On February 5, 1812, five eager future missionaries sat in a church in Haverhill, Massachusetts. They listened to Jonathan Allen preach a rousing commissioning sermon. These were the first American missionaries to be sent out by the fledgling American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, then only two years old.
But what most surprised some that day was that two of the five new missionaries were women: Ann Judson and Harriet Atwood. And it’s clear from Allen’s sermon that these women were not viewed merely as luggage accompanying their husbands, but as important, personal contributors to the hoped-for mission among the Hindus and Muslims of India.
At one point in the sermon Allen spoke at length directly to these young ladies:
It will be your business, my dear children, to teach these women, to whom your husbands can have but little, or no access. Go to them and do all in your power, to enlighten their minds, and bring them to the knowledge of the truth. . . . Teach them to realize that they are not an inferior race of creatures; but stand upon a par with men. Teach them that they have immortal souls; and are no longer
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