An English man with strong Biblical opinions; Image Source: Britannica

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Glorifying Jesus and spreading the word is what missionaries do best. One such missionary, William Carrey was sent to India to do the very same. But, he was not born to do this.

Carrey’s parents were weavers, who had their first child (Carrey) on 17th August 1761. As a child, he was interested in Botany and other related sciences, and anything having to do with religion seemed rather far-fetched. 

But as he grew up, Carrey began to be involved with the church. His work as a missionary started off in London itself, however, he was invited to Calcutta to raise funds for the Baptist Missionary Society.

So he planned a tough journey to Calcutta along with his pregnant wife and children via the ocean. With an eventful trip that involved his wife giving birth to a child, they finally arrived in November. In his first few years, Carrey decided to blend in and establish his mission in Calcutta. For this reason, he learnt Bengali.

Carrey, despite being a missionary, was a man who meant business. To fend for his family, he took a managerial position at the Indigo Factory his friend Thomas owned. In his spare time, the missionary revised the Bengali New Testament. 

He also formed the principles based on which his missionary would function, and he did all this within a span of merely two years. After working on the founding of his missionary, Carrey moved to the Danish colony in 1800.



Carrey's humble abode in Serampore. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons 

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Serampore welcomed him with open arms. He found himself purchasing a house with the rest of the missionaries there, which became the missionaries’ abode for a while. It was August and the missionary already had its first convert, a man named Krishna Pal. Re-announcing his caste over a public lunch with the missionaries, he stated that the Baptism helped him feel less ‘diseased’ after having lost an arm. The missionaries were already making a change. 

> They painted a picture that the caste system was wrong when Krishna Pal, a Shudra, married a Brahmin - a demonstration of the fact that Christianity had no caste barriers.

34 years later, after having converted over 700 Indians, Carrey died at the age of 72. He was indeed, instrumental in laying the foundation of Christianity in India.

Mass conversion and spreading the learnings of Christianity were the major concerns of Christian Missionaries and still are. When the British were expanding their colonies, these missionaries sailed to distant lands to propagate the ideas of Christianity. One such missionary who came to India was William Carrey. 