William Carey: 19th c. Missionary to India Issue 36 | 1992 Purchase this issue

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Ten years ago, Dr. Ken Curtis had a crazy idea: Launch a church-history magazine.

“Nobody wants to read a magazine about church history,” the experts told him. “Who would subscribe? Who would advertise? A nice idea, but it will never fly.”

But here we are, ten years later. It hasn’t always been easy (see interview in this issue), but we have now published 36 issues on the people, events, and movements that have shaped our Christian faith. Thanks to you, Christian History has not only survived but is thriving.

Our family of subscribers continues to grow—we’re nearing 50,000 now. The vast majority of you renew your subscriptions. You introduce the magazine to others. And 93 percent of you save every issue. You have proven the experts wrong and shown that people do want to learn more about their Christian heritage. We feel deeply grateful for your support.

And the word continues to spread. Not long ago, Dwight Gibson of the Slavic Gospel Association stopped by our offices. “Christian History is a great magazine,” he began, “but I had to go to Central Europe to find out about it. In Czechoslovakia, the believers showed me a copy. They were translating the issue [No. 13] on Jan Comenius. Although he’s a famous Czech leader who’s pictured on the 20-Kronur note of the country, people there had never known about his deep Christian faith. They’d never been told.”

William Carey was perhaps the least likely candidate imaginable for the title many now bestow on him: Father of Modern Missions. He was an undereducated and poor shoemaker, sometime schoolteacher, and preacher who struggled to be ordained.

Further, Carey was born in an age when many people were utterly indifferent, even hostile, to the notion of missions. But Carey couldn’t get ...