Company for Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the parts adjacent in America | |
![]() The Eliot Indian Bible, published in 1663 as the first Bible printed in North America, was published with the support of the Society | |
Formation | Original founding: 1649 Royal charter: 1662 |
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Legal status | Charity |
Purpose | Missionary work Religious education |
Headquarters | Bolney, West Sussex, United Kingdom |
Region served | Historical: New England and British North America Curent: Canada West Indies |
President | Robert Boyle (first) |
Key people | Nick Wells (Chair) |
Website | newenglandcompany |
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England (also known as the New England Company or Company for Propagation of the Gospel in New England and the parts adjacent in America) is a British charitable organization created to promote Christian missionary activity among the Native American peoples of New England and other parts of North America under British control. The company's current website states that "the New England Company can lay claim to being the oldest missionary society still active in Britain." [1] The records of the New England Company, now held at London Metropolitan Archives, tell the history of colonial America and its Indigenous peoples. [2]
It was founded by the Act for the promoting and propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England, passed by Oliver Cromwell's Parliament on 27 July 1649. That Act set up a Corporation in England, consisting of a President, a Treasurer, and fourteen people to assist them. [3] This corporation had the power to collect money in England for missionary purposes in New England. [4] This money was received by the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England and dispersed for missionary purposes. The official name of the corporation was "The President and Society for the propagation of the Gospel in New England". [4]
Following the restoration of the English monarchy, the Society was granted a Royal Charter by Charles II in 1662. That charter provided for the promotion and propagation of "the Gospel of Christ unto and amongst the heathen natives in or near New England and parts adjacent in America". The Society was engaged in protestantism and colonization in Restoration politics. [5]
The Society operated within the territory of what is now the United States from 1649 to 1786, sending both missionaries and teachers to New England and later also to Virginia and New York. Due to the independence of the United States from Great Britain, after 1786 the Society continued to operate only in Canada and the British West Indies.
The Society supported the early efforts of John Eliot in Massachusetts, culminating in the first printed translation of the Christian Bible into a Native American language. The corresponding book, known as the "Eliot Indian Bible", was published in 1663 in the Massachusett language. The Society also played a critical role in funding and supporting institutions that sought to educate Native Americans, including the Harvard Indian College and later Dartmouth College. [6] [7]
The first president of the Society was the eminent Anglo-Irish scientist Robert Boyle (1627–1691). Boyle, who had no direct descendants, stated in his will that his legacy should be dedicated to "the Advance or Propagation of the Christian Religion amongst Infidells". After a prolonged dispute among his executors it was decided that the legacy would be used to purchase Brafferton Estate in Yorkshire, and that the proceeds of that estate would be used to pay "a rent-charge in perpetuity of £90 per annum unto the Company for Propagating the Gospel in New England". [8]
This timeline of Christian missions chronicles the global expansion of Christianity through a listing of the most significant missionary outreach events.
John Eliot was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called "the apostle to the Indians" and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. In 1660 he completed the enormous task of translating the Eliot Indian Bible into the Massachusett Indian language, producing more than two thousand completed copies.
Jonathan Mayhew was a noted American Congregational minister at Old West Church, Boston, Massachusetts.
Samson Occom was a member of the Mohegan nation, from near New London, Connecticut, who became a Presbyterian cleric. Occom was the second Native American to publish his writings in English, the first Native American to write down his autobiography, and also helped found several settlements, including what ultimately became known as the Brothertown Indians. Together with the missionary John Eliot, Occom became one of the foremost missionaries who cross-fertilised Native American communities with Christianized European culture.
Rufus Anderson was an American minister who spent several decades organizing overseas missions.
Praying Indian is a 17th-century term referring to Native Americans of New England, New York, Ontario, and Quebec who converted to Christianity either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many groups are referred to by the term, but it is more commonly used for tribes that were organized into villages. The villages were known as praying towns and were established by missionaries such as the Puritan leader John Eliot and Jesuit missionaries who established the St. Regis and Kahnawake and the missions among the Huron in western Ontario.
A Bible society is a non-profit organization, usually nondenominational in makeup, devoted to translating, publishing, and distributing the Bible at affordable prices. In recent years they also are increasingly involved in advocating its credibility and trustworthiness in contemporary cultural life. Traditionally Bible society editions contain scripture, without any doctrinal notes or comments, although they may include non-sectarian notes on alternate translations of words, or variations in the different available manuscripts.
Praying towns were settlements established by English colonial governments in New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert local Native Americans to Christianity.
United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG) is a United Kingdom-based charitable organization.
Experience Mayhew (1673–1758) was a New England missionary to the Wampanoag Indians on Martha's Vineyard and adjacent islands. He is the author of Massachusett Psalter.
Samuel Green was an early American printer, the first of several printers from the Green family who followed in his footsteps. One of Green's major accomplishments as a printer was the Eliot Indian Bible, translated by the missionary John Eliot, typeset by James Printer, which became the first Bible to be printed in British America in 1663. Members of his family who also became printers include his sons Bartholomew, Bartholomew Green Jr. and Joseph Dennie. Throughout his adult life Green also served in the Massachusetts Bay Colonial Militia, advancing to the rank of captain later in life.
17th-century missionary activity in Asia and the Americas grew strongly, put down roots, and developed its institutions, though it met with strong resistance in Japan in particular. At the same time Christian colonization of some areas outside Europe succeeded, driven by economic as well as religious reasons. Christian traders were heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade, which had the effect of transporting Africans into Christian communities. A land war between Christianity and Islam continued, in the form of the campaigns of the Habsburg Empire and Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, a turning point coming at Vienna in 1683. The Tsardom of Russia, where Orthodox Christianity was the established religion, expanded eastwards into Siberia and Central Asia, regions of Islamic and shamanistic beliefs, and also southwest into Ukraine, where the Uniate Eastern Catholic Churches arose.
Christianity in the 18th century is marked by the First Great Awakening in the Americas, along with the expansion of the Spanish and Portuguese empires around the world, which helped to spread Catholicism.
Frederick Dibblee was a Canadian Church of England clergyman who also was an educator and diarist.
Biblical translations into the indigenous languages of North and South America have been produced since the 16th century.
The Eliot Indian Bible was the first translation of the Christian Bible into an indigenous American language, as well as the first Bible published in British North America. It was prepared by English Puritan missionary John Eliot by translating the Geneva Bible into the Massachusett language. Printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the work first appeared in 1661 with only the New Testament. An edition including all 66 books of both the Old and New Testaments was printed in 1663.
The Indian College was an institution of higher education established in the 1640s with the mission of training Native American students at Harvard College, in the town of Cambridge, in colonial Massachusetts. The Indian College's building, located in Harvard Yard, was completed in 1656. It housed a printing press used to publish the first Christian Bible translated into a Native American language, the Eliot Indian Bible of 1663, which was also the first Bible in any language printed in British America.
Daniel Takawambait was likely the first ordained Native American Christian pastor in North America, and served the church in the praying town of Natick, Massachusetts from 1683 to 1716. Takawambait also advocated for indigenous land rights in colonial Massachusetts, and authored at least one publication.
Marmaduke Johnson was a London printer who was commissioned and sailed from England to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1660 to assist Samuel Green in the printing of The Indian Bible, which had been laboriously translated by John Eliot into the Massachusett Indian language, which became the first Bible printed in America. Johnson is considered the first master printer to emerge in America. When he attempted to operate his own privately owned printing house in Boston, without an official license from the Crown, the Massachusetts General Court interceded and censured his operation, which in turn started one of the first 'Freedom of the Press' issues in colonial America. After several appeals the Court conceded, where Johnson moved to Boston, set up and outfitted his printing shop, and ultimately became the first printer in America allowed to operate his own private printing press. During his printing career, Johnson printed several works for Eliot containing religious material translated for the Indian nations of Massachusetts.