Luther Rice was a Baptist clergyman, promoter of missionary, and educational organizations.
Background
Luther Rice was born on March 25, 1783 in Northboro, Massachussets, a descendant of Edmund Rice who settled in Sudbury, Massachussets, before 1639, and the ninth child of Capt. Amos Rice, who served in the Revolutionary army and had married Sarah Graves of Shrewsbury.
Education
Luther's meager public-school education was interrupted at sixteen, when, under circumstances showing initiative on his part, he secured employment that involved a voyage to Georgia. The reading of books which decades earlier had influenced the Great Awakening largely shaped his religious experience and incited him to prepare for the Congregationalist ministry. After three years at Leicester Academy, he entered Williams College in the sophomore class, graduating in 1810. From 1810 to 1812 he was a student in the recently opened Andover Theological Seminary.
Career
Both at Williamstown and at Andover he was actively connected with the Society of Inquiry on the Subject of Missions and associated with those whose address to the Massachusetts General Association of Ministers led to the organization of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. His request to join the four men appointed by that body for missionary service was granted on condition that he provide the funds for outfit and passage; in this task, after strenuous efforts, he was successful, and was ordained with the others in the famous service at Salem, Feburary 6, 1812.
Sailing from Philadelphia, on August 10, 1812, he arrived in Calcutta. During the voyage Rice made some study of the question of baptism, two of his fellow-voyagers being English Baptist missionaries. On the arrival of Adoniram Judson Rice found that he too was concerned with the same question. Judson was immersed September 6 and Rice on November 1, following. Having thus severed their Congregational affiliation, Judson and Rice agreed that the circumstances required the return of Rice to America to adjust matters there and to secure support from the Baptists.
Reaching New York on September 7, 1813, Rice went to Boston to obtain a discharge from further obligations to the American Board. Thereafter, for more than twenty years, he devoted himself to organizing the Baptists of America for missionary and educational work. According to Prof. William H. Whitsitt, "The coming of Luther Rice was the most important event in Baptist history in the nineteenth century. " Far more clearly than any other up to his time, he sensed the religious task of the American Baptists as a whole.
He at once turned his attention to the establishment of a national denominational organization for foreign missionary endeavor, visiting Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, and Charleston, attending meetings of associations, and consulting with eminent leaders. Largely as a result of his activities, at a meeting held in Philadelphia in May 1814 there was organized what became popularly known as the Triennial Convention - for years the chief active symbol of American Baptist unity. Throughout the remainder of his life, in journeys covering thousands of miles yearly, he presented the missionary cause to the Baptists of the United States.
Very early he recognized the necessity for an educated ministry and saw the strategic importance of a Baptist college and theological seminary at the national capital. While he became most directly concerned with the founding and development of Columbian College at Washington (later George Washington University), he was also instrumental in the establishment of numerous Baptist educational institutions throughout the area of his travels.
He saw the need of supplementing his personal efforts by the use of the printing-press, and as a result a religious weekly, The Columbian Star, was established. Later developments of his ideas led to the organization of the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the American Baptist Publication Society. Rice became so much involved in the financial problems of Columbian College that Baron Stow published insinuations reflecting on his character and his reputation became temporarily clouded.
It is now evident, however, that he was absolutely honest and that the questionable situations arose from his attempting to carry along, with inadequate assistance, several separate but somewhat inter-related enterprises. With only his own personal requirements to care for - the only woman with whom he fell in love having refused to go with him to the foreign field - he gave unstinted and self-sacrificial devotion to the causes which he promoted.