Jessie Trout

Last updated • 4 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Jessie M. Trout
Jessie Trout 1949.tiff
Born(1895-07-26)July 26, 1895
Died1990 (aged 9495)
Occupation Missionary to Japan & church leader
Years active1921–1961
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.

Contents

She received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Bethany College in 1955. [2]

Early life

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]

Career

Japan

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]

Japanese-American internment camps

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]

Leadership

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]

Later years

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]

Works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)</span> Mainline Protestant (religious) denomination

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Restoration Movement</span> Christian movement seeking church reformation and unification

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."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Campbell (minister)</span> Scots-Irish American ordained minister (1788–1866)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Lipscomb</span> Leader, American Restoration Movement (1831–1917)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barton W. Stone</span>

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Campbell (minister)</span> Irish Presbyterian minister

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toyohiko Kagawa</span> Japanese Christian social reformer

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.

The Brush Run Church was one of the earliest congregations associated with the Restoration Movement that arose during the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century. In 1811, a congregation of Christian reformers known as the Christian Association of Washington (Pennsylvania) reconstituted itself as a church and constructed a new building to replace the temporary log building where they began. Because it was built on the farm of William Gilchrist, near a stream called Brush Run, both the building and the congregation became known as Brush Run Church. It was the center of activity for Thomas and Alexander Campbell, father and son respectively, in their movement for Christian reform on the American frontier. The meeting house was later used as a blacksmith shop, then as a post office and finally it was moved to Bethany, Virginia.

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).

Disciples of Christ Historical Society is the official archives for congregations of the Stone-Campbell Movement, also known as the Restoration Movement. The Society is incorporated as a general ministry of the Christian Church and serves all three branches of the Movement: the Churches of Christ, Christian churches and churches of Christ, and the Disciples.

The Redstone Baptist Association was an association of Baptist churches in Western Pennsylvania. The early Restoration Movement leader Alexander Campbell and the congregation he led, the Brush Run Church, were members of the Association for several years during the early 19th century.

The Christian Woman's Board of Missions (CWBM) was a missionary organization associated with the Restoration Movement. Established in 1874, it was the first such group managed entirely by women. It hired both men and women, and supported both domestic and foreign missions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon E. Watkins</span> American pastor

Sharon E. Watkins is an ordained Christian minister who became the first woman to lead a mainline denomination in North America in 2005, when she was elected the General Minister and President of the Christian Church in the United States and Canada. She served two six year terms. She preached at the national prayer service on January 21, 2009, at the invitation of President Barack Obama, becoming the first woman to preach at an inaugural prayer service. In 2017, after stepping down from the role of General Minister and President of the Christian Church, she became director of the Truth and Racial Justice Initiative of the National Council of Churches of Christ, USA. She is currently the pastor of Bethany Memorial Church, in Bethany, West Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Bostick</span>

Sarah Lue Bostick (1868–1948) born Sarah Lue Howard near Glasgow, Kentucky, on May 27, 1868, was key in organizing the first African-American Christian Woman's Board of Missions auxiliary in 1892 and subsequent clubs throughout the south at the turn of the 20th century.

Sadie McCoy Crank, born Sarah Catherine McCoy, was one of the earliest ordained (1892) female preachers in the Stone-Campbell Movement and an organizer for the Illinois Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This is notable because around this time a vigorous debate about the role of women as preachers was taking place in religious periodicals like the Gospel Advocate, Christian Standard, and Christian-Evangelist.

Clara Celestia Hale Babcock was one of the first women preachers to be ordained within the Restoration Movement, and was a leader within the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

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.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Foster, Douglas (2004). The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. p. 746. ISBN   9780802838988.
  2. "Honorary Degrees". Bethany College. Retrieved May 2, 2017. 1955 - Jessie Mary Trout - Doctor of Divinity
  3. 1 2 "Jessie Trout", Manifests of Passengers Arriving at St. Albans, VT, District through Canadian Pacific and Atlantic Ports, 1895-1954; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787 - 2004; Record Group Number: 85; Series Number: M1464; Roll Number: 404, Washington, D.C.: The National Archives, September 24, 1920, Jessie Trout; age 25; Single, Female, Schoolteacher; Owen Sound, Canada; Father - Archibald Trout, Owen Sound; Final destination Indianapolis, Indiana
  4. 1 2 "Jessie Mary Trout", Card Manifests (Alphabetical) of Individuals Entering through the Port of Detroit, Michigan, 1906-1954; NAI: 4527226; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; Record Group: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004, Washington, D.C; Washington, D.C.: The National Archives, Jessie Mary Trout; Female; 53; Canadian; born 26 Jul 1895 at Owen Sound Ont, Canada; Arrival 5 Jun 1949 at Detroit, Michigan, USA
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Lotys Benning Stewart (June 8, 1947). "They Achieve". The Indianapolis Star. p. 70. Retrieved May 2, 2017 via newspapers.com.
  6. Trout, Jessie. The Year Book, Toronto Normal School. 1914. pp. 10, 66.
  7. Debra Hull (January–March 2008). "Education and Women in the Stone - Campbell Tradition". Leaven. 16 (1). Retrieved May 2, 2017 via pepperdine.edu.
  8. Christian Church Women. Chalice Press. 1994. p. 134. ISBN   978-0-8272-0580-2.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "Miss Jessie Trout Speaks at Area Meeting of Disciples". Moberly Monitor Index. Moberly, Missouri. November 27, 1959. p. 4. Retrieved May 2, 2017 via newspapers.com.
  10. "Winnipeggers Receive Tidings". The Winnipeg Tribune. September 5, 1923. p. 2. Retrieved May 2, 2017 via newspapers.com.
  11. Emmons, Sherrie (Winter 2012). "Tiny Woman, Big Mission" (PDF). Just Women: Embracing Life. 22.
  12. Suzuki, Lester (1972). "Ministry in the Wartime Relocation Centers". The Christian Century. 89 (2): 36.
  13. John Howard (May 15, 2009). Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow. University of Chicago Press. p. 170. ISBN   978-0-226-35477-4.
  14. Reuben Butchart (1949). "Canadian Missionaries Serve in Foreign Lands". The Disciples of Christ in Canada Since 1830. Archived from the original on November 28, 2003 via Memorial University, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
  15. Conner, Nancy Nakano (June 2006). "From Internment to Indiana:Japanese Americans, the War Relocation Authority, the Disciples of Christ, and Citizen Committees in Indianapolis". Indiana Magazine of History. 102: 90, 107.
  16. 1 2 Rosemary Skinner Keller; Rosemary Radford Ruether; Marie Cantlon (2006). Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America. Indiana University Press. p. 304. ISBN   0-253-34685-1.
  17. 1 2 D. Newell Williams; Douglas Allen Foster; Paul M. Blowers (March 30, 2013). The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History. Chalice Press. p. PT278. ISBN   978-0-8272-3527-4.
  18. Edwin C. Linberg (November 2009). The Disciples in the Pacific Southwest Region: The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 1959-2009. iUniverse. p. 84. ISBN   978-1-4401-7085-0.
  19. Catherine A. Brekus; W. Clark Gilpin (December 1, 2011). American Christianities: A History of Dominance and Diversity. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 97. ISBN   978-0-8078-6914-7.
  20. Gary Holloway; Douglas A. Foster (September 1, 2015). Renewing the World: A Concise Global History of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Abilene Christian University Press. p. PT78. ISBN   978-0-89112-684-3.
  21. 1 2 Hortense Myers, United Press International (July 4, 1963). "Jessie M. Trout, After 42 Years as Missionary, To Continue Work". The Franklin Star. Franklin, Indiana. p. 2. Retrieved May 2, 2017 via newspapers.com.
  22. Mark G. Toulouse (1997). Joined in Discipleship -- Revised & Expanded. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press. p. 58. ISBN   978-0-8272-1732-4.
  23. D Duane Cummins (May 1, 2009). The Disciples: A Struggle for Reformation. Chalice Press. pp. 163, 166–167. ISBN   978-0-8272-3678-3.
  24. Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series: 1957. Copyright Office, Library of Congress. 1958. p. 329.

Further reading