The Visions of Judson and Browne
Neither Adoniram Judson nor Benjamin Browne lived to see his “vision that is the Grail” more than partially fulfilled. We have described Adoniram’s youthful vision of himself as a “great man,” a vision shared by his family and friends. Though his stern father would have discouraged his son from pridefulness, he also expected him to attain eminence in the university or the pulpit. His family was convinced that when the young man left for Asia he was frittering away his God-given talents on a possibly noble but potentially fruitless quest. Adoniram was fresh from his personal experience of the new life in Christ. In his fervor he saw himself as an evangelist in the India mission.
Yet, when that avenue was closed, he was seized by the even more compelling, even exciting vision of leading Buddhist Burma to experience new life as a Christian nation. Adoniram had, in fact, abandoned his early vision of a career that could make him a prominent public figure as writer, preacher or professor. There was a double irony. First, by sacrificing those careers he did finally achieve renown as one of his era’s great men of God. Second, the names of all but a few of his contemporaries who achieved public acclaim in church or state or literature during their lifetimes have been lost, except on the pages of dust-covered volumes of interest only to a historian, while the Judson name resonates both in the church and in the academy.
Benjamin P. Browne envisioned an evangelical Christian college of the liberal arts in the Midwest, one that would be founded upon historic New Testament values of faith and practice as understood and proclaimed by conservative leaders in the American Baptist Convention, many of whom were located in the Midwestern states. Adoniram found the fulfillment of his vision unexpectedly: first through his new insight into the rite of baptism, then through his call from India to an established but dysfunctional mission in Burma. Ben’s route to attain his goal went similarly indirectly through his call to the presidency of a seminary with declining student enrollment, which the American Baptist Board of Higher Education had scheduled for closing. Adoniram arrived in India, then Burma, by conventional standards a relatively inexperienced young man. Ben Browne was already a prominent leader in Christian higher education within the Baptist denomination.
However, both the untried young missionary and the respected elder statesman would be called to exercise the New Testament virtue of patience. This is usually more difficult for a young man such as Adoniram, who did not make his first convert for six years. However, it was equally challenging for a senior who had to face many initial obstacles, and who, even after the six years during his 1963-1969 founding and nurture of Judson College, was once again faced by the proposal from influential supporters that the college should be closed.
