The First American Missionary
By James Clark, Resonate Bellingham
If you were to Google search “who was the first American missionary,” the first thing you would see is a Wikipedia article about Adoniram Judson. Judson was sent out from America when he was 25 years old, in the year 1813, and spent 40 years establishing churches in Burma. Many of us have heard of Judson, but what most of us haven’t heard is that by the time he left America for Burma, an African-American pastor named George Liele had been in Jamaica for 30 years.
George Liele was born a slave in the year 1752. He was sent to Georgia when he was young, and in 1773, at 21 years old, he converted to Christianity. Liele was concerned with the spiritual condition of his fellow slaves, and he was gripped by a desire to preach the word. Henry Sharp, Liele’s master, was supportive of this, so over the next two years, Liele traveled to plantations all over the Savannah, preaching the gospel to slaves. Many repented and believed in the gospel. Two years later, in 1775, George Liele became the first ordained African American Baptist preacher. That year, he planted the first African American Baptist Church in North America, which exists to this day.
The next year, in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the American Revolution raged. Around this time, Henry Sharp freed Liele from slavery. They both sided with loyalists to the crown, since the British promised freedom to all slaves who fought on their side. Sharp was killed in battle in the year 1778, which paved the way for his successors to attempt to reclaim Liele as a slave. He was thrown in jail, but he was eventually released after proving that he was legally a free man. American revolutionaries were particularly hostile towards colonial loyalists, so Liele was in danger even out of prison. He befriended a British colonel who funded safe passage to Jamaica, which at the time was a British colony, to Liele, his wife, and his four children. After two years, Liele paid this debt, and in 1782 his whole family landed in Kingston, Jamaica, fully free.
Years of war and prison had done nothing to change George Liele’s convictions. The British may have freed American slaves, but they had not yet abolished slavery within their empire. African slaves were brought to Jamaica to work on sugar plantations, and just like in America, Liele was deeply gripped by a desire to share the word of God. He quickly planted a church, a full ten years before the father of modern missions, William Carey, sailed for India in 1793. The Lord blessed Liele’s work; they had to hold baptism services every three months. Over the next eight years, Liele was imprisoned multiple times for sedition and “agitating the slaves,'' once for three years. He was forced to submit his gatherings and sermons to observation, yet in this same period of time, he baptized over 500 men and women and had grown his church to more than 350 members.
By the year 1813, there were 8,000 baptist Jamaicans. The majority of them were slaves. Eighteen years later, there were over 20,000 Jamaican believers, most of whom could draw a line back to the church that George Liele began in 1783. Liele’s impact went beyond conversions, and it influenced culture and law as well. He established a free school and championed education for black men and women in Jamaica. In the year 1838, slavery was abolished in Jamaica.
George Liele died in Jamaica in the late 1820s. He did not get to witness the freedom of Jamaican slaves or more than 20,000 Jamaican believers, but this is his legacy and the impact of planting a church and preaching the gospel to slaves for decades. His successor in Jamaica is unknown, but he had two disciples in Georgia named David George and Andrew Brian. Both George and Brian led churches in the south that pioneered the growth of the African American church, so in many ways, George Liele can be considered a father of that movement as well. Today, more than 60% of Jamaicans identify as protestants, most of whom can trace their lineage back to George Liele, a man born a slave who God used to change the world.
Almost six years ago, my wife and I took our honeymoon to Jamaica. Numerous churches dotted the landscape, and several of the people we met were followers of Jesus. I did not know who George Liele was at this point in my life, but I remember wondering how Christ became so widely known. I had assumed that British colonists brought the gospel message with them, but the truth was that they tried to suppress it. It wasn’t an empire that brought Christ to Jamaica, but a single-family. Only in Christ does an exile who was recently a slave have the power to shift the trajectory of an entire nation. Only in Christ does a person of such influence not care for their name to be remembered. George Liele was such a person. He was lowly according to the standards of earth, yet mighty in the kingdom of heaven. His influence and legacy through obedience to God carried generations and nations into the presence of our Father. Like the original disciples who were driven to the ends of the earth from Jerusalem and Judea by persecution, Liele was driven away from his home. Also like the disciples, wherever Liele went, Jesus was proclaimed and known. When he was in America, he made disciples and planted churches. When he was in Jamaica, he made disciples and planted churches. Disciples build the church, and the church changes the community, the nation, and the world.
The world told George he was property, but God claimed him as a son. George's God-given identity fueled his purpose to bring his lost brothers and sisters home to their heavenly Father. Most Americans and Jamaicans today don’t know who George Liele was or what he accomplished. Like John the Baptist, he believed that we must decrease and Christ must increase. We set aside our legacy and fame because the one deserving of fame and reverence is Jesus, the founder, and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). George’s identity was found in Christ, and in his life, we see a snapshot of Jesus, who was and who is to come.
