FATHER OF FAITH MISSIONS
The life and times of Anthony Norris Groves
By Robert Bernard Dann. Authentic Media. 606 pages. £12.99
ISBN 1 884543 90 1
This huge volume is a comprehensive study of the life and work of Anthony Norris Groves, missionary first to Baghdad and then to India, and a man whom the author regards as an unjustly neglected, pioneering figure in the history of the missionary movement. The book is clearly based on careful research and provides fascinating insights, as the title suggests, into both the man and his times.
Anthony Norris Groves was born in 1795 and his relatively brief life spanned the tumultuous years of the first half of the 19th century. He lived through, and played a key role in, the emergence of what came to be known as the Brethren movement, and familiar names like John Nelson Darby and Samuel Muller appear frequently in these pages. While still a young Christian, Groves studied the Bible intensively and published a small booklet outlining his discoveries with the title Christian Devotedness. In this he attacked the addiction to wealth and possessions which he observed among Christians, and summoned those who would be serious about following Christ to take his example and teaching with utter seriousness. This was a call to radical discipleship; to a literal obedience in renouncing the rule of Mammon and living in absolute dependence on the promises of a faithful God. Robert Dann detects here the real beginnings of faith missions and argues, perhaps debatably, that the pamphlet marked ‘a turning point in the history of Christian missions’.
