Loving God enough to break ancient rules (part 2 of 6)

Amy’s significance

Seen in retrospect Amy’s life’s work had an appropriate air of inevitability. Nothing in her life seemed wasted and she was able to secure full scope for her remarkable work in India. Since the experience as a little child with her mother in a Belfast teashop, until she finally settled in Dohnavur, all her experiences educated her precisely for the great task ahead. Her life story is a moving story. But a moving story is worth little if it only moves the feelings. For us the question that matters is, how far out of its selfish track does it move our life into ways of sacrifice? Amy had prayed:

2401. From Sunrise Land, 49.
2402. Nesaruthina Carunia, in an interview with the author, 16 November 2013 in Dohnavur.
2403. The Continuation of a Story, 45.

2404. In The Continuation of a Story, ‘And so we go on, and must go on, in this attack upon the prince of darkness’ (p. 45).

Oh, let us have done with limitations, let us be simply sincere! […] But if the Call is a true Call from heaven, it will change to a song as she obeys.2405 Amy’s life is so well pictured in the words of Bishop Creighton, which she wrote down in her own Bible: ‘Life has no more to give than the opportunity of loving service’.2406 She lived this life.

Today’s observers might well feel dismayed by her blend of humility and mysticism with a sense of unique, clear Biblical vocation. But does it not make authentic holiness people more truly human? She belonged to an era in which she was not exceptional in her claim to a divine commission. She, however, knew how and when to become flexible in practical issues, when she sought to embody the teaching of the Bible and some of the mystics in a settled missionary world and in a society which opposed her when she sought to bring the ideas received into practice. Amy made India her home and, according to the Indian scholar Kushwant Singh, who stated that a missionary who has cut off nearly all connections with her homeland and made the country of her work her home country, this is regarded as the best.2407 Humanly speaking, there will always be different opinions on Amy’s life’s work, from complete denial of anything good to nearly complete sainthood. It will always be easy to find evidence for a negative or positive judgement. We mislead ourselves if we concentrate overmuch upon a way of working and in what way her ideas took shape in Dohnavur. We see her as a woman in the school of Christ that has always been on earth since the days of the Apostles. I see in her a missionary with a high concept of God’s majesty, which made her abandon herself having everything in Christ for life and death. A surrendered life, given in the hands of the Holy Spirit to be led by him and to give all her thoughts under the obedience of Christ. She gives us a wake-up call to see the missionary tasks of our own era. We have not yet reached the final; yet, thus far, our performances as ‘players on God’s mission chessboard’ make us shrink for the holiness of God, to be found with those who were before us, at Christ’s feet. All my further observations about her life’s work in Dohnavur as well about her written work has to be seen under the here described flag. Myrtle Hill has observed:

Perhaps the greatest testimony to her leadership, however, is the fact that the community survived both the ending of British rule in India and her own death in 1951. Continuity was ensured by adapting both the ethos and the work of Dohnavur to the India of the late twentieth century, and although the fellowship members are now all of Indian nationality, the work still continues today.2408 Amy was rather afraid of publicity, ‘as it opens up the way for pride’2409 but her existence could not remain hidden, being as she was from a rather well-known middle class family, with an outspoken church affiliation, influenced by pietistic teaching and shaped by a strict Presbyterian upbringing. She did not age when young. She was allowed to act her age and as a little child and teenager was raised in a happy family. Until the death of her father and the loss of the family mill business she knew little pain. She took life seriously but enjoyed it nevertheless. Her fantasy was very productive and growing older, she had access to her own childhood. One can say a symptom of a real grown-up life. During her whole life, she remained a private thinker.

She not only observed her own environment but she had a good overview of what was happening on the mission field and in the inner thoughts of the people. She had a strong urge for independence and

2405. Lotus Buds, 337 and 340.

2406. In the Bible that belonged to Amy. This information was given to the author by Brett Irwin of the Records Department, Access and Cataloguing, PRONI, Belfast, in October 2015.

2407. Kushwant Sing, in Sunday, 10. He also defended the cause of Christian missionaries who were ordered to leave India in the aftermath of the successful visit of the late Pope Paul II in 1986.

2408. In ‘Amy Beatrice Carmichael’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

2409. This One Thing, 35.

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kept off all that had not gone through her. She wanted to discover everything herself. As we have seen she had moments – Mount of Transfiguration experiences – that she was very near to God and God near to her, but, mostly, the transition quickly followed in this demon-possessed valley. The test of mountaintop experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness was when she was nearly daily confronted with the demon-possessed environment of actual circumstances. She was not living in the clouds but on earth. From the very beginning, she never described the sunny side of the work only. She was honest, able as she was to look beneath the surface and she refused to ‘modify truth’.2410 In her work she was faced by winds of adversity, and overcame the enemy in the name of the one who had told her to go and conquer by climbing. Born to climb, she knew the Saviour around her, and the angels and the redeemed, all encouraged her to persevere.

In developing the structure of the Fellowship’s compound she showed a very practical mind. This is denied by others, who call her temperament ‘mystical and impractical’.2411 Through her Irish temperament and Scots covenanter blood she had inherited pioneering qualities which made her a natural leader. The upbringing in her mother’s home developed all that was practical. As an itinerant missionary her distinctive contribution was in the realm of pioneer evangelism among women in Japan and south India. Amy was a missionary who, to a greater or lesser degree, was a ‘product’ of her own cultural background, and nobody can undo that. This, however, can be said of all missionaries who by their sense and control influenced the forming of churches in their respective work fields. Many churches in mission areas reflect European or American denominational divisions. Tinnevelly today is still dotted with parish churches, which look remarkably like Anglican parish churches in Victorian England. The church next to the Dohnavur compound is a clear example of such a church building. Many young churches and institutions are like David in Saul’s armour. However, in the shaping of the Dohnavur Fellowship we see that Amy tried to mark the Indian character in everything. In building style, clothing, the learning of the Tamil language, in keeping the caste rules for some children, in the naming of the children, in money affairs living in dependence on the Lord for funds, and for herself she took Indian citizenship. Her style of writing showed her long stay in India. Nowadays, fully under Indian leadership, the Fellowship continues its mission as it had 100 years ago. Of course, also here things are changing and computers are used by the staff members, but still Amy’s vision for the Fellowship is always the starting point of the work, and still the Lord is the ‘Unseen Leader’.2412

On mission in general, and on the south Indian mission work in particular, it is difficult to state Amy’s influence with precision. Regarding the effectiveness of Amy’s missiology the difficulty is that her thinking on reaching the people with the Gospel and her practical involvement as shown in the Dohnavur compound is so locally situated and contemporary, that there is hardly any critical material related to her work.

Despite the limited information regarding her influence, it is unmistakable to discern that she has had influence in India’s Church and social circles, which were and are involved in the work to solve the problems of thousands of children in physical and moral danger. From the very beginning in her itinerary work for the evangelisation of south India she involved saved and consecrated Indian women. Doing the work in this way she was ahead of her time in knowing that India can only be effectively evangelised by its own people. Amy lived to see her dreams realised. We now see the outward work of

2410. See Things As They Are, 221.

2411. Elliot in A Chance to Die, 239: ‘It must have seemed to the men trying to monitor her activities, her disclaimers notwithstanding. And there were the less definable spiritual differences, such as an amorphous ecclesiology and a do-ityourself creed’.

2412. Nesaruthina Carunia, in an interview with the author, 16 November 2013 in Dohnavur. her life’s work, but about its inner history and its crises she first had dealt with God through her prayers in the lonely nights in the Dohnavur bungalow. Her life was spent trying to change dreams into realities. Has the work been completed? No, not until India is Christ’s.

Amy loved life, enjoyed the company of people, saw the beauty in God’s creation. An inner-directed woman, living a restrained life in a modest way, eyes looking forward and a heart upward to the high, the holy, the heavenly. Her enthusiasm of life was somewhat hampered by Victorian conventions and boundaries, but Max Warren’s opinion of Victorian missionaries – who with all their ‘limitations thought big and built large’2413 – is certainly true for Amy Carmichael, in many respects ‘the ideal Keswick missionary’.2414

Amy, an unlikely candidate for the life of a missionary, became a missionary princess at a time when mission fields were rich in such women even if some contemporaries felt that their days were already something of the past. God’s servants come and go and most of their names do not appear in the chronicles of the church. Their names are written in heaven. Known unto God. Some, through their distinctive way of work, the influence of their writings, which both not only inform us, but also transform the thinking about mission, will last until the last person who knew them dies. Her work was unique, using innovative methods, done in a God-given time, and cannot be repeated now, but her mission view has not lost its primacy. That up to this day the demand for her books is ongoing, indicates that what she has to say is still of great value. Amy was pre-eminently such a missionary. Within evangelical circles throughout the first half of the 20th century her work and writings were well-known all over the world.

Her exclusive way of working in India attracted and at the same time could distract many. Her role in mission circles remained as ambivalent as it was powerful. Her critics found her too exclusive, although it was not easy to gainsay her magnetism. At the time she went to India her faith and mission were settled with God. The first 30 years encapsulated the religious seriousness of the outgoing 19th century. What Amy had heard and learned from God in Belfast, Keswick, Japan and Ceylon was the foundation for the 56 years in India. The element of consecutiveness until her death had not gone. Her gift was caring and management strategy, although – and here we see her connections with the Friends – she was suspicious of formal methods, since these could quench the Holy Spirit and become a substitute for direct experience of the Spirit of God. She always was looking for real spiritual life, for the vital touch of life:

There is plenty of preaching and praying and singing about it [Calvary]; Good Friday sees crowds in church for hours. There is most efficient machinery, wheels of all sorts and sizes are turning all the year round. But oh! for the vital touch of life, the sence that burns like a live cinder pressed into the flesh! It was for my sin He died, I crucified Him. […] May God save us from ‘paper-grace’ and give us grace to live it, and to continue to live it.2415 When we oversee the development of the Dohnavur Fellowship and the part Amy played in it, I come to the following observations:

• In a few words, we can define her life: a fully Christ-focused life. Her passion was to make the supremacy of Christ known in every walk of life. Lifelong she remained true to the words that were on the banner during the opening ceremony of the Welcome in Belfast, THAT IN ALL THINGS HE MAY HAVE THE PRE-EMINENCE. All her aims, all her ambitions, all her desires, all her pursuits, all can be gathered sharply and clearly into the focus of ‘this one thing’. Is not this

2413. M. Warren, ‘The Church Militant Abroad: Victorian Missionaries’, in A. Symondson, ed., The Victorian Crisis of Faith (London: SPCK, 1970), 60.

2414. Eddy, Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade, 124.

2415. Fragments that Remain, 102 and 147.

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making life just to focus on one thing only? Narrow, as in a certain sense Christ’s life was narrow, this was her aim; narrow with regard to self-seeking, but broad as the love of God to all around her.2416 A woman who had realised God, who lived in such a natural way with God, as Enoch in the old days. She displayed an independence of thought and courage to follow the dictates of her Master in obeying his Word, branded in her as if they were her own convictions. For some she was not easy to get along with and too independent. What came first in her choice was to live the Joshua life. It meant a daily turning to our Master with a ‘Yes Lord’ to everything, even to what went most ‘against the grain’,2417 and always counting the cost of discipleship. In her books and poems she ‘preached’ discipleship and it was discipleship she practised. The tenor of Amy’s life was layered with exile in her calling to evangelise the people in south India and to save children in danger. She leaves us with a high standard of a life marked by tenacity of purpose, by powers of endurance, and indefatigable perseverance. She will remain an authoritative voice for the cause of authentic missionary enterprise.

• It has been stated that missionaries who went to India in the 19th century ‘failed to appreciate the Indian point of view’.2418 Amy was a splendid exception. As a missionary from the West, she had no difficulty in unloading her cultural baggage. Despite facing a lot of opposition, she loved India and its people. Shaped intellectually in a conservative Ulster Victorian environment and having her own theological presuppositions, she believed that God’s love had no boundaries. All the features of New Testament evangelism as shown in the first centuries were benchmarks for her shaping her spirituality and her work. Not hindered by ecclesiastical traditions she formed her ‘own’ Fellowship, a family closely knit together for sanctified living under the guidance of the unseen leader, and at the same time the Fellowship became a prominent voice, especially for righteousness and justice for little children in danger. One wonders how a woman could accomplish the founding and leading of the Dohnavur Fellowship in spite of physical frailty and the latter for 56 unbroken years. Did not her physical weakness mask an exceptional inner strength? Her comrade in this spiritual warfare, Lilias Trotter of the Algiers Mission Band, also had a frail constitution, which forced her to take several months off per year to regain strength. Both ladies, Amy and Lilias, were turned down as missionary candidates due to physical frailty and yet both lost sight of their physical limitations, proving in their lives that God’s grace is made perfect in weakness.2419 We also have to take into account that the way Amy did her work was unconventional and daring. She did not follow the mere missionary code and system imported from her home country. In starting the Dohnavur Fellowship she had no other example and having seen in her itinerary period what the result was of formal and nominal

2416. Here I had in mind Lilias Trotter’s Focussed. A Story and a Song.

2417. Edges of His Ways, 17 July, 102.

2418. See Edwards, Christian England, 338: ‘Among the Indians generally, suspicion far outweighed the acquiescence – it can scarcely be described as anything more active – of some of lower classes and occasional support of a far smaller number among the higher castes. Sometimes, too, there was open hostility to individual missionaries. From the British government in India the missionaries might look in general for approval extending at times active support, but an incautious step might produce immediate recriminations. […] Indians observed that the missionaries when they destroyed the centuries-old fabric of custom had no idea about how to replace it from within the Indian tradition. […] Here was the paradox of the British mission to India. It became well-intentioned but always wounded. It accepted many sacrifices. When independence came in 1947, probably there were two million British graves in India, most of them filled by disease. It contributed much, as independent Indians have often acknowledged. Yet even when it was being self-sacrificial, acting as conscience dictated in justice and kindness, bringing to India Christianity and many other benefits, the British presence in India was wounding because it was patronizing’ (pp. 338 and 340).

2419. ‘It is somehow reassuring to know that great leaders have feet of clay’ (Huffmann Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, 14.

Christianity, she chose a ‘higher way’, by listening to the Word of God and the inward voice of the Spirit. She often must have felt loneliness, because nearly no companion stood with her. With the Walkers was tremendous colleagueship in the early days. The sense of loneliness came after Walker’s death in 1912 and the death of her mother in 1913.

• The Dohnavur Fellowship is an interdenominational Fellowship. Relationship with other Christians is on a firm basis, personally and spiritually, if not ecclesiastically. Amy distinguished between principles, which were not open to alteration, and customs, which were subject to revision. Converts won through the hospital work or evangelistic enterprises were encouraged to join the church nearest to their homes. Amy often had the model of the Church in the first century in mind when the Dohnavur Fellowship took shape. ‘Oh for a return to the days of the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, to obscurity, and poverty, and suffering, and shame, and the utter absence of earthly glory, and the winning of souls of a different make to the type thought sufficiently spiritual now! Oh for more signs of Apostleship – scars and the cross – the real cross – the reproach of Christ the Crucified, – no mitre here, but there the crown.’2420 What she thought of the existing denominational churches of her time is expressed in what she wrote: ‘Breathe the air of the New Testament and the church of today appears to be structure of ice’.2421 She had always encouraged indigenous church leadership, and discouraged reliance on overseas funding. What we see worldwide in our age is an increasing number of independent bodies of Christians, ‘independent Christian fellowships’ or ‘base communities’. In a certain sense the Dohnavur Fellowship has given a successful example of a relationship between the main Christian confessions and an independent body of Christians. The interdenominational element of the Dohnavur Fellowship is also to be seen in the workers from overseas, who came from various different church backgrounds. The Fellowship was a testimony to the truth of the Keswick motto, ‘All one in Christ Jesus’.

• Amy was a providential agent sent of God, to revive the truth and fullness of practical Christianity in southern India. Done chiefly by placing the motives and exhortations to a strict and regular devotion in their highest, clearest, and most affecting light, and laying down rules for the attainment of a habit of piety. God’s grace seemed so natural to her. Amy’s life showed a beautiful blending of the natural and the spiritual. She holds an outstanding position among Protestant missionaries, influenced by and familiar with many mystics, and it is very clear that she was not at cross-purposes with other missions. Her knowledge of the work of most noteworthy Christian mystics from the early Church to Madame Guyon in the 17th century and the works of other mystics opened in her new heights of inspiration. Her mysticism was related to her understanding of religion as an inward principle, grounded in the deeper nature of the soul, which moved her to seek after union with God. Amy learned by experience that the Holy Spirit reigned supremely and that he had come down through the centuries and guided Thomas à Kempis, Madame Guyon, Père Didon and many others, and reiterated the unchanging demand of a holy God: ‘Be ye holy, for I am holy’. Amy’s was a nature that took things deeply, and while her missionary calling and work had a strong appeal, it was sometimes too sacred to speak of, except between the Lord and herself.

2420. Things As They Are, 248. Cf. too pages 295–296: ‘Oh the spiritual confectionery consumed every year in England! God open our eyes to see if we are doing what He meant, and what He means should continue’.

2421. Meal in a Barrel, 42. In Things As They Are, pages 115 and 116, she writes: ‘Dead they are in apathy and ignorance and putrefying customs, and the false security that comes from adherence to the Christian creed without vital connection with Christ. […] Over and over again it is told, but still it is hardly understood, that the Christians need to be converted; that the vast majority are not converted; that statistics may mislead, and do not stand for Eternity work. […] God has His saints in India, men and women hidden away in quiet places out of sight, and some few out in the front; but the cry of our hearts is for more’.

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• In Amy we see a missionary who always was very candid and forthright. She never drew people to herself, she drew them in God’s nearness. She hardly involved herself in a theological debate, but focused on the ‘one thing that is necessary’. She identified herself with the people who were the recipients of the Gospel and was continually in dialogue with them. Adopting indigenous methods, enculturation and contextualisation was done by her through her dressing, her lifestyle and language study, the structures of the House of Prayer and the houses where the people lived. As a lover of the mystics, as she herself had a number of ascetic features, the children were not brought up on the thought of the Middle Ages, nor of the 20th century either, but she saw a happy life for them when the children’s walk ‘were all Emmaus walks’.2422 Meanwhile she was so real as Amma, a woman of flesh and blood, who was happy when the children were happy and who was hurt when she saw others in need and distress. As a missionary she exuded a rare blend of earthliness and holiness; we see a missionary fully immersed in life’s practical realities of everyday living and meanwhile totally engaged in assimilating those realities through an eternal perspective. She used her practical skills and meanwhile shared the fragrance of Christ, which spoke to the Indian people very powerfully. Her contribution to mission is that she brought missions to the centre of the worldview of many Christians, so that God could be glorified among the nations.2423 • Amy’s mission view is primarily derived from her Biblical and theological convictions. God had led her and her whole ministry was strictly Biblical. She never put aside her Presbyterian upbringing, although later on she was soaked in Quaker thoughts. She was more interested in the Church universal, but basic reformed principles can be traced in her writings and thinking. Her old Presbyterian, often pietistic conception of Scripture focused on a soteriological reading and explanation of the text. The Keswick tradition helped to guide her strong will and determination in her mission to the children of southern India. She did not remain silent; she sounded the alarm. An aspect of her character was her serenity, an authentic mark of the evangelical Irish Presbyterians. In her talking to God, there was no difference in tone from that which she used to everyone else. She was at home in the realm of God as she was in her daily work in the Dohnavur Fellowship. Natural in everything, there was no barrier between the spiritual and the natural world. Her spirituality offers to our contemporary world a new awareness of the value of community against the increasing individualistic tendency of this 21st century. So many are involved in a stream of activities, but lack contemplative spiritual practices and a real involvement in the lives and thoughts of the people they work among. Compromise? Not a word in her dictionary. Frivolities were not touched and like Thomas Walker she went after higher things.2424 For herself and from others she expected utter holiness, crystal pure.2425 New recruits learned from her in 1894 to consider the cry and the call, to welcome all tests of whatever sort before they crossed the seas.

2422. Cf. Ploughed Under, 134.

2423. Cf. J. Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad. The Supremacy of God in Missions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), who has opened the eyes of many that mission work is not the ultimate goal of the church. ‘Worship is. […] Worship, therefore, is the fuel and the goal of missions’ (p. 17). Piper’s plea for a God-centred, Christ-exalting mission has been realised in Amy’s Dohnavur Fellowship. After having spoken of Amy’s self-denial, Piper goes on: ‘God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him. And the supremacy of that glory shines most brightly when the satisfaction that we have in him endures in spite of suffering and pain in the mission of love’ (p. 107).

2424. She wrote about Thomas Walker, ‘for that great, old, unfashionable word, “Puritan” was one he held in honour. He would never have felt it necessary to apologize for leaning that way, and such was the crystalline quality of his conscience that anything once seen as the will of God for him was followed to the end in fidelity; but judge others he did not’ (When God Came, 10).

2425. She wrote in Japan in 1894, ‘If we are not clean when we bear the vessels of the Lord, we may profane His Holy name in the things which we hallow. Our very service a defiling thing’.

• Amy wanted to be among people and her sympathetic nature brought her easily into contact with young and old. But more, that sympathy bound her to people. With an open mind to each new situation, she made a conscious effort to balance her impressions with facts and emotion with objective consideration. She only trusted the Holy Spirit to provide guidance. In looking upon the Holy Spirit, for Amy God’s agenda became a reality in her context in that he prepared the way for evangelism. The Church as the body of Christ was more important for her than denominational differences. The ‘one thing only’ was so important, that where she wanted to go she would go, not afraid to blaze the trail. ‘Our God asks for faithfulness, not for compromise: Sow not thy field with mingled seed’.2426 In Amy, we meet a person who felt things very deeply. She rejoiced greatly in seeing great deeds, and felt emotional pain deeply. Frustrations had much to do in conforming her into God’s image. Suffering: she knew what it was, but even more the sweet consoling fellowship in that suffering, revealing to her the power of Christ’s resurrection. Next to the blessings, the Dohnavur Fellowship experienced opposition. After new converts had been baptised or after the dedication of the new hospital, unexpectedly the devil retaliated as was seen in the sudden death of new converts or, in case of the hospital, 12 workers from Dohnavur falling ill at the same time. But generally the dominant note in the Fellowship was a note of happiness.

• Dohnavur had grown into something distinctive under the leadership of Amy, who knew the meaning of pragmatic governance. She was averse to views that lacked a Biblical foundation and did not shy away from controversial decisions when necessary for the children. Always crystal clear on her fundamental issues, she said and did when she was faced with 1001 decisions what she thought was right. She was one of whom Custis spoke: ‘His [God’s] image bearers are agents of those lifetransforming forces’.2427 She had surrendered her life to God, but this surrendered life became the assertive. Wholly given herself, she always kept true to her once given promise ‘Yes Lord’, and surrendered to nothing else than to her Master’s will. Waiting upon the Lord is one of its main features. A nice trait in Amy’s work was that she wrote about her experiences with God and with the people. These written records are a wealth of understanding of the real Amy. In reading about her fellowship with God the sparks of piety in the reader’s mind will soon kindle into a flame. She was a lover of nature, and loved to dwell in the Forest House. How she loved the beauty of her Lord’s dear handiwork, coupled with his direct dealing with her in her heart. Often the living God had spoken to her when her eyes were open, and ears attuned to the sound of so many living creatures, or she was submerged by the beauty of a place; all this was healing and quieting to her.

• By any standard of measurement, Amy’s achievements have been judged to be remarkable and, in many aspects, she was clearly ahead of her time. Not trained in any academic discipline of missiology but in the school of the Holy Spirit, the gifted Irish missionary demonstrated an intrinsic grasp of fundamentals of missiology. She defined her missionary priorities, of which the drawing of people to Christ was the first one. As a missionary with a surrendered self she went into a creative self to save others. With the slightest means, she achieved in Dohnavur the greatest in a very small location. A fundamental mastery of the Tamil language and knowledge of the Hindu thought and culture, she stood firm in discussion with Brahman scholars; in the education system in Dohnavur she did not alienate the children from their Indian roots. Before the term enculturation was used in missionary thinking, she introduced and developed an indigenous Christian fellowship with many Indian characteristics, even in architecture, dress, in the names of the children and buildings, in all her writings we see ‘an Indian flavour’. The startling impact of Amy’s books opened the horizon of many people in the West about the conditions of women and girls in India’s society, and the strong Biblical views on missionary calling and the appeal for holiness and

2426. Ploughed Under, 147.

2427. James, Half the Church, 184.

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endurance in suffering awakened dormant Christians and churches to new possibilities. Her emphasis on the ‘one thing necessary’ kindled renewed interest in carrying out the great commission. However, she never allows us to lose sight of the fact that the children were the core of the work.

• Amy’s leadership skills were rooted in her intimate friendship with God. She trusted her God in everything and loved what was most precious to him. She was that person who was led by the will and the love of God. A person faithful against all odds who did not shrink back and who was ready to let the people know that she went for the ‘one thing necessary’. She was the person through whom God performed his deeds in Dohnavur. In quiet trust she could work night and day for the children. That she was dubbed ‘the hare’, as some mentioned, is not far from the truth, but also as a ‘Maria’ she could sit at Jesus’s feet to be in his presence and to listen to his voice. That was Amy: a leader who, once she knew the mind of the Lord, did in obedience what the Lord had said and rested in the arms of him whom she had grown to love and to trust with her whole heart. Did she not make any mistakes? Was she perfect? She was one who wanted to be in his will, and was a person who had been met by God, and it was that where her authority came from to be active and serve the Lord, often in a new way, and daring.2428 • In Amy we meet a passionate spirit tempered by love. People who met Amy were overwhelmed by her love for others. The love of God radiated from her like a power magnet, touching so many lives and irresistibly pointing towards Jesus. Those who knew her personally agree that to a marked degree, love was the element in which she lived and it was the overall impulse in her work. Being a lover of Jesus Christ, it was this love that accounted for the catholicity of her spirit to drop the denominational labels and to have fellowship with all who fear the Lord.Children saw in her a person you can trust. In the words of Star who wrote her first impressions of Amy after having met her: ‘And the spring overflowed in love for that Ammal in the sari, and as I looked at her I knew that if only I could go to her, she would have a place in her heart for me.’2429 Also adults had this impression and she was for them ‘the child catching Ammal’. For Amy her worst suffering was her anguish when occasionally she would lose a child she thought she had rescued, sometimes from her very doorstep. First-hand she saw the huge danger of innocent children exploited for sexual purposes in the temples, growing up under conditions far from the eyes of most missionaries and dignitaries at that time. Indirectly in her work she helped to write the laws, effected in 1948, that set innocent children free. She was a woman who saw ‘deep’. She not only saw and heard many things, but she was able to judge and to bring her reflections in written words. Amy felt for life at the margins and her empathy was with suffering people – and with suffering animals – and from this sprang her readiness to identify herself with and support those who suffer.

• The main goal of her work she saw was transmitting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of India, as she herself explains: ‘For always the missionary element is to the fore’.2430 The Dohnavur children should become real messengers of Jesus Christ. She waged war against everything that somehow would divide her work from her goal. In her we see that getting people and also the Dohnavur children to ‘make decisions’ and cross the line between death and new life was vital. In this, she fully agreed with Thomas Walker. Today many Christians are frustrated, longing for a deeper relationship with God. They want to make an impact for the Kingdom of God and to share their faith in a way that works, but are unsure how to do it. Stuck in a rut, they are oblivious to how different their Christian lives could be. Amy’s way of

2428. The Carmichael’s family motto, after Amy’s grandmother Jane Dalzell. The name Dalzell came from the Scottish word meaning ‘I dare’ (‘To have sufficient courage for any purpose’ in Noah Webster’s dictionary).

2429. Ploughed Under, 31.

2430. The Continuation of a Story, 45. working is helping people to discover the fruitful lives and intimate relationship God intended for them. In her life we see a bracing combination of vigorous theology and first-hand observation of what is happening at the front line and we witness a remarkable treasure, which points to God’s power and purposes. Amy told the gritty truth, even about mission. Vulnerability and truth build trust; after all, our God is a God of truth. Notwithstanding the opposition her actions evoked and the barriers she faced, she tried to make people make decisions and cross the line between death and new life.2431 She knew what she wanted and, when necessary, was not afraid to rock the boat of the missionary establishment when she felt her cause was right. And her deeply anchored Christology could not leave out the diaconal work. Christ came to serve and not to be served. What Amy held on to was Calvary love and she focused on the sacrificial agapè love of Christ and living that out in her life. She personified the spirit of missions with a social conscience.

• As well as her writing about her missionary work, her devotional books to this day inspire countless men and women around the globe into deeper love for their Saviour and a hunger to follow him more completely. The 35 published books exhibit a deep, mystical relationship with God and great creativity. I see as one of the most important lessons that Amy’s life, her personality, and her work and writings teach us is how to know Christ in the fellowship of his sufferings. This, despite her own physical weakness – she suffered from neuralgia, a disease of the nerves. Today we would perhaps call it fibromyalgia, and that declares her weakness, which caused her sometimes to stay in bed for weeks. For the last twenty years of her life she also had the sufferings being an invalid due to the accident in 1931. The issue of suffering is an item in Amy’s missiology that she took serious. The world she lived in mandated that suffering be looked at with eyes that saw the connections to the suffering of Jesus: ‘Captain beloved, battle wounds were Thine, Let me not wonder, if some hurt be mine; Rather, O Lord, let my deep wonder be That I may share a battle wound with Thee.’2432 Amy had a tremendous amount of experience in itinerating evangelistic enterprise, in Japan and Ceylon as well as in India. She showed that reaching people on the spot is the most effective way of doing mission work. The example she gave us in disciple making is still effective today. By doing her work in the itinerating team she made an impression on many in her time. Was not her life a life full of vision fuelled by prayer? Seeing below the surface still her eyes were drawn upward, from where her help came.2433 In her books she kept the balance; she did not gloss over sin, nor did she omit the failures of one or another, yet she wrote with a note of triumph as she traced the spiritual growth in several Christians. She never pushed herself into the limelight, and reading her books we see a missionary, like so many others, faithfully doing the work the Lord had laid on her shoulders.2434 Amy found a way of combining the spiritual with the actual, and of contextualising her vision of evangelism and practical work, which was apt and truly functional.

• I picture her as typically British, though she was a blend of Irish and English. When you read her story, yes, she could take it! She could take the hardship. She was not a sissy by any stretch of the imagination. She endured abuse on the mission field, sickness, all kinds of administrative problems,

2431. Cf. Geraldine Taylor-Guinness: ‘Where are those willing, for His sake to put their lives into this work? It is lonely, far away and difficult: it is urgent, satisfying, and near to His heart’. In G. Taylor-Guinness, The Call of China’s Great North West of Kansu and Beyond (London: CIM, 1923).

2432. In Rose From Brier, 34. Cf. also Brewington, The Sacred Place of Exile, 31–33.

2433. Cf. Psalm 121:1.

2434. Cf. what she wrote, ‘Humdrum we have called the work, and humdrum it is. There is nothing romantic about potters except in poetry, nor is there much of romance about missions except on platforms and in books. Yet “though it’s dull at whiles”, there is joy in the doing of it, there is joy in just obeying. He said “Go, tell”, and we have come and are telling, and we meet Him as we “go and tell”’ (Things As They Are, 24).

Chapter 22

and harassment from local authorities. She somehow was able to keep her perspective about all of the hassles and tribulations she had to deal with in order to fulfil her call.

• She was conscientious. She knew the Indian mind and could understand their way of thinking and doing.2435 In learning the language and culture of the people among whom she worked, she could identify herself with women and children, especially. Amy respected the people and their culture. In Japan as well as in India she was always careful to observe the wishes of the people. The culture as such in its resistance against the living God and its sinfulness she judged as anti-power against Christianity and salvation, but the adherents of another religion she treated with respect, even in her contact with the children. She very sharply saw the position of women, often being seen as ‘things’, less than animals. Through her knowledge of the culture she knew that sexism was the root of all the oppression. She would not express herself in this way, and the forms of oppression having many varieties, she led the Dohnavur girls to maturity, as women as God meant them to be. • Amy had a holistic approach to mission work. Since her understanding of salvation she had always been attracted to the needy and the poor. In what she told from the Scriptures there was a distinct emphasis on practical theology: the application of age-old Scriptural truths in the arena of everyday life. The relationship of social concern to evangelism, an issue largely ignored by Keswick, was taken up by her.2436 Christ always, she found out, was drawn to those who could not help themselves. She was always ready to ‘go into the pit’, sit next to someone others would evade. She had learned the love of Christ.2437 Nesaruthina said ‘Amy used every opportunity she had to meet people and give them the good news. A person never left Amy without hearing of God and of the Gospel’. She even sang with the children and recited Bible verses before Government officials, and another old woman said that ‘she believed that faith in Christ should be seen in action’. Balaleela Carunia of the DF wrote, ‘She never separated the non-Christian from Christians. She shared equal love and helped them always’.2438 Her evangelistic approach was direct and heart searching. Her attitude was to serve and not to be served. She was transparently honest in seeking only the glory of God. The award of the Kaiser-I-Hind medal was a ‘shock’ for her. ‘Would it be unpardonable rude to ask to be allowed not to have it?’ Her Master had always been despised and rejected, not kindly honoured. She absolutely did not want to be in the picture. There is a strong current of rationality in her missionary programme. It was known that in her contact with representatives of other religions she could talk with them on equal level and talking with them in their own language she could defend the Christian belief in the way Paul dealt with the scholars in Greece.2439 She was very realistic. Not only the soul but the care for the body was essential for her. You cannot ‘pitchfork souls into heaven’ she said when some made the remark that in building all the nurseries she was not doing evangelistic work. When the boys’ work required building new nurseries and workshops, she had her answer ready:

2435. When Amy wanted to understand what really was in Ponnamal’s heart, she confessed that it was often so difficult for her really to understand the Indian way of thinking. ‘For the Indian mind rarely recognizes that which ours seizes upon as the crucial thing’ (Ponnamal, 10).

2436. See O. Barclay’s comment on Keswick’s ignorance on social issues, in Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Britain, 93. 2437. Cf. ‘If I refuse to allow one who is dear to me to suffer for the sake of Christ, if I do not see such suffering as the greatest honour that can be offered to any follower of the Crucified, then I know nothing of Calvary love’ (If, 57); ‘If my interest in the work of others is cool; if the burdens of others are not my burdens too, and their joys mine, then I know nothing of Calvary love’ (If, 59).

2438. These statements in Matthews, ‘The Theological Contributions of Amy Carmichael’, 34.

2439. See Acts 17.

‘Well, one cannot save and then pitchfork souls into heaven – there are times when I heartily wish we could – and as for buildings, souls (in India, at least) are more or less securely fastened into bodies. Bodies cannot be left to lie about in the open, and as you cannot get the souls out and with them separately, you have to take them both together.’2440 Mission work, in her own words, is ‘not what we are going to say or sing, or even feel or pray – but what we are going to do’.2441 • She stands out as a shining example of a missionary who had great concern for the lost. She did not give the impression of being of more importance than others. At first in modest Quaker dress, and as well in Japan as in India in local dress, she was the sinner saved by grace, never putting herself in the forefront. Was not she ‘Nobody’ in the early Scraps? Out of compassion she was prepared to identify herself with the people she met and lived with. When she had an opportunity to speak to the people, she never used an abundance of words or evaded the most important things. Directly she took the people in her talking about the Gospel to the heart of all things, the Cross. We see this already in her letter to her mother after she had heard the call ‘Go Ye’. Nothing could stop her to convey the good news. Until the end of her life her main concern was that those around her, children and elderly people, had a saving knowledge of Jesus. Her humility showed her to be a real servant of the Lord. • Since the appearance of her first published works, her talent as a writer has been recognised. Long before worldwide digital social connections existed, she already had a wide social network. From and to Dohnavur letters went and came from across all over the world. By the worldwide spread of her books, many in various translations – many of them reprinted as late as the second decade of the 21st century – her devotion to Christ, her mission views and way of working have become known all over the world since her first official publication in 1895. Also in many devotional books, her name is mentioned. As a result of her highly influential Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India (1903) and Gold Cord (1932), Westerners were alerted to the evils in the Hindu temple system and played a key role in the eventual downfall of evil practices and opened the way for legal actions. She looked upon her sufferings in a positive way, as battle wounds and honours gained in the service of her Saviour. This cannot be better explained than in her own words, ‘Give me the love that leads the way, | The faith that nothing can dismay | The hope no disappointments tire, | The passion that will burn like fire; | Let me not sink to be a clod: Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.’2442 • Amy so valued singing. She wrote numerous new songs for the children and taught them well-known mission songs of their time. It is a desideratum for our time to revive the old songs, to get God’s people to sing the mission mandate. When vital elements in Christian worship are not heard anymore, they will disappear out of the memory of Christians and will not anymore be mentioned in their prayers. • She was practical and she dared to do new things.2443 She, who knew that it was easier to put a text on the wall than to live in the spirit of it, always sought for the reality in life. She had certain qualities that made her perfect for being the Amma of the DF. She could look over ‘the borders’, had the creative inclusiveness of spirit, was faithful to the fundamentals of faith and did not switch her convictions, all wholly combined with a far-ranging vision. To supply the daily food for all the children, she bought land to produce rice and vegetables. Today the Dohnavur Fellowship occupies most of the land in Dohnavur. She created job opportunities for women and encouraged women to be practical, but she also implemented her restrictions. In Nesaruthina Carunia’s words, ‘Amy was

2440. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 213.
2441. In Things As They Are, 56.
2442. Gold Cord, X; Toward Jerusalem, 104.

2443. As J.E. Williamson says about her mission skills: ‘She “built with love and grit. Grit is love that continues”’ (Amy Carmichael, 136).

Chapter 22

strict to discipline the children. She did not let them read worldly books, she did not take them to cinema theatres, she did not allow them to dance to Hindu tunes and she had many other such restrictions, she did not like to exaggerate things and colour them to suit the needs of people. […] She would write nothing for the sake of pleasing readers but only the truth.’2444 • Raised with Victorian concepts of helping the underprivileged and imbued with the attitude of the one who said: ‘I am among you as one who serves’, she achieved satisfaction in her work and a sense of freedom and independence. Amy’s creation, the Dohnavur Fellowship, has become a model of Christian living. Far from perfect, yet the growing community has few parallels in our modern time for the unity, prayer and love that emanated from it. Amy saw the first centuries of Christianity, not yet divided by dogmatic and denominational differences, as a model. With the Fellowship she shaped a community close to that mentioned in Acts 2:42. She was also a kind of role model for single women missionaries abroad. Her whole life demonstrated an approach to mission that intricately weaved Christian religion and knowledge, spirituality and social action. Without hesitation, I see her as a great missionary, in a sense that she is great in love as shown in her life as Love Unlimited. • It is time to get a picture of Amy’s contribution to the missionary cause. Her pioneering contribution to the missionary movement has been unknown too long in broader missionary circles and deserves to be better known. Now, at the commemoration of her birth 150 years ago and seeing with great concern the worldwide impact of missions nowadays, Amy can encourage and guide us, to ‘keep climbing’. Until now, she has been looked upon by many as a late Victorian narrow-minded, old- fashioned missionary, following the paternalising British model. On the contrary, she did not follow the beaten track, but she was ahead of many in her time. Of course, she is a representative of the outgoing 19th century, raised in a sheltered atmosphere, and this may be the reason why she sheltered the children in Dohnavur, and also the readers of her books, from all that was offensive. However, she already innovated in India the things that we take for granted in our time, before they were generally accepted in missionary circles. Some of these innovations were: the thorough mastery of the language, which she accomplished through the straightforward way of evangelising the people. The acquisition of the knowledge of the culture and the religion of the people among whom she worked and the obtaining of the knowledge of the literature of these people, the teamwork with local people and even their training for leadership. She never made it easy and never offered them an alternative. She developed a disciplined and methodical co-leadership. Before the word was invented they had already practised ‘multi-tasking’ as an executive model, in which she showed a patience and a trust in the sovereignty of a loving God. She did not neglect the social aspect of mission work. We can say it was in her DNA to help in a physical and spiritual way. In 1942, she got a book, titled A Colony of Mercy, Social Christianity At Work, and she wrote on the first page: ‘A dear old book, beloved a long way old. Aunts in Portaferry long ago’.

• The most characteristic note of Amy’s life was: a whole-life devotion to her Saviour, Jesus Christ.

To be so transparent in her life that Christ was seen through her, and that His love and life might be reflected in her. Through her work we gain a deeper understanding of the importance of trusting God for provision, guidance and protection and discover how to trust in God and develop an attitude of contentment. His watchful care was sufficient. Foundational to her view of living as a Christian, was that every day she took time to read and study the Bible. A vital part of Dohnavur Fellowship life was the constant recurring reminder of things unseen. The finance meetings were ‘angels meetings’, the hospital the place of ‘Heavenly Healing’ and the hospital

2444. In Matthews, ‘The Theological Contributions of Amy Carmichael’, Appendix, XII. ward the ‘room of kindness’.2445 New to many was that in her concept, the natural is sacrificed to the spiritual, but in dealing with the natural, it is in a natural way soaked with the spiritual. God delivers from sin and she prayed that the Dohnavur children with body and soul would present their life to God to be transformed into a spiritual life of obedience. In a natural way, she turned from the things below to the things unseen. She never argued, never sought to force her viewpoint on others; her written work and deeds speak for themselves.

In all she did, she was driven by a higher purpose and by a sense of urgency based on a belief in the imminent return of Christ. She valued time, never losing a minute by idle business, but she used all her God-given capacities towards good stewardship. She had her own ideas of ruling the DF and was not easily inclined to allow any outside forces to monitor her. It tells us something of her greatness that, when necessary, she was prepared to be led by others. In this process, she joyfully took the cross and followed him who had said: ‘Follow Me’.2446 It is the climbing that counts.

Love was her sovereign preference for Christ and she identified herself with Christ’s interests for others. Her interpretation of sanctification was her aspiration after unbroken communion with God. Visitors to Dohnavur sensed a familiarity with God and Christian living in actual life. She was living witness to the realities of Christian experiences. In the actual realities of daily south Indian life could be seen in the first half of the 20th century her ‘extra ordinary self-sacrifice under the roughest of exteriors’.2447