The Outcastes Were Not Cast Out

The Outcastes Were Not Cast Out

He had to decide whom to evangelize—the rich or the poor.

ON July 16, 1838, John Clough was born in western New York, and his family later moved to Iowa. While in college, John gave his life to Christ and felt God calling him to spread the gospel to those who had never heard it. He was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1864, and he and his wife arrived in southern India as missionaries to the Telugu people in 1865.

Eleven years earlier at a predawn prayer meeting on a hill overlooking the city of Ongole, two missionaries and three Telugu Christian women had asked God to send a missionary to that city. The Cloughs’ arrival was the answer to that prayer. In 1866 Clough founded the mission station at Ongole, and immediately the gospel began to spread. A church was organized, and soon they had twenty-eight new converts. Most of them were Madigas, who were outcastes. This presented Clough with a problem. Up to this point all of the Christians in Ongole were of the higher castes and did not associate with outcastes. If Clough continued to accept outcastes into the church, he would lose the higher castes. He and his wife sought the Lord’s guidance separately on this issue, and both were led to 1 Corinthians 1—that God calls the lowly, weak, and ignorant rather than the noble, strong, and wise.

From that point forward, Clough’s evangelistic efforts concentrated on the outcastes. He endured insults and attempts upon his life by the higher castes for this decision. However, he persisted, and at the end of five years of working at the Ongole station, the Madigas church had fifteen hundred members.

Clough’s approach to foreign missions was philosophically different from that of his time. He required converts to live by a few principles that he considered essential but was lenient when it came to matters of cultural practice. He was careful not to impose Western culture upon the Telugus unnecessarily. He felt the gospel would have the longest lasting effect and reach the most people if it was culturally relevant to the systems already in place.

For example, Clough allowed his preachers to follow the Hindu guru model, like the spiritual teachers the people already respected. He placed heavy emphasis on the work of these indigenous preachers, for he felt the gospel would carry the greatest weight when it came from one of their own. He encouraged new converts to return to their social groups, rather than removing them from their pagan environments as other missionaries attempted to get their converts to do. Churches were organized in the villages in accordance with indigenous social structures. He made the village elder a deacon in the church, which united community and church leadership in an effort to Christianize the village leadership.

Beginning in 1876, India suffered through three years of terrible famine and cholera. Clough worked tirelessly during this time to obtain food, supplies, and health care for all, regardless of caste. By participating in a government relief project, he obtained the contract to oversee construction of four miles of the Buckingham Canal. He was able to employ many starving people, mostly Madigas, at good wages. During this time he refused to accept new church members or baptize new converts because he didn’t want people converting for the wrong motives. After the famine was over Clough offered baptism to all who really believed. During a three-week period in 1878 almost 9,000 were baptized upon their profession of faith, with 2,222 on one day! By the end of 1878, church membership at Ongole had reached 12,000!

John Clough worked with the Telugus for the next three decades, embracing the outcastes, working for their social good, and honoring the indigenous cultural structures. When Clough left India shortly before his death in 1910, he left behind a church of 60,000 members!

Reflection

How important is it in world missions to embrace local cultural principles and customs rather than to impose one’s own? To what extent should churches on the mission field resemble the churches from which the missionaries came? Do you feel the Cloughs made the right decision to evangelize the poor instead of the rich?

God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all.

1 Corinthians 1:28