The American Baptist Home Mission Society is a Christian missionary society. Its predecessor, the Home Mission Society, was established in 1832 in New York City to operate in the American frontier, with the stated mission "to preach the Gospel, establish churches and give support and ministry to the unchurched and destitute.""Where we come from" , American Baptist Home Mission Societies, accessed 25 Aug 2010 In the 19th century, the Home Mission Society was part of the Triennial Convention, the mainline Baptist denomination in the United States established in 1814. Today, the Home Mission Society is part of the reorganization of the Triennial Convention, the American Baptist Churches USA, reorganization by merger of the several Triennial societies and organizations related to missions and work, including publications (1824), women (1877), and education (1888).
Founding Early 19th-century Baptist churches in the United States formed national "societies" with specific mission orientations related under the umbrella of the Triennial Convention. The deepest root of American Baptist Home Mission Societies (ABHMS) is the Baptist General Tract Society founded in Washington, D.C., on February 25, 1824, "to disseminate evangelical truth, and to inculcate sound morals, by the distribution of tracts." In 1826 the tract society relocated to Philadelphia, where it was renamed the American Baptist Publication Society. The 1824 tract society became the American Baptist Society in 1870, the Board of Publication and Education in 1944, and Educational Ministries in 1972. Home mission pioneer John Mason Peck was the general secretary, 1843–1845.
The Home Mission Society (ABHMS), itself, was organized in 1832 to raise support for missionaries in North America. Later, Dr. Henry Lyman Morehouse, corresponding secretary of ABHMS, took the lead in forming the American Baptist Education Society (ABES) in May 1888 to promote "Christian education under Baptist auspices in North America." A major achievement of the group was the founding of the University of Chicago in 1890, strongly supported by John D. Rockefeller. In addition, Dr. Morehouse (for whom Morehouse College is named) succeeded in engaging Rockefeller in major financial support for Bacone College, Spelman College, and black education in general. Responsibility for historically black colleges, founded by and for freedmen and women after the Civil War, remained with ABHMS until the Great Depression, when this work was transferred to the Education Society. After 1935, the only schools administered by ABHMS were Bacone College, Muskogee, Oklahoma; International Baptist Seminary, East Orange, New Jersey; and the Spanish-American Baptist Seminary (SABS), Los Angeles. The publishing (Judson Press), educational, and discipleship ministries of the educational society were transferred to National Ministries in 2003 with the dissolution and merger of the Board of Publication and Education (Educational Ministries).
Other significant roots that were grafted into the work of the national societies were the Women's Baptist Home Mission Society (WBHMS), founded in Chicago on February 1, 1877, and the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society (WABHMS), founded in Boston on November 14, 1877. These two societies merged in 1909 and moved their offices to New York City. In 1955, the WABHMS integrated its work with ABHMS.
Soon after the founding of ABHMS, the Free Will Baptist Home Mission Society was formed in Dover, N.H., on July 31, 1834, with David Marks as the first corresponding secretary. In 1842, Marks moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where he befriended the evangelist Charles G. Finney and was active in the Underground Railroad. The Free Will Society and related Free Baptist Women's Missionary Society of Boston merged with the American Baptist Societies in 1911.Laubach, David C. American Baptist Home Mission Roots: 1824–2010 , Valley Forge: American Baptist Home Mission Societies, April 2010
Seeds of the Home Mission Society When the American Baptist Home Mission Society (ABHMS) was founded in 1832, it was patterned after the older American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS) (1814) and the even older Massachusetts Domestic Missionary Society (1802), which was organized to "furnish occasional preaching, and to promote the knowledge of evangelic truth in the new settlements of these United States, or further, if circumstances should render it proper" and to "evangelize the Indians and western frontiersmen." The imprint of these early missionary societies, leaders, and missionaries has been determinative for the world view and work of ABHMS (National Ministries, 1972–2010).
For most of its history, ABHMS enabled American Baptist congregations to support missionaries serving on its behalf in North America, including Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. In the beginning, before telegraphs and railroads, reaching these new frontiers on the vast North American continent required the cooperative efforts of many Baptists and great hardship on the part of missionaries. As mission fields grew stronger and became self-supporting, these newly formed associations, societies, and conventions began planting churches, founding schools, and sending and supporting their own missionaries. It is the ancient biblical model that the one evangelized and discipled becomes the evangelist and disciple-maker so that faith passes from neighbor to neighbor and generation to generation. A good example is the Kiowa Baptists at Saddleback Mountain in Oklahoma, who wanted "other Indians to hear about the Jesus Road" and filled red Jesus barrels with money to send a missionary to the Hopi Indians in Arizona and established the Sunlight Mission on Second Mesa. In the late 20th century, a corrective missiological shift occurred that continues to gain momentum. Local congregations saw home mission as not only what they paid others to do on their behalf on distant frontier mission fields on the Crow Reservation in Montana or Kodiak, Alaska, but also what they were called to do on the mission field at their own doorstep. Historically, African-American churches have practiced "mission on your doorstep," yet a radical missional-church approach also challenges African-Americans. This shift can be seen in the examples of African-American churches in Phonix sponsoring Navajo ministry and those in Los Angeles adding Latino staff and offering Spanish language classes.
Dr. William Staughton was present with William Carey at the formation of the English Baptist Missionary Society (Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen) at Kettering, England, in 1792. His zeal for foreign missions was transplanted to America when he emigrated in 1793. He wrote The Baptist Mission in India in 1811. At First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, on May 18, 1814, the first General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions (i.e. Triennial Convention) elected Staughton—an ardent supporter of Christian missionary work—as its first corresponding secretary for the newly formed Baptist Board of Foreign Missions. The purpose of the Triennial Convention was to support Adoniram Judson and Ann Judson's mission in Burma. The Judsons and the Rev. Luther Rice embraced Baptist sentiments aboard ship as they sailed to Calcutta. In India, they met British Baptist missionary Carey and were baptized by immersion. Evicted by the East India Co., Rice returned to America while the Judsons traveled to Burma. The fruit of Judson's long labor in Burma has in the 21st century come to the shores of North America, and ABHMS is currently working with 93 Burmese congregations.
John Mason Peck, a pastor in central New York, met Rice in June 1815 and spent several months traveling throughout central New York promoting a missionary spirit, encouraging missionary societies, and taking up collections for foreign missions. Influenced by the stories of Judson and Carey and stirred by the missionary vision of Rice, Peck sought support from the Triennial Convention to be appointed a missionary to the Missouri Territory. From May 1816 until May 1817, Peck studied under Stoughton in Philadelphia, when he and James Welch were commissioned for the "domestic mission" in the Missouri Territory. Rice was present. Peck and Welch arrived in St. Louis with their families in December 1817.
No one person influenced Baptist work more in the Midwest over the coming years than Peck. A pioneer of new methods, he founded the first Sunday schools, women's societies, and missionary societies in the territory. Peck organized the first Baptist churches west of the Mississippi, ordained the first African-American clergy in St. Louis, and helped found Alton Seminary, which later became Shurtleff College. Peck also served two terms in the Illinois State Legislature and was a vocal opponent of slavery. He faced harsh criticism from anti-mission, or "old school," Baptists, who believed neither in Sunday schools, colleges, or theological seminaries nor missionary, tract, or Bible societies.
Peck's appointment from the Triennial Convention was short-lived and not renewed in 1820. Opposition to the missionaries sprang from the fact that they had settled in St. Louis, where they established a church and a school, instead of "plunging into the wilderness and converting the Indians." The convention directed Peck to travel to Fort Wayne, Ind., to join Isaac McCoy in his work with the Indians. With calls to send missionaries to Russia, India, and the Sandwich Islands, and the financial demands of the new Columbia College in Washington, D.C., there were no resources to support home mission except with Native Americans. Peck did not join McCoy and continued his support with help from Massachusetts and later from ABHMS.
Rev. John Berry Meachum (1789–1854), a former slave and skilled carpenter who bought freedom for himself and his family, assisted American Baptist Home Mission pioneer Peck with the church and Sunday school Peck founded in St. Louis in 1817. Black and white, bond and free worshipped together at First Baptist until 1822, when African-American worshippers formed a separate branch. Peck ordained Pastor Meachum in 1825, when he founded the First African Baptist Church, the first Protestant congregation established for African-Americans west of the Mississippi River. Shortly after a brick church building was erected, Meachum and Peck opened a day school called the "Candle Tallow School" because classes were conducted in a secret room with no windows to avoid being discovered by the sheriff. Missouri law forbade teaching free or slave blacks to read and write. Even more restrictive laws were enacted by the General Assembly of Missouri in 1847.
But Meachum would not be denied. With the help of some of his friends—black and white—he bought a steamboat, fitted it with a library and classrooms, and, in 1847, christened his ship "Freedom School." The Mississippi River was federal territory, and the federal government did not enforce the Missouri law against education of blacks.