Dan Beach Bradley Was a Transformative Missionary in Thailand
Dan Beach Bradley—missionary, doctor, health officer, newsman, and advisor
LATE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY several missionaries took up the call to go to Siam (now Thailand). However, impeded by suspicion from the surrounding culture and by frequent illness, the missionaries were struggling. Karl Gutzlaff, one of them, made a faulty translation of the Bible into Siamese. But when his wife died and his own health failed, he left, pleading with England for a replacement. English Congregationalists appealed to their American counterparts, and in response, Dan Beach Bradley went as a medical missionary.
He sailed on this day, 2 July 1834. At his side was Emelie Royce, his wife—whom he had courted by mail. Emelie worked with him and bore four children (one of whom died at birth) before succumbing to tuberculosis.
Bradley was thirty-two when he reached Siam. He fell in love with the land and the Thai people, but had no success converting them. However, he raised medical standards—importing smallpox vaccinations, performing the first modern surgery, establishing leper colonies, introducing painkillers, and teaching modern obstetrics.
Beginning in July, 1844, he issued Thailand’s first newspaper, the Bangkok Reporter, developing a type face (printer’s font) to represent the Thai language. His news stories and diary are still important sources of information for mid-nineteenth-century Siam.
Above all, he re-translated the Bible into the Thai language, a translation which scholars would later confirm as highly accurate.. Thanks to his Thai language printing press and his ability to translate court documents, he was able to support himself and his work.
This soon became necessary, since he broke with his mission board over the theology of Christian perfection or sanctification. Here is how he defended his theory of grace:
I believe and teach that the provisions of grace are such as to authorize the Christian to look to Christ with the confident hope and expectation of receiving all the aid he needs to enable him to do all the will of God, or, in other words, to love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself. Consequently, I do not, as some suppose, set aside the grace of Christ or the constant dependence on that grace. Whatever available power to obey God we have is a free gift of his grace.
After Emelie’s death, Bradley returned to the United States to arrange foster care for their children. While there, a friend urged him to marry Sarah Blachly, a graduate of Oberlin who was as eager as he to spread the gospel. He proposed four days after meeting her, and Sarah, like Emelie before her, sailed as his wife to Siam. She remained there for the next forty-three years until her death.
When Bradley died in Bangkok in 1873, Siam lost an extraordinary missionary, doctor, health officer, newsman, and advisor.
—Dan Graves
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