Clough, John Everett (1836-1910) and Emma [Rauschenbusch] (1859-1940)

Pioneer American Baptist missionaries in Andhra Pradesh, South India

John Clough was born in Frewsburg, New York. His farming family moved to Iowa, where he worked on the farm, did survey work, and graduated from Upper Iowa University of Fayette in 1862 (M.A., 1965). In 1882 he was awarded an honorary D. D. by Kalamazoo (Michigan) College. Appointed as missionaries to India by the American Baptist Missionary Union, he and his first wife, Harriet (Sunderland), arrived in Andhra Pradesh in 1865. In 1866, they moved to Ongole, where he remained for the rest of his missionary career. After his wife died in 1893, Clough married Emma Rauschenbusch, another missionary, in 1894. They retired in 1906 but remained in India until 1910. John Clough died soon after returning to the United States that year.

Emma Clough, the sister of the famous social gospel theologian, Walter Rauschenbusch, was a scholar in her own right. She attended Wellesley College and Rochester Female Seminary and was granted a Ph.D. by the University of Berne, Switzerland, in 1894. In recognition of her scholarly accomplishments, she was made a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

John Clough is well known for his famine relief work in 1877 and 1878 and his association with the Ongole mass movement. In a six-week period during the summer of 1878, he and his assistants baptized nearly 9,000 members of the Madiga (Dalit) community in and around Ongole. More significant, though not so well known, were his insights into the importance of maintaining converts in their traditional social environments. For this purpose his evangelistic work was centered on villages, where he encouraged inquirers to wait until a family or group was ready to be baptized with them. Churches were organized in the villages in accordance with indigenous social structures, and continuing relationships with neighbors of other faiths were encouraged. He placed emphasis on the work of indigenous preachers, encouraging them to adopt as their model the Hindu guru.

Downs, Frederick S., “Clough, John Everett and Emma (Rauschenbusch),” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 129.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Bibliography

Digital Texts

Clough, Emma Rauschenbusch. A Study of Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Woman. London: Longman’s, Green & Co., 1898.

_____. While Sewing Sandals; or Tales of a Teluga Pariah Tribe. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.

Clough, John E., written down for him by his wife Emma Rauschenbusch Clough. Social Christianity in the Orient: The Story of a Man, a Mission, and a Movement. New York: Macmillan, 1914.

Secondary

Harris, Paul William. “The Social Dimensions of Foreign Missions: Emma Rauschenbusch Clough and Social Gospel Ideology,” in Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards and Carolyn De Swarte Gifford (eds.), Gender and the Social Gospel. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 2003, pp. 87-102.

Torbet, Robert G. Venture of Faith; The Story of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society and the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1814-1954. With a Foreword by Jesse R. Wilson. Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1955.

Portraits

“John Everett Clough,” at mosesonmissions.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/john-clough/

“John Everett Clough.” Frontispiece in John Everett and Emma Rauschenbusch Clough. Social Christianity in the Orient; the story of a man, a mission and a movement. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1914.