composed of Presbyterian ministers who withdrew from the jurisdiction of the Kentucky Synod of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America on September 10, 1803. It dissolved itself on June 28, 1804, with the publication of a document titled the Last Will and Testament of The Springfield Presbytery, marking the birth of the Christian Church of the West.
Barton Warren Stone was an American evangelist during the early 19th-century Second Great Awakening in the United States. First ordained a Presbyterian minister, he and four other ministers of the Washington Presbytery resigned after arguments about doctrine and enforcement of policy by the Kentucky Synod. This was in 1803, after Stone had helped lead the mammoth Cane Ridge Revival, a several-day communion season attended by nearly 20,000 persons.
Thomas Campbell was a Presbyterian minister who became prominent during the Second Great Awakening of the United States. Born in County Down, he began a religious reform movement on the American frontier. He was joined in the work by his son, Alexander. Their movement, known as the "Disciples of Christ", merged in 1832 with the similar movement led by Barton W. Stone to form what is now described as the American Restoration Movement.
Jesse Moren Bader (1886–1963) was a 20th-century evangelist, ecumenist and global leader. He was a significant and visionary leader during the twentieth century, not only within his own communion, helping establish the World Convention of Churches of Christ but also within the wider church. This influence was not limited to the United States of America but extended to the Christian world.
Toyohiko Kagawa was a Japanese Protestant Christian pacifist, Christian reformer, and labour activist. Kagawa wrote, spoke, and worked at length on ways to employ Christian principles in the ordering of society and in cooperatives. His vocation to help the poor led him to live among them. He advocated for women's suffrage and promoted a peaceful foreign policy.
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The Christian Association of Washington was an organization established by Thomas Campbell in 1809 to promote Christian unity. It was a study group that Campbell formed with like minded friends and acquaintances in the local neighborhood of Washington, Pennsylvania. The group sought to foster unity by focusing on a common form of Christianity that they could all agree upon. This charter that Campbell wrote for this group, the Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington, became one of the most important early texts of the Restoration Movement.
The Disciples of Christ (Campbell Movement) were a group arising during the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. The most prominent leaders were Thomas and Alexander Campbell. The group was committed to restoring primitive Christianity. It merged with the Christians (Stone Movement) in 1832 to form what is now described as the American Restoration Movement (also known as the Stone–Campbell Restoration Movement).
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Central Christian Church, also known in its early years as the Church of Christ in Indianapolis and Christian Chapel, is located at 701 North Delaware Street in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Its members formally organized on June 12, 1833, as the city's first Christian Church congregation. The congregation formally adopted the name of Central Christian Church on February 3, 1879. Its red brick and stone masonry Romanesque Revival-style church was dedicated in 1893. Building additions were completed in 1913 and in 1922. The church continues to serve the Indianapolis community and holds weekly worship services.
1955 - Jessie Mary Trout - Doctor of Divinity
Jessie Trout; age 25; Single, Female, Schoolteacher; Owen Sound, Canada; Father - Archibald Trout, Owen Sound; Final destination Indianapolis, Indiana
Jessie Mary Trout; Female; 53; Canadian; born 26 Jul 1895 at Owen Sound Ont, Canada; Arrival 5 Jun 1949 at Detroit, Michigan, USA