nineteen hundred and forty-six - Amazon Web Services

226 SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
to our organization as soon as a directing secretary for the department can be
selected. Dr. B. J. Cauthen, the recently elected secretary for the Orient, began
his work in Richmond January 1 of this year. Miss Gene Newton has been
elected as assistant to the executive secretary.
RELIEF
Through the World Emergency Committee of the Foi-eign Mission Board,
Southern Baptists have contributed for relief of destitute people a total of
$1,127,000 in the years 1942-45. Of this amount $234,608 was given in 1945.
• In the distribution of these funds, priority has been given to needs in areas
where the Foreign Mission Board has missionary work. The larger part of
this money has been expended through our missionary channels in China.
There are, however, vast areas of destitution where the Foreign Mission
Board does not have missionaries. In those areas, the World Emergency Committee
has used the best available channels for rendering relief. It is not the
idea of the Committee that Southern Baptists wish to withhold help from
destitute people because the relief we contribute cannot be handled by Baptist
agencies. Where there are such agencies, they are used. Where there are none,
other available agencies are used to dispense our gifts. .
The need of millions of people for food and clothing is so tragic and urgent
that we must reach out through every effective channel to meet these needs.
The reports which follow will tell their story of indestructible achievements
of the past and of the compelling needs of today.
THE FOREIGN MISSION BOARD
—HISTORICAL SKETCH—
E. C. ROUTH
When the Southern Baptist Convention was organized in Augusta, Georgia,
101 years ago, two mission boards were constituted, one for Foreign Missions,
the other for Domestic Missions. Richmond, Virginia, was designated as the
location of the Foreign Mission Board.
The first missionary appointed by the Foreign Mission Board was Samuel
C. Clopton, who was commissioned September 1, 1845, to go to China. George
Pearcy was appointed November 3 of the same year. Both sailed early the next
summer. J. Lewis Shuck who, in response to the appeal of Luther Rice, had
gone to China in 1835 with his young wife, Henrietta Hall Shuck, had returned
to this country in 1846 with his motherless children. He was available for
appointment by the Southern Board, and returned to China in 1847, as a missionary
of our Board. He was assigned to Shanghai, with Matthew T. Yates and
T. W. Tobey as his associates. He and I. J. Roberts, who had labored in China,
first at Macao, then at Hongkong, and had started a mission at Canton in 1844J
were appointed March 27, 1846. Roberts was to be located at Canton.
The North China Mission, Shantung Province, was opened in 1860 with Mr.
and Mrs. J. L. Holmes and Dr. and Mrs. J. B. Hartwell as pioneers. Dr. R. H!
Graves had gone out to Canton in 1856. Dr. Hartwell baptized the first man won
to Christ in Shantung Province.
The Interior China Mission was opened in 1904 by W. Eugene Sallee and
W. W. Lawton.
In June, 1846, Dr. James B. Taylor, in response to the urgent plea of the
Foreign Mission Board, resigned as pastor of the Grace Baptist Church, Richmond,
and accepted the secretaryship for full time. For twenty-six years he
labored diligently and faithfully and laid enduring foundations for the everenlarging,
world missionary program of Southern Baptists.
After China, Africa was the next field to be entered. Interest in mission
work in that continent dates back to 1815 when Richmond Baptist Missionary
Society was constituted "with a view solely of missions in Africa." The American
Baptist Missionary Union, the foreign missionary agency of Northern Baptists,
maintained its own work in Western Africa until 1856 when Northern Baptists'
withdrew from Liberia. In the meantime, a number of missionaries of the
Missionary Union exercised the option given them of associating themselves with