As Holland prepares to celebrate its sesquicentennial, some aspects of Holland history easily come to mind: Klompen dancing and the Tulip Time festival, the familiar story of the Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte s Kolonie, and the terrible fire that destroyed over 80% of Holland in 1871. The life and times of Reformed Church missionaries may not come to mind as easily, but Holland, Hope College, and Western Theological Seminary can claim more than a few.
The Reformed Church in America (RCA) has a rich tradition of spreading the Gospel dating back to 1796.1 Missionaries not only had the great challenge of converting people to Christianity, but also the challenges of learning new languages and different cultures. Following are brief sketches of four RCA missions and some missionaries with Holland connections who made tremendous contributions to the missions in which they served.
Arcot Mission (India)
Dr. John Scudder left a thriving medical practice in New York City to become one of the first medical missionaries of the RCA. He served with other missionaries in the Ceylon Mission from 1819-1836 while he and his wife Harriet raised their nine children. In 1853, three of John Scudder s sons: Henry Scudder, William Scudder and Joseph Scudder travelled to the Arcot District and founded the mission there. All nine children were to eventually join the Arcot Mission, making the Scudder family s contribution there quite unparalleled. By 1861, ten missionary families served the Arcot Mission; 9 of these families carried the name Scudder.2
The Arcot Mission was well established when Cornelius A. De Bruin, a 1926 Western Theological Seminary graduate and his wife Frances began their years of service. The Arcot Mission had become one of the most successful missions of the Reformed Church from the looks of the many hospitals, schools, and churches that had been built.3 Frances De Bruin describes the excitement of missionary work in the following excerpt from a letter she wrote to a friend in 1936:
We have had a very pleasant season...Of course, it is not all entertainment that keeps us busy during this season. We have a convention for the deepening of the Spiritual life, and this year the speaker was an Indian pastor from North India. Then came a conference lasting 4 days, which was very interesting. That gives us a chance to meet missionaries from all over India, and exchange ideas with them.4
Besides furthering their education and learning about new cultures, missionaries also spent a considerable amount of time out in the field. Frances De Bruin wrote many letters describing the difficulties in building communities of Christian believers. Here is an example:
We are having an interesting time. We are contemplating opening a new village with fifteen families at present, and more expected to come....I had two of my native pastors, supervisor of the village schools and a couple of little boys with me. We had a great time. I went down purposely to see whether they were ready to receive Christianity and Baptism. We have opened villages that were not ready and I vowed never to repeat the mistake. So often they come from material motives such as a desire for better clothing or lands or homes. I asked them why they wanted to come and all of them said: 'to worship the true God, to lead better lives, to know Christ' Only one said to receive better clothing. ...I told them both that they need not come. We did not want them that way.5
Finding and cultivating a Christian community was not an easy task. Finding people willing to abandon the religion so ingrained with their culture and, as in Arabia, to break the law, was at times not very hopeful.
Arabian Mission
One of Holland's local connections to the Arabian Mission, founded in 1889, is Hope College graduate Jeannette Veldman. Trained as a nurse, Veldman served at Hope Hospital in Amoy, China, until she was forced to leave Amoy in 1951 after the communist takeover. Veldman was reassigned to the Arabian mission as Director of Nursing and In-service Education in 1952. While there, Veldman began a nursing school which served Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Spreading Christianity worked slowly at the American Mission in Amarah, Iraq, where Veldman was stationed in 1955:
We do have encouraging bits of evidence that the Holy Spirit is working, and we thank God that He gives us this visible evidence now and then. One young man shows continuous progress in His inner Christian life, and has even bravely told other young men of this faith in Christ in large groups as they questioned and accused him of doing such a thing.6
Today, the RCA has kept up its presence in the Middle East and missionaries provide health care, education, and Bible study/worship.
Japan Mission
The RCA mission in Japan was founded in 1859, just one year after a treaty opened the borders to missionaries. Newly arriving missionaries in Japan were greeted by political unrest, a language barrier, and an unfamiliar climate. At that time, thankfully, the Japanese upper classes were enamored with Western culture and desired to learn English at the small mission school. Missionary James Hamilton Ballagh taught them English with a twist as he used the Bible as their textbook.7 Even more intriguing is that all this evangelizing went on even though Christianity was banned in Japan until 1873. Government spies kept close watch on the missionaries, but were so impressed with the kindness of the missionaries that many of them converted to Christianity.8
The reasons for becoming a missionary are many. In an article about the history of the persecution of Christianity in Japan the Rev. Gordon D. Laman (Hope College class of 1956) writes of how he was called to become a missionary:
My Korean college roommate was the source of my first real information about Japan. Having spent nine years of his childhood in Japan, he had suffered the double ignominy of living as a Korean national and as a son of a Christian minister in Japan before and after World War II. I subsequently learned that the Christian church in Japan was a struggling minuscule minority, that the percentage of Christians among the Japanese population was one of the smallest in the world, and that there was something unique or different about Japanese attitudes toward outsiders. As a sense of my calling to mission in Japan grew, I entertained the hope that in serving here I might make some contribution toward positive changes in the statistics and attitudes.9
Gordon Laman continues to make positive contributions to the Christian community in Japan. He has served there since 1959.
Amoy Mission (China)
Dr. John Otte (Hope College class of 1883) did not have a calling to be a missionary, a situation that greatly disappointed his mother. While at the University of Michigan medical school, his minister, Dr. Peter Moerdyk, suggested that he become a medical missionary.10 Dr. Otte fulfilled both his and his mother's dreams by sailing to Amoy, China, in 1888 to begin his service as a medical missionary. Otte contributed much to the missionary field; perhaps his most lasting achievement has been the building of Hope and Wilhelmina Hospitals in Amoy. The work was difficult, but like other missionaries both before and after him, it was ultimately rewarding:
It would be difficult to find a happier sphere of work than that of the Medical Missionary in China. There are many, very many, times of deep anxiety, but in all these God helps. Much is needed for the work that cannot yet be obtained. In God s own time these wants will be fulfilled. For what has been received we praise God, and thank the many friends of the work the world over.11
The Scudder Family, Cornie and Frances De Bruin, Jeannette Veldman, John and Frances Phelps Otte, and Gordon D. Laman all encountered the uncertainty of travelling to a new country, the difficulty of obtaining funds, and building a Christian community, but each was rewarded by the experience. Those spiritual rewards continue to guide new generation of missionaries and their message of faith.
This sampling of stories and information about the foreign missions of the Reformed Church and some missionaries that have hailed from Holland barely scratch at the surface of the rich collections on missions and missionaries that we have in the Western Theological Seminary Collections at the Joint Archives. Many more tales of perseverance, political intrigue, and deep and abiding faith are just waiting to be discovered.
by Jenifer S. Holman
Endnotes
1 Arie R. Brouwer. Reformed Church Roots: Thirty-five Formative Events. (New York:
Reformed Church press, 1977) 129.
2 John James DeBoer. The Story of the Arcot Mission. (New York: Reformed Church in
America, n.d.) 8-19.
3 J. Sam Ponniah. The Vellore Diocese: Fruit of the RCA Mission, in The Church
Herald July 23, 1982, 28.
4 from a letter written by Frances De Bruin dated June 23, 1936. W88-0027. Cornelius
De Bruin Papers. Western Theological Seminary Collection of the Joint Archives of
Holland.
5 from a letter written by Frances De Bruin dated February 2, 1936. W88-0027. Cornelius
De Bruin Papers. Western Theological Seminary Collection of the Joint Archives of
Holland.
6 From Jeannette Veldman, missionary letter dated October 3, 1954. Jeannette Veldman
Papers (W89-1012) in the Western Theological Seminary Collection of the Joint Archives of
Holland.
7 Kiyoshi Mizugaki. One Hundred Years of Evangelism in Japan W92-1049. in the
Western Theological Seminary Collection of the Joint Archives of Holland.
8 Ibid.
9 Gordon D. Laman. "Our Nagasaki Legacy: An Examination of the Period of
Persecution of Christianity and its Impact on Subsequent Christian Mission in Japan,"
reprinted from The Northeast Asia Journal of Theology, March/September 1982, 94 in
Gordon Laman Papers, W88-0069a in the Western Theological Seminary Collection of the
Joint Archives of Holland.
10 Frances Phelps Otte. A History of the First Medical Work in Foreign Lands of the
Reformed Church in America: Pioneering in Medical Missions. Otte Family Papers (W88-
0089) in the Western Theological Seminary Collections of the Joint Archives of Holland.
11 John A. Otte. The Healing Art in China. (New York: Reformed Church in America.
Board of Foreign Missions, n.d.) Otte Family Papers (W88-0089) in the Western
Theological Seminary Collection of the Joint Archives of Holland.