Before there was any theology course in India, there were people who spent their lives so that the Bible would speak the country's languages. This page is about those lives — and about the conviction they left behind: no one understands God as deeply as in the language they learned to pray in.
William Carey lands in Bengal and begins what would become the largest Bible translation effort ever carried out by a single mission.
Henry Martyn begins translating the Scriptures into Urdu and Persian — work that consumes him before he turns 31.
In December, a young Sikh asks God to reveal himself — and goes on to preach Christ wearing traditional Indian robes, rejecting "westernized" Christianity.
India recognizes 22 official languages and records thousands of mother tongues in its census. Making the Word — and the teaching that explains it — speak the language of every people is work no one has declared finished.
An English cobbler who became the "father of modern missions" — translated the Scriptures into more than 40 Indian languages.
A social reformer and Sanskrit scholar who translated the Bible into Marathi and founded a refuge for widows and orphans.
Translated the New Testament into Urdu and Persian before dying at 31, worn out by the work.
An Irish missionary who devoted 55 years to rescuing at-risk children in South India, without ever returning to her home country.
Known as "Praying Hyde," remembered for a life of intense intercession for pastors and the Indian people.
Converted from Sikhism, preached Christ while wearing the robes of an Indian sadhu — a faith embodied in the country's own culture.
There is no comparing what those lives accomplished with what this project does. Carey and his colleagues translated the Scriptures into dozens of Indian languages. Pandita Ramabai rendered the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Marathi, the language of her own region. Henry Martyn died at 31, worn out, leaving the New Testament in Urdu and Persian behind him. A translated theology course does not come close to that — and that is not the point.
What they leave behind is a conviction, and it is a simple one: no one understands God as deeply as in the language they learned to pray in. It is what they spent their lives translating for — because the Word of God has to arrive whole, not half-heard through a borrowed tongue.
It is the same conviction behind this project, on a far smaller but still necessary point: across much of India the Bible has already been translated, but the pastor who teaches it every Sunday has never had a way to study it deeply in his own language. Training that pastor, in his heart language, is the step still missing.
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