Missionary Life in Persia

An account by the American missionary, Justin Perkins, of his years living among the Christians of Persia, with a new Introduction by John Ameer, setting the activities and experiences of the American missionaries in Persia in their historical context. In 1831, missionaries were sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to evaluate the possibilities for setting up missions among the Christian minorities there. The Americans perceived the Nestorians Christians of the venerable and ancient Church of the East as likely to be receptive to an American mission, and Justin Perkins (1805–1869), a graduate of Amherst College and the Andover Theological Seminary, was chosen to lead it. Perkins and his wife Elizabeth arrived in Urmia in 1835, and were welcomed by the clergy of the Church of the East. Their ensuing cooperation with Perkins, as well as the friendliness proffered by the local Iranian nobility, enabled the missionaries to proceed in establishing the mission. The missionary enterprise was also assisted by the socio-economic context of the Nestorians. Years of isolation from other Christian communions, their inferior status among Muslim majorities and a grinding poverty, all characterized the lot of the plains Nestorians. Illiteracy, for example, was the norm; by accounts of all the visitors, and by substantiation of the local clergy, it is clear that few of the Nestorians in Urmia were literate. Even many clerics and deacons were unschooled and were able to perform liturgical exercises by means of memorizing the texts which they were able to do by means of oral instruction. The missionaries quickly learned that the hunger for education was widespread and set up schools to meet this need. In Perkins' memoir of his years as a missionary in Urmia he writes of his joys and successes on the mission field, as well as of hardships encountered: of his seven children, only one would survive to return to America.