Setbacks and Advances in
the Rangoon Mission
Matters were about to take
a severe downturn. In 1817, Adoniram decided that he needed the assistance of
some non-Western Christians to convince the Burmese that his faith was not merely
a religion for white men, and so he set off on a voyage to recruit a few from faraway
Chittagong. His ship ran into resistant winds on the Bay of Bengal, and he nearly
died of fever before landing far from his intended destination. He turned
around and returned to Rangoon empty-handed. Meanwhile, the governmental
administration in Rangoon had changed, and the viceroy with whom they had begun
to establish a friendship was ordered back to the capital at Ava, to be
replaced by a far more violent and imposing character. This new governor
immediately ordered the interrogation of all foreign priests. This, together
with a breakout of cholera, convinced the Houghs to abandon the mission.
Adoniram returned to find their work severely set back, the small amount of
goodwill they had built up in Rangoon now gone, and he and Ann alone once
again.
They were soon joined by
four young missionary recruits from the United States, the Wheelocks and the
Colmans, but the Wheelocks did not last long in the endeavor, and the Colmans
were so far behind the Judsons in linguistic ability that they could not
contribute much to the work of the mission. So Adoniram embarked on his next
project: the construction of a zayat, a
sort of bamboo pavilion in which travelers could rest and hear teaching from
religious sages. Adoniram built his zayat
alongside many others that lined the way to the great golden pagoda in
Rangoon, so that it faced the traffic of innumerable religious pilgrims. There
he would call out to passersby, engage in discussions, and lead simple
Christian services for anyone curious enough to attend. This effort attracted a
good deal more interest from the local populace than his tract had, and it
resulted, in the summer of 1819 (after six years of missionary labor there), in
the conversion of the very first Burmese Protestant Christian, Maung Nau. His
conversion resulted in a handful of further seekers, two of which shortly
followed him in the waters of baptism: Maung Thahlah and Maung Byaay.
Petitioning the Burmese
King
Change was in the wind,
however. A new king had arisen in Ava, had brutally massacred all rivals to the
throne, and had begun a campaign of building new pagodas and encouraging the
Buddhist clergy throughout the land. The Judsons and their colleagues knew that
their mission, particularly their zayat outreach,
had attracted negative attention among the local Buddhist leaders, and they
felt that harassment and persecution would probably soon follow. In this
situation, Adoniram felt that the wisest course of action would be to present
his mission work directly to the new king in Ava, in the hope that his fluency
in the language, his respect of Burman culture, and his assurances that he was
not doing anything politically subversive would convince the king to quell the
rising tide of religious antagonism.
It was perhaps the only
choice left to the mission at that point, but it turned out poorly. The king
was unimpressed, and rejected their petition to propagate the Christian faith
within the Burman empire. Adoniram recalled it as “a most egregious blunder.” According
to the laws of Burma, they were now restricted to proclaiming their faith only
to fellow outsiders who might happen to enter Rangoon. Judson and his team were
about to abandon the mission when the fervency of their handful of converts
convinced them to stay, and shortly thereafter, they were able to baptize a
prominent teacher in the community, Maung Shway-gnong. But further
evangelization at the zayat was now
out of the question, so Adoniram spent much of his time continuing his
translation of the Burmese New Testament.
In December of 1821, they
had the good fortune of welcoming new members to their mission team: Dr. and
Mrs. Jonathan Price. This was a remarkable boost for the prospects of the
mission, because having a doctor trained in the medical practices of the West
was an immense asset. Despite the king’s earlier rejection of their work, Dr.
Price’s presence brought them to his attention again, and this time in a
positive light. Adoniram and Dr. Price were invited to Ava, and were even
allotted properties near the city so that the mission could maintain a resident
presence there, where the king would have access to Dr. Price’s medical
expertise.
By July of 1823, after a
decade’s worth of work in language-learning and translation, Adoniram Judson
completed his rendering of the New Testament into Burmese. Ann had been absent during much of 1822 and
1823, having been forced to return to America for reasons of health. But she
returned in December of 1823, bringing two new missionaries with her, the
Wades, after having spent many months
speaking and writing letters across America in an unprecedented literary
campaign to bring greater awareness of the Burmese mission.
Ava and Arrest
Now, with a mission team
composed of four couples (the Judsons, the Prices, the Wades, and the Houghs
once again; the Colmans having left to plant a sister mission in Chittagong),
Adoniram proposed that his family and the Prices take up residence in Ava, leaving
the other two couples to carry on the mission work in Rangoon. Unfortunately,
this trip to Ava happened to coincide with a major period of crisis in the
Burman empire. The Burmans had carried out raids into the territories of the British
East India Company, and Britain, after a long period of toleration, had finally
seen their patience end. Just as the Judsons and Dr. Price were landing in Ava,
they received word that a British army had seized Rangoon. Immediately, all
foreigners fell into disfavor in Ava. On June 8, 1824, Adoniram and Dr. Price
were arrested and dragged away, leaving Ann alone in the Ava mission house.
Adoniram and Dr. Price
were kept in a Burmese death-prison for more than a year, shackled,
malnourished, held side-by-side with fellow prisoners suffering from smallpox
and leprosy, occasionally tortured, and subject to the blinding heat of the
Burmese summer without reprieve. They were kept in a constant state of
anticipation for their own executions, with the guards setting up elaborate
ploys to make them think they were about to be disemboweled, burned, or fed to
lions. Ann spent her days bringing food to the prison and offering petitions
and gifts to any government officials who would listen to her pleas. It was
during this time that she also realized she was pregnant, with the baby due
early the following year.
It was also during this
time that Adoniram’s manuscript for the Burmese New Testament was miraculously
preserved. It had been in the Ava mission house, but Ann knew it could not be
kept there, because the house was subject to daily searches by guards looking
for evidence of espionage. She had buried it in the garden, but keeping it
there would eventually damage the manuscript. So Ann made plans to deliver the
manuscript to Adoniram, so that he could watch over it in his incarceration.
She hid it inside the stiffest pillow she could find, hoping that would prevent
any guards from wanting to keep it for themselves. Thus the only full copy of
the Burmese New Testament rested under the head of the only man in the world at
that time who could have written it, but the fates of both were still unclear.
Eventually, Adoniram and the other prisoners were moved to a different
facility, but allowed to bring nothing with them. One of the prison guards
snatched away the old pillow, and no one knew what had become of it. A few days
later, a servant of the Judsons happened to be wandering through the grounds of
the old prison and noticed the pillow in a discarded pile. He retrieved it and
delivered it back to Ann. The Burmese New Testament was still there inside it,
untouched.
Matters continued to grow
worse after Adoniram’s move to another prison. Ann spent many days simply
trying to find him, to discern whether he was dead or alive. Even when she was
able to re-establish contact, there was still no hope for release. In the
meantime, their baby had been born—Maria Judson, in late January of 1825.
During the first few months of her life, though, she was hit by a smallpox
infection and barely survived, after which Ann became seriously ill herself,
and could not produce enough milk to feed the infant. The jailers showed enough
mercy to release Adoniram for a period of time each day, under guard, to take
his starving infant around the nearby villages to beg for milk from any nursing
mothers.
Finally, in November of
1825, Adoniram was released, to find that both Maria and Ann had survived their
time of starvation and disease. For the next few months, Adoniram was engaged
in negotiations between the Burmese and the English. It wasn’t until March of
1826, more than two years since leaving Rangoon, that they returned to their
old mission house to find it in ruins. The Houghs and Wades had been forced to
flee during the war, and most of their handful of converts had either died or
fled away as well. There was almost nothing left of their decade of work at
Rangoon, save the New Testament that Adoniram carried with him.