A Missionary to These Shores: John Eliot

Today the Episcopal Church remembers a missionary to these shores, John Eliot. James Kiefer writes:

John Eliot was born in Hertfordshire, England, in 1604 and graduated from Cambridge in 1622. He taught school for a while, came under Puritan influence, and determined to become a minister. In 1631 he went to New England and was ordained to preach at Roxbury. He developed an interest in Indian language and customs, and began to preach to the Indians in 1646, at first in English but within a year in their own tongue, Algonkian. He published a catechism for them in 1654 and by 1658 translated the Bible into Algonkian, the first Bible to be printed in North America. A revised edition was published in 1685. Eliot also wrote The Christian Commonwealth (1659), Up-bookum Psalmes (1663), The Communion Of Churches (1665), The Indian Primer (1669), and The Harmony of the Gospels (1678), and was a major contributor to the Bay Psalm Book.

Eliot planned towns for Indian converts, away from the white towns, in areas where they could preserve their own language and culture and live by their own laws. He prepared Indians to be missionaries to their own people. Daniel Takawambpait was the first Indian minister in New England, being ordained at Natick, Massachusetts, in 1681. Eliot's Indian towns grew to fourteen in number, with thousands of inhabitants, but they were scattered in King Philip's War in 1675 (King Philip was an Indian leader who undertook to drive the English out of New England), and although four communities were restored, they did not continue long.

Eliot died after a long illness on 21 May 1690.

Let us pray: Great Creator, source of mercy, we thank you for the imagination and conviction of your evangelist, John Eliot, who brought both literacy and the Bible to the Algonquin people, and reshaped their communities into fellowships of Christ to serve you and give you praise; and we pray that we may so desire to share your Good News with others that we labor for mutual understanding and trust; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

  

CALENDAR REMINDERS

  

Pentecost is next Sunday, please wear red.

Please remember everyone on our Prayer List, especially Melva Pope, Bob Newding, Xavier and Marcy who are newly married, Patricia Robinson all of those who are ill and those who have no one to pray for them.

Your servant in Christ,

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+

St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church

Galveston, Texas 77550