Thomas Jefferson Bowen was the first Southern Baptist missionary to focus on winning Muslims to Christ and the first missionary sent by the convention to Central or South America, but generations have not known his name.
By 1860, Southern Baptists only had mission work in four countries, and Bowen was responsible for two. He was a national hero, publishing with the Smithsonian Institution, preaching, and speaking throughout the eastern U.S., yet mental illness all but erased the memory of his existence.
Jim Hardwicke, author of Unthinkable: The Triumph and Endurance of Forgotten American Hero T.J. Bowen, spent years digging up his story, consulting more than 1,000 primary sources, so future generations can be inspired by his example.
Born in Georgia in 1814, Bowen joined the fight to defend the Republic of Texas as one of the original Texas Rangers. Saved in 1840, he preached and helped establish churches and associations in southern Georgia, eastern Alabama, and northern Florida.
Around the Southern Baptist Convention’s founding in 1845, Bowen read early reports of missions work and became burdened for Central Africa. He offered himself to the Foreign Mission Board (FMB) as a missionary and was approved but had to raise his own funds. He was sent with another white man as well as a slave whose freedom Bowen helped purchase.
The trio pressed nearly 70 miles into the African interior and preached briefly before the two white men became ill, Hardwicke said. The former slave nursed them for a time but then returned to the coast. Soon, Bowen’s associate died, leaving him to evangelize the African interior alone.
At the time, Africans were enslaving and selling other Africans. Bowen used his military experience to lead a city of 60,000 to stand against the enslavers. In turn, the city leaders negotiated a treaty with the British to open the interior to opportunities for missionaries.
In 1853, Bowen returned to America where he would preach at the Southern Baptist Convention in Baltimore and marry Lurana, a wealthy Georgian, before returning for another attempt at evangelizing the heart of Africa.
The Bowens established the first Baptist mission station in Central Africa, and had a daughter who lived only a few months.
“All the diseases that killed most of the other white people left him physically and mentally maimed for the rest of his life,” Hardwicke said. “He started experiencing anxiety and depression in 1854. He began to be psychotic in 1854, suicidal in 1855.”
But Bowen still managed to write the bestseller Central Africa, a 359-page account of his explorations and missionary efforts.
He also compiled a grammar and dictionary of the Yoruba language, published by the Smithsonian Institution. As late as 1940, the grammar was still being used in Nigerian schools, and it was instrumental in translating the Bible into the Yoruba language.
While Bowen longed to return to Africa, his health kept him back. In 1859, the FMB agreed to send him the shorter distance to Brazil, where he planned to reach Yorubas taken there as slaves.
Shortly after arriving with his wife, Bowen ran afoul of the Roman Catholic authorities and was imprisoned on suspicion of inciting insurrection among the slaves. The FMB contacted the U.S. War Department, and the commander of the American fleet at Rio threatened to fire upon the city unless he was released, which he was.
In Brazil he suffered a major physical and mental breakdown, and the Bowens returned home. Alone in final 14 years of his life, tormented by severe headaches and other ailments, he wandered the South, without money, and given to drunkenness.
Hardwicke asked two physicians to examine a primary document about Bowen’s health, and they determined the illnesses he acquired in Africa likely included malaria, Gambian sleeping sickness, worms, and possibly typhoid and strep.
Admitted to a Georgia insane asylum seven times, Bowen died and was buried in an unmarked grave there in 1875.
“[Southern Baptists] were embarrassed by his insanity, and they were embarrassed by reports of his drunkenness,” Hardwicke said. “They put a veil over his life, especially that part of his life.”
Bowen is still revered in Nigeria where he started what became the Nigerian Baptist Convention, which has grown to more than 20,000 churches with more than 10 million members. A university and a hospital there bear his name. From Nigeria, millions of people have been reached for Christ in other parts of Africa, Hardwicke noted.
“I have no doubt that in heaven T.J. Bowen and Lurana are greatly honored,” Hardwicke said. “The fruit that has been born of their sacrifices is multiplied millions of believers and tens of thousands of churches in South America and Africa.”
—Erin Roach for Baptist Press