David Brainerd: Missionary to the American Indians (2012) | Full Movie | Gary Wilkinson

Manhattan Island today with extorting skyscrapers it would have looked so different to those early settlers who came to these shores [Music] this story is about a missionary called David Brainerd who would spread the Liberty of the gospel to the native inhabitants of these shores he retired early but in a short space of time he would leave a legacy for mission and be an inspiration to generations of Christians [Music] the story of david Brainard's life would become well-known because of two important factors Brainerd kept a diary of his life and Jonathan Edwards a key figure during the first Great Awakening looked after David Brainerd during his final days of suffering from tuberculosis Edwards noting the significance of what Brainerd had done in his short years published Raina's diary which became well-read and an encouragement to believers everywhere during the early 1700s the frontiers were still being forged there were 13 established colonies still under British rule the Native American Indians it was an uncertain time as they faced the influx of settlers settlers want land and there's a lot of problems over the land transactions because native people knew nothing about fee-simple about individual ownership of land land was given to a tribe by the Creator and the tribal people used that land and when certain members weren't using one part of it another member could use it but nobody owned the land so what happens is when for example inland people would often come to the coast to do fishing of course there were people living on the coast so what they had to do was they would pay tribute the coastal people would allow them to stay there for a couple of weeks and fish and so the original land transactions here this is probably what Native people thought they were doing so you have a lot of problems there and of course one of the major problems is disease European diseases decimated people here there are some estimates that 90% of the population native population in southern New England was killed off by European diseases by 1650 that's tremendous amount by the 17 teams New England is actually emerging out of a time her long warfare only do you have King Phillip's war in 1675 1676 you also have a series of imperial wars with France and her Indian allies King William's war Queen Anne's war and so by the time you hit the 17 teens actually things are beginning to stabilize there is a resumption of immigration and also you have the emergence of a really robust Atlantic world trade that is going on - and so Connecticut Rhode Island Massachusetts are continually being integrated into this wider world of trade David Brainerd was born in the colony of Connecticut in 1718 in a town called haddem on the Connecticut River he was the sixth of nine children born to Hezekiah and Dorothy bleonard the best knowledge we have of Brandon's family background suggests that his grandfather came to the colonies of the age of about 12 as an indentured servant and then when he reached the age of 21 he was part of a group of men who settled the new town of haddem he and his wife had a number of children one of them a young ggest son Hezekiah Brainard who was David Brandon's father became very wealthy very politically connected his father served numerous terms in the Connecticut legislature he was on the Governor's Council he was Speaker of the House of Connecticut in several occasions in addition to his land there's pretty good evidence he ran a fairly successful merchant business from his home his home life early on he was educated by his parents and at home and children would be regularly taught not just Latin not just grammar but the catechism and they were expected to know the basics of Christian doctrine so that when they heard the minister on Sunday preached say on the doctrine justification he wouldn't have to take time to explain what that was the the families and would know what that is because they've been catechized Brainard was part of a New England world that was still very much influenced by the legacy of the Puritans the for fathers who'd come in the 17th century and whose impact not only religiously but politically on the colony was very very strong David's parents died early on in his life first his father then his mother he went to live with his sister Jerusha who married a farmer from East Haddam when David reached 19 he tried farming as he had inherited a farm from his father in nearby Durham this didn't last long in 1739 it goes through a conversion process and in that same here he enrolls at Yale as Brainard made his way to Yale as perhaps helpful just to try to describe Yale at that particular time it had been founded in the early 1700s as a alternative you might say to Harvard College Harvard was perceived by some New Englanders as having become too theologically liberal we think of those early colonial colleges especially geared towards the training of ministers and Yale was certainly that and yet I think Brainard went not quite sure what his path was going to be in the future when David Brainerd got to Yale in September 17:39 he was treated like many of his other fellow classmates as incoming freshman and there's hazing and other things that were involved the average age of incoming student yeah would have been 15 16 he was consuming older than the average freshman and so I can sort of imagine brain and having to say to a 16 year old you know can I shine your shoes or you know can I walk up the stairwell and I I think they would have graded a lot with him he did get sick his first year he went back in his what would been a sophomore year got sick again he this time refers to it as a mild upset but he also reports that he was spitting blood he came back to college and with another man named David Youngs who would eventually also become a revivalist they as Brandon said we got together determined to do something about the spiritual addition to college and there was no real plan because about a month after they started meeting for this purpose the great revival the Great Awakening hit Yale one of the most important religious developments within the first half of the 18th century in colonial America was what has come to be called the Great Awakening of the first Great Awakening really refers to a series or wave of revivals that began as early as the 1720s first in individual congregations in places like New Jersey then in the 1730's in Massachusetts and then from the late 30s into the 40s up and down the eastern seaboard but especially in New England Edwards is serving as a minister in Northampton and Massachusetts in the 1730's he inherits this church from his grandfather Solomon Stoddard and in 1734 1735 after a period of extraordinary dullness as Edwards would describe it there is a series of events that leads to a more widespread revival of religion and so this revival breaks out in Northampton and in Jonathan Edwards his own description of it it transforms the entire town what's fascinating is that this then becomes a model for other towns and other ministers around New England but also in parts of the British Isles as well this is partly because Edwards publishes a report of the awakening in Northampton and 1737 as a faithful narrative the surprising works of God this book sold and was read in the colonies but it was very influential with a couple of guys in England named John Wesley in Georgia Whitfield who saw this is the the beginning of God's awakening as people Whitfield began preaching outdoors in England became an instant hit as some historians have quite rightly argued one of the first great celebrities I mean the reception for Whitfield we turned up in the colonies was white like what rock stars Oh sporting heroes get today I mean the newspapers reported he's here now he's on the ship we believe he's on the way he's arrived in Philadelphia he's on his way to Boston it was just very exciting for people and whitfill preached to hundreds if not thousands of people in outdoor settings when he preached in Philadelphia Benjamin Franklin was in the audience and he estimated that perhaps 20,000 people were there to hear Whitefield preach so this is these are your large large crowds and it becomes known as great largely because of its geographical spread and the impact that will have on the spiritual tone of the colonies but it'll also have ripple effects politically socially economically across colonial America for decades to come as the first Great Awakening was spreading across New England it came to New Haven and it came to Yale College causing great upheaval Thomas clapper who was the rector of Yale had welcomed Whitfield he wanted to see renewal of religion but he had reservations and the more Whitfield preached the more reservations Clapp had and when Whitfield came back the second time he wouldn't let him preach on the campus and by this point in time the zealots on the campus which included brain and Young's another guy named Samuel Hopkins and several others had decided the Clapp was was standing in the way of what God was doing and the students themselves were looking at the faculty members and thinking our own faculty are very cold and dry and and they were even wondering if many of them were converted and so you could see this great divide taking place and so Yale becomes a hotbed I kill but tenant comes here Ebenezer Pemberton preaches there and these guys are real sort of firebrands at the time most of them calmed down two or three years later but at the time they're really pushing the envelope so Brainerd is involved in this and of course the problem with understanding what happens with brain is that the whole story of his expulsion is is destroyed from his diaries and so the story of the brain is expulsion is Edwards story of brains expulsion which is at one point after a chapel service in a private conversation with two other students brain had referred to one of the tutors of Galla guy named Chauncey witness Lee and said he has no more grace in this chair less employment Weasley was not truly converted someone overheard this they reported it to the rector because that passed a rule saying he couldn't criticize the college faculty the rector hold brain and up before him to mana but he apologized in front of the whole College a brain and said I want to do that because it was a I would sin and should require a private confession and when he refused to do a public confession he was expelled we know from a latest statement of Brandon's that he'd attended illegal meetings on more than one occasion despite the college rules saying he shouldn't have there are other documents out there Diaries of other students notations and letters reynad was a troublemaker so I think really what had happened was that Brandon had been acting in the revivals he'd been very critical of the administration he'd broken a lot of rules and Clapp had finally caught him with a witness I knew this is what happened that he probably suspected Brandon was a troublemaker but didn't have any evidence and now he had as Brainard began to consider his options following his expulsion from Yale he encountered the divisions produced by the Great Awakening both in New England and the middle colonies in New England folks divided into new lights and old lights Pro and anti revival factions in the middle colonies particularly among Presbyterians similarly they became known as the new sides and the old sides those Presbyterians favoring the awakening and some of its methods and tactics became known as the Presbyterian new side by the spring of 1740 to Brainerd had left New Haven and he was living in a small town called Ripton in Connecticut studying under the local minister during this time he was able to meet a number of ministers in this new light movement these were ministers Bellamy and Jonathan Dickinson famous Presbyterian minister who would have an enormous impact on David Brainerd and during the spring of 1740 to and into that summer he wanted to be licensed to preach so braded had the option of being licensed by a local Association as a preacher couldn't be a minister because he was no attained but he could preach and he actually got connected with a group known as the Fairfield East Association and so this was kind of a backdoor way into non ously becoming the minister of a church but becoming a preacher and so he's actually doing a lot of traveling and a lot of teaching in this period Prater was presented with the possibility of becoming a missionary to Native Americans by the presbytery of New York and specifically by a pastor by the name of Ebenezer Pemberton who was a commissioner of the SSP CK the Scottish Society for the propagation of Christian knowledge was founded in Scotland as you might expect in the first decade of the 18th century and the focus really initially was to evangelize the Scottish Highlanders what's intriguing is by the 1730's you have people in Scotland who are aware the missionary activity among Native Americans and to begin to see another mission field that is parallel to the Scottish Highlanders this was a pretty big move because he was probably the fifth or sixth man in the New England colonies to ever contemplate becoming a full-time minister the Indians I was a pretty new process at this point in time they originally had wanted him to go to Pennsylvania it was the winter and there was something a little bit of unrest on the Pennsylvania border lands and so they actually had him be a assistant minister in East Hampton on Long Island for six weeks and so he spent six weeks out there but he also had the chance to meet with another guy man Azariah Horton and Horton was also working for the Scottish Society amongst the montauk Indians of the eastern end of Long Island and Brandon made several visits to Horton and so clearly got a little bit of a hint as to what what missionary work was like in many ways the early 18th century represented what some historians have called a second wave of evangelization with regard to Native Americans so if in the 17th century you have John Elliott's in Massachusetts Thomas Mayhew and Martha's Vineyard Richard borne down on Cape Cod and there is a tremendous emphasis in the mid 17th century to evangelize these Native Americans King Philip's War temporarily brings that to a halt King Philip's Warren 1675 which really devastated Native communities even those who remain neutral or actually sided with the English were detrimental E affected by the outcome of King Philip's War which of course was that the English won the war you get throngs of English coming in population is greatly outweighed to the advantage of the Europeans you have native leadership trying to find ways for their communities to survive and still maintain traditional culture these are people who had very successful very ancient cultures and and religious and social systems so they're looking for survival strategies and one of those major survival strategies is Christianity there is this dialectic that the early 18th century kind of holds out that there's a renewed emphasis to evangelize but there's also a renewed interest on native parts as well within native communities it has nothing to do with religion at the beginning Christianity provides ministers who are white authority figures ministers are anti-alcohol and so it keeps the alcohol peddlers from bringing that and in causing destruction ministers also usually set up a school which native leadership very much wanted in fact we see in the petitions to the General Assembly native leadership asking for ministers and schools to come to their areas because with schools they teach English you'll be able to read English so that the next generation coming Apley better equipped to handle the structures and documents and mechanisms of empire of colonialism what's interesting I think to observe is the way in which this educational effort then actually does open up more opportunity in terms of missionary activity because the educational curriculum is so religiously infused but also that kind of exposure to Christianity actually makes participation in the first great awakening of a 1730's and 1740s a little more logical or natural some it's not quite as jarring for natives to take place in revivals the Great Awakening new lights whatever you want to call them they were much more evangelical native people like this they could understand this because native religions were very evangelical very individualistic people had visions people talked about blood blood was was up in fact Native people use metaphors all the time so when these itinerant ministers come into town they come into New London James Davenport Gilbert 10:00 and even George Whitefield natives come to hear them because it's a spectacle it's something different it's something that they want to be a part of they're interested in it it's a new form of Christianity that they haven't been exposed to before even before the first Great Awakening there is a small trickle in a lot of the churches in southeastern New England of servants of individual people native servants who are being brought to church and brought forward for baptism brought forward for church membership this changes fairly dramatically in the first Great Awakening where you find Native Americans themselves joining local white churches they are often forced to sit in the back of churches or up in the balconies and some put aside in separate spaces Brainard's first assignment was going to be amongst the Delaware Indians in Pennsylvania New Jersey the border area there but in 1743 he's informed that that possibility is no longer viable because there's sufficient violence going on on the frontier that he's reassigned northward to a community in the region of Albany New York just across the border from Massachusetts in an Indian village call Khanna meek with a group of meheecan Indians this was an actual kind of outpost from a larger group of Mohicans who'd moved to Stockbridge Massachusetts where they were being served by a missionary John Sargent and it will be sergeant who requests an aid an assistant for this group of Indians living about 20 miles from Stockbridge Sargent he'd been a tutor at Yale College very successful he's actually ordained as the minister Stockbridge with a responsibility to Native Americans in a ceremony that both the Stockbridge Indians who a Mohican and the colonial government jointly appointed to that position so there's a great deal of confidence inside and he seems to do very well and so Brandon arrived there in 1743 and spent about a year there ministering to the Native Americans in that region he's clearly shocked when he gets there this was a man had grown up in commercial towns and Yale and this is really isolated lady equal the first 1743 I wrote the quantum eke near 20 miles from Stockbridge with the Indians lives with whom I am concerned and they're lodged on a little heap of straw I was greatly exercised with inward trials and de-stresses all day and in the evening my heart was sunk and I seemed to have no God to go to Lord's Day April the 10th preached to the Indians both for noon and afternoon they behaved soberly in general two or three in particular appeared under some delicious concern with who my discoursed privately and one told me her heart had cried ever since she heard me preach first a number of days later he struggles with depression Wednesday April 13 my heart was overwhelmed within me I verily thought I was the meanest vilest most helpless guilty ignorant connected creature living and yet I knew what God had done for my soul at the same time though sometimes I was assaulted with damping doubts and fears whether it was possible for such a wretch as I to be in the state of grace he often wrote about being lonely in his journal he would often relate his serious depression in his journal as well and you couple that with his struggle with tuberculosis and it made many days among the American Indians difficult économique he would try to preach and feel so weak and have regular sweats and fevers and this was difficult life and he didn't know the language either and so he had an interpreter that he called John his interpreter up there who actually later become interpreter of Jonathan Edwards in this pretty good case to be made that this was an individual who was as Edwards would put it late I was melancholic by nature he was probably not a happy you know very bubbly person and I think being an isolation probably made that worse for him brainerd uses the words of melancholy and vapors frequently in his diary to describe what he is feeling David Breiner talks about vapours and talks about melancholy and the 1700's melancholy was a term that they used for depression and going back to understanding it a little bit more we have to go back to ancient Egyptian times in Mesopotamia where the belief was that all the things were made before major elements earth air fire and water and then Hippocrates around 400 BC used that kind of mentality to put together an understanding of the human body saying the human body is made up of four main substances they were called humors so humor ology your humor ISM came about and that was sort of the understanding of medicine that these four black bile yellow bile phlegm and blood needed to be in some kind of balance for our physical health and psychological health and so if there's excessive black bile that was called melancholy in males but it was called vapors in females with the idea that actual vapors were coming inside the body from that excessive black bile from their uterus up and sort of clouding their psychological abilities and the workings of the mind I think is brainerd initially talked about his struggles his melancholy being that male version which is more sort of sedentary low-key remorseful pessimistic doom and gloom as his physical problems continue to escalate there became a more physical expression of his maladies as well as a maybe a lesser tolerance for his struggle so he might have become more flamboyant with his emotional expressions so he started to refer to himself as having the vapors which was more that female version of depression I think was because of the physical maladies he had in just the toll it was taking on him give him a more flamboyant expression of his physical struggle and his emotional struggle what was the cause of this struggle I mean we still are having trouble sort of conceptualizing that even today but taking a look back you know I think part of it was as you read his diary he was just a very sensitive deep thinker and I think there's people that are born genetically predisposed that their personality is a much more sensitive personality so the ills of the world both the ills that they experience as well as the people around them experience really take a toll on them and trying to find out well what's fair what's worthy why do these things happen to people why is my friend sad why did my mother died when I was 14 and my father when I was 9 so some of the experiences that he had growing up certainly had a market influence on him now at that time in the seventeen they didn't look at psychological issues as sort of the composite of all the experiences and how we interpret those experiences as we do now we looked at it as well I did something and now I'm getting a consequence that's why I have this adversity or that's why I had this depression or anger or you know mal adoption to that particular situation he lives with a Dutch family as he describes them they don't speak English he doesn't speak Dutch but he also attempted to make a success after a number of months he actually built what he called a hot near the Native American settlement he moved out of the Dutch family's home and built his small Hut for himself much closer the Native Americans living fairly close to this settlement while he's building the hut he notes but he's actually living in one of their there where there was a tent on whether it was one of their huts we're not sure but he's actually living with an Indian family for a couple of weeks which is a pretty remarkable thing for an 18th century Connecticut man to be doing not the norm at all it was obviously a lot of give-and-take for him he is very much affected by the limited economic circumstances of the Indians there and over time he begins to become convinced that he himself should give up more and more of his own material possessions so one of the interesting features I think we need to recognize in Brainard's own experience in économique as well as in years to come will be the ways in which his missionary experience and those who were working with him in essence are shaping him he's not only they're trying to change them in certain ways but he himself is being changed by the Indians with whom he is in contact the village is getting fairly small there are rumors of a new war with the French had actually broken out in parts of Europe and so braining says look I think you guys should really count down a Stockbridge work with John Sarge and he's got a much bigger mission there and that's basically what they do and so he ends his ministry in Kenya meek and the society is ready from the move to Pennsylvania at this point in time in between the time that bran had left and when he went to Pennsylvania there was an attempt to reconcile with Thomas clapper Yale and it would mentions us briefly we know that Aaron Burr was part of it Jonathan Dickinson had been they've all been working on Brandon's behalf and the traditional story is that it really the problem couldn't be solved and yet that's actually contradictory within the Diaries themselves because branded clearly wanted to get a degree this was the big thing he needed that degree to make his future stronger and on the meeting with clap that was actually offered to him the clap said yes you can come back to Yale yes you can have your degree but you have to come back for a year I think he didn't want to go back to Yale I think he wanted the degree based on the work had done he had done a lot of work since he left he just didn't want to be a student again by this point he was you know 24 25 my students would have been 17 or 18 yeah I'll probably didn't have happy memories for him I don't think he just didn't want to go back there so the reconciliation you could say was probably effective but it didn't have any consequences for him in the end so he'd never actually graduated from Yale so he heads to a place called the forks of the Delaware a location in eastern Pennsylvania where Delaware Indians remained when he gets there in 1744 he's pretty immediately disappointed to find that there are very few remaining Indians actually resident there they are the last remnants of the Delaware and Muncie Indians who had lived there but in the intervening years an intervening year many of them had moved on further west in the Susquehanna Valley the forks of the Delaware of course is where the Lehigh River meets the Delaware River this is all major lenin Lynott a sacred homeland slanty land ave means the people with real people that's the real name that is their name for themselves the English called them Delaware so you go to the folks the Delaware scattered settlements there's no really concentrated group of native Americans and so his ministry would be traveling around the different villages shortly after he arrived there he was now fairly well connected with one of the Presbyterian factions in New Jersey New York people at Taunton Dickenson Ebenezer Pemberton again who had this long association with basically what these this group did in New Jersey you know who is simply ordained him as a minister or even without the degree and they had the authority to do this because there is no political involvement with the church in those colonies so it was the way out to the churches to run their own affairs he builds a hot close to one of the Native American settlements but because of the scattered nature of the Indian settlements he does have to ride a lot to visit them on a regular basis the one significant thing that happened during his time of the folks of Delaware was the conversion of his interpret of Moses Tatem II Tatem II had long had contact with colonial people I even ago she netted land sales with the governor he actually had land taken from him under false auspices at one point he also had been exposed to Christianity we're not exactly sure how he'd had interactions with the Moravians but it's not entirely clear that this happened pride a brain at or after Brandon but the important thing was he had to some extent of spiritual vocabulary and so since he was interpreting he didn't just have to interpret word-for-word he could do concepts and of course this is something that if you're not used to dealing in different languages escapes you tatah me ends up a time when Brandon is away from the folks of Delaware on a visit back to New York Tatem Eve lighted tells him he'd gone through this period of spiritual anguish sort of a visual pilgrimage and finally gone through a conversion experience and brain-dead reticent Lee at first but gradually becomes convinced that in fact yes Tatem II has gone through a significant conversion experience and this all happens during the braided spins of the forests of Delaware now Brainerd became quite interested in wanting to extend his ministry to larger numbers of Indians living further into the interior of Pennsylvania and so he made the decision to take more than one trip into the Susquehanna River Valley where he visited towns Indian towns by the names of Shamokin and Juniata and others where he encountered not only much larger groups of Indians but Indians who were very much living in places that were much more under the control of Indians rather than under the control of English colonists he is going to encounter lots of Indian ceremonies festivals dances that are going to be radically different from anything he's seen before and so later in October of 1744 he takes his first trip west to the Susquehanna River region on this trip he took a couple of people with him as interpreter at that time a guy named Moses Tatem II with him and one other minister and on this trip his his horse fell and broke its leg and he had to kill his horse put it out of misery and had to continue the rest of the way on foot very difficult journey there were no roads or anything he would be traveling over these small Indian trails that were basically one file trails through heavily wooded heavily mountainous areas very few ventured that far that was the western frontier in the Susquehanna area he would be coming into winter known as Iroquois in villages and the Iroquois of course had these very big long houses big barns I mean some of them were 300 400 500 feet long and 20 feet high because Iroquois were extremely matrilineal and matrilocal and each of these sometimes you find as many as five seven ten families living in them in little compartments each related sisters mothers aunts and of course they also unlike the Algonquin speakers the Iroquois had huge palisade villages and large populations in there they were less known to the to the English and also what was known of them was that they were very fierce very warlike and many of them were anti-christian that would have been much deeper waters to wade into and he probably had some concern going there because he probably didn't know how they would greet him Brina was probably one of the first telling when the first presbyterian style missionaries to head out into the susquehanna the Moravians had been there for a couple of years they had just established their settlement of Bethlehem which was not that far away from the forks of Delaware and there was at least one missionary couple in the villages Shamokin on the Susquehanna Valley which was a pretty important settlement for both Native Americans and colonial authorities it was a place where you'd negotiate treaties most of the other Europeans would have been traders there wouldn't have been a lot of other presents out there and so it was a fairly he would have been a fairly unique figure 1740 for Friday October the 5th we arrived at Susquehanna River found there 12 Indian houses after I had saluted the king in a friendly manner I told to my business and that my desire was to teach them Christianity after some consultation the Indians gathered and I preached to them he had mixed results as far as being welcomed some seemed interested in hearing from him some of the the leaders of these tribes seemed to even invite him into their homes and and to hear what he had to say others were fairly resistant after returning to the forks of the Delaware he continues to struggle with depression 1740 for Friday December the 14th near noon went to the Indians but knew not what to say to them and was ashamed to look him in the face I felt I had no power to address their consciences and therefore had no boldness to say anything or as much of the day and the great degree of despair I whatever doing our being any good in the land of the living his time at the forks had engaged him in ups and downs he'd gone through a real struggle by early 1745 in his own spiritual questioning of whether this was where God had wanted him to remain and to be one of the real turning points and Brainard's life and ministry is when he makes the decision to seek out other ministry opportunities with a group of Indians in southern New Jersey at a town called Cross fixing just east of Trenton he finds this Indian village it was sort of surrounded by colonial settlement but Khloe a Delaware village and he talks about preaching and said well there was only a few women who heard me preach he his diary doesn't seem to suggest he's particularly excited but he makes the comment in his diary that they went off and told other people that was preaching now what's really important about this is that it was in the Delaware culture the religious leaders on man but the women are considered to be the keepers of religious knowledge and religious value and so when these women here and preach and go off to the rest of their people and say you need to come and hear this religious person preach that's a very important cultural statement just the fact that the women accept an arm even the men accepted them you know at the same rate as the women but the women because the tribes are matrilineal the social-networking would travel through these métro lineages and women would get it out to their kin and kith that they liked what this guy was saying and come and listen and if they liked it then they would stay because there were they're searching for for something positive because so much bad things are happening to Native peoples of this time brain it never understands this and then within a week or so of him preaching it's they're looking for food and he's worried that they're all gonna go off hunting he's gonna lose his audience and they kill a number of deer close by which means they can feed themselves for several weeks and there's no need to go hunting and so he keeps his audience longer than he would have expected of course Brainerd sees this as the hand of God probably brandon is preaching in the way he'd preached during the revival meetings which would have been very animated walking about this also fit with Delaware culture that spiritual values would be translated or presented in a very animated fashion again he didn't know that he was doing this I don't think but he is he's making some cultural connections completely unaware of what he's doing revival begins to break out and what he describes is basically what you would seen happening in New Haven in Northampton in other places during the high of their writings people falling down people bursting into tears over their sins people going into long prayer times talking about visions from God tatah me is you know able to translate these concepts of Delaware's so he's not just doing a word-for-word translation but inner describes the revival in his diary 1745 August 8th in the afternoon I preached to the Indians there was much visible concern among them while I was discoursing publicly but afterwards when I spoke to one and another more particularly whom I perceived under much concerned the power of God seems to descend upon the assembly like a rushing mighty wind and with an astonishing energy bore down all before it I stood amazed at the influence that seized the audience almost universally it had impact on their marriages had impact on their debt a lot of the American Indians were in debt through drinking and all of that changed they would not take revenge on past offenses these were all kinds of effects that that the gospel had among those that were converted it was profound change as the revival continues more Indians come in when these new Indians turn up they build huts or put out tense not not in the middle of the village but the converted Delawares and now going to them and preaching so all of these new onions are hearing the gospel not from Brainerd but from other Indians and he writes this frequently that you know he would go to bed and they would continue to have prayer meetings or they would be singing songs in their huts or they would go out and visit the new arrivals and preach the gospel and so III think what's really significant about this is this is a sort of self-replicating revival this is not just Brainerd he is now in a sense creating what Christians would see his disciples people that are continuing his work and he's effectively now functioning as a pasta to a Native American settlement it becomes there's obviously knowledge of it as spreading out because he often writes about quote-unquote the white people that walk all around causing trouble and so you get the impression that this Native American revival is sort of a tourist attraction that local white certainly I have to see what the heck is going on and there's a number of occasions where he preaches to both whites and Indians at the same time which again is pretty remarkable for this period of time but there's no doubt that Brainerd developed tremendous affection for the members of his congregation especially those in cross weak sing where he recorded many times very personal and intimate conversations and encounters with them in their homes and a key element of his ministry was to go into homes and talk one-on-one with these congregants I think there's there's no getting around the fact that Brainerd and his own emotional well-being was very much connected to these native peoples word of his success began to spread his public diary is going to be a means through which he can spread the word the very way in which he constructs that account is going to be important it's going to describe the revival very much as a Jonathan Edwards had described the revival in Northampton and so it's less an account of a missionary successfully evangelizing Indians and more an account of a congregation in this case a congregation of native peoples having a true revival what is happening for Brainerd in New Jersey in many ways is part of a wider movement one of them was among the Narragansetts in 1742 a large number over a hundred Narragansetts also begin to affiliate Christianity and they join a church they formed with a church a native church and eventually have a need of minister there as well on Long Island the mung sockets and Shinnecock also begin to form a local native indigenous church in parts of Connecticut the Mohegans the Niantic sand the Pequots also form a small native run and native lead churches and so there's a sense of which the 1740s is the beginning not exclusively or not definitively but in some of these regions it is the beginning of what people referred to as an indigenous Christianity whereby natives themselves are appropriating Christian ideas and idioms and practices and then making them their own in part by having their own church structures and by having their own native ministers and so forth but it decides that since God is working it would be a good time to go back out of the susquehanna again but he does something that I think again is really significant because he takes a number of the Delaware converts with him but there's also clearly changes going on in his life because at one point in the journey he separates from the Delaware's don't really know why that doesn't anything terrible but he stays with some settlers when the settlers Chloe weren't very religious he spends a couple of nights with him on the road and he meets up again with his what is Delaware converts and he writes that it's so good to be back amongst my people again and so what's happened by this point in time is that he feels increasingly uncomfortable around non religious white people and more comfortable around religious Indians now there's not a suggesting a brain it never gets away from the superiority of your in culture or we probably see today his racism but he's clearly making him bond with these people that he's very comfortable with them in ways he's not comfortable with not particularly really just white people so anyway he gets out to the susquehanna douche market again it's not particularly successful what's interesting is he has some of his Delaware converts speak to the people there there in a sense if we look at it in 20th century terms he's the preacher and the converts is showing their testimony so they're telling the story of their conversions in the spring of 1746 he went on this exploratory mission to find a new home for the Christians of cross week son and he came upon a place called cranberry and it was just north not too far 20 miles or so north of cross week son so in the late spring early summer of 1746 they moved up there about 130 people moved up to cranberry Brandon becomes very I think very excited about what's going on across week saying and then a cranberry where they relocate and so what he can't in leap oints people to in these public diaries is the same signs that you would see as a sign of conversion in a European Church I'm seeing in a Native American church you've already deliberately writes this narrative and I think this is the other thing that's very interesting a number of historians have pointed out that the revival narratives that are emerge in the 1740s and 1750s have a general type and Brainard's description the revival of the Native Americans effectively fits into that structure to me this is his way of saying this revival is every bit as legitimate as revival at Northampton brain had made one final trip to the Susquehanna and it is noteworthy less for the success he might have had in terms of Indian responsiveness and and more because of what it reveals about his worsening physical condition in some sense maybe it wasn't the most prudent thing to do at a time when he would have been coughing up blood and suffering from a disease for which there was very little treatment in the 18th century well we understand about consumption looking back that looks to be tuberculosis as we call it today so tuberculosis is an infection carried by a very strong bacteria that's very resistant it takes very powerful antibiotics to kill it over a longer period of time than normal infections it's still a very deadly disease in our world today tuberculosis is an illness that primarily attacks the lungs first and mainly but then spreads out to all of our organs including our brain so it can lead to significant brain effects on mood on judgment on psychosis and hallucinations and those kind of things as well as the primary effects on the lungs probably the closest thing that people have a lot of contact with is maybe lung cancer where cancer starts to eat it the lung can metastasize to many different areas of the body and debilitate the rest of the body but as it affects the lungs first fever chills night sweats interference with sleep and then as it continues to affect the lungs and wears away the lining of the lungs then you start to vomit or cough up blood and start to feel like you're choking because you don't have that much lung power to work and so those are the symptoms that Brainerd initially complained up of spitting up blood that's why he was given time off from Yale and as you talked about the significant symptoms towards the end of his life it was really that process of feeling like he's vomiting blood all the time in combination with his choking there was the significant symptoms that he had finally gets home the son backwards and forwards we don't have all the details with society representatives and they decide that they're going to have his brother John come and then pick up the work at a cranberry John has been ordained David now wants to go back to New England to visit people he writes in his journal but probably also say goodbye realizing that he may not have much time left to live there's a farewell service he cries Native Americans cry he begins the journey back to New England but he's so ill that he can't can continue and so his his acquaintance and friend Jonathan Dickinson takes him into his home in November 17:46 in Elizabethtown so during the the winter the end of 1746 and early 7th 47 he's in the home of Jonathan Dickinson and number of people come and visit him by this point he's he has a certain amount of reputation reynad actually published his journal in two pots one in early 1746 covering the period through the second half of 1745 and then the second part probably around July of 1746 had been published by a well-known publisher in Philadelphia named William Bradford and it seems to have been fairly widely circulated so there was certainly his work was becoming known now how widespread and how many people we can't really say but clearly people knew about it and the other way that we know that he was becoming well-known was there were people in New Jersey one of the Indian land and they began to gin up stories that brain was creating an Indian base to launch attacks on settlers because there were thousands of Indians coming there which they weren't so we sort of know by his enemies too that the reputation was spreading and it was at this very time that Jonathan Dickinson begins he's receives a charter to begin a new college the college of new jersey and so it starts in 1746 that that fall while David Brainerd is in his home and trying to recuperate from his tuberculosis get better but it's also during this time that classes start to meet in that early spring at at springtime of 1747 in Jonathan Dickinson's home while Brainerd is there and that is the first days the first class of what is now called Princeton University while Brainerd was traveling back to New England and his destination was probably Boston he came to Northampton Massachusetts which would have been pretty close to the road on the way back to Boston or into Boston Edwards by this point in time had a very was very well-known at a very good reputation had already published some of his most important works we know that Brandon had read at least one of them Edwards and Brainard had some acquaintances I don't think that would particularly close friends but Edwards had preached to Yale when brain was there he had been at the appeal to clap and the Edwards family also had a reputation for taking in travelers in fact when Brainard a ride to Northampton a friend of his ax men and Eleazar Wheelock who would later become quite famous in the colonies was actually there being cared for by the Edwards family he was also sick and so much of the care for Brainard as he was trying to recuperate though the prospects of any full recovery were dim at this point was given over to Jonathan's daughter Jerusha the relationship that develops between David and Jerusha has been one of much interest through the centuries in the 19th century evangelicals developed the notion that these two had become romantically involved there really is no evidence for that though it makes for a good story at most it would appear as though Jerusha and David became friends and she was in fact his caretaker it was a very difficult season over the course of his his writing journaling life I think there was something like 22 entries of Brainerd longing to die and then October 1740 74 he dies his funeral service that Edwards presides at and he's actually then buried Northampton Cemetery Jerusha sadly dies not long afterwards and there's a suspicion that she may have contracted tuberculosis from nursing brain and Edwards does have her buried next to Braden in the cemetery which is also sparked a great deal of speculation but it was the family plot when he died he was 29 years old young and for such a young man to have lived so much through it all I think what impressed Edwards was his devotion to God he had a strong communion and fellowship with God that I think when Edwards read his journal and his diary he said this would be very beneficial to to the public by the time that brain had died in Edwards house in 1747 Edwards was beginning a dispute with some members of his church over the issues of membership going back in the 1600s to be a member of a Puritan Church you had to provide a conversion narrative that was agreed on by the minister until you would had become a member you couldn't take communion this had changed in the intervening years where people had to be living a good life you know and they could take communion Edwards wanted to take his church back to the old version he wanted to impose membership rules to bar people from communion he wanted people to not just be living a decent life but it truly converted life and I believe that in brain and he's so the exemplar of this the brain was an example of the life that was truly converted someone who wasn't just a good person but was living for God and so I think he saw him brain and not just oh this is a good story but this is the story of someone who's truly converted this is what true conversion looks like maybe you're not working with Indians but your life was radically changed you're not just running your business and raising your family and coming to church on Sunday and I think that this was the primary motivation for why I would wanted to publish the life and also why he added said he's showing that up he took out a lot of the melancholy stuff he removed some of the references to the more radical so the Yale days because he didn't want people being too radical it became very widely read it actually this more copies of the life of Brandon were published and all the theological works that edwards published and I think what happened at Northampton was people with this is the kind of life we have to live to be a member no thank you very much and probably accelerated the process that got him five buyers church in 1751 over this dispute ivory won the membership was gonna be those British evangelicals were also impacted by the fact that John Wesley put out an edition of the life of David Brainerd as well in the 1760s and so in some respect Brainard's Fame was connected to the fact that arguably the two most important and influential evangelicals of the 18th century on the two sides of the Atlantic Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley had both found in Brainard's life story a compelling account of Christian service and missionary dedication that they wanted to make known ed Woodson presented and branded as how to live a good Christian life the new versions present how to be a missionary and so there are new rewrites of Brandon's life condensations of it abridged versions which emphasize missions Brandon it has a missionary and one he has to teach people about how to be a missionary and so that really emerges in the around the 1820s 1830s 1840s in that period each generation has found within Brainerd perhaps a slightly different emphasis from model preacher to model missionary to a young student radical as interpreted by 1967 Jellicle 's now I think some of these characterizations of Brainerd probably stretch matters a bit but they nevertheless testify to his ongoing significance and importance for the evangelical community Brainerd found true satisfaction with God it was there that he wanted to be satisfied not in the even though he was oftentimes depressed which showed his humanity even though he battled the sickness showed how vulnerable he was he had a unshakable relationship was the God who saved him [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: Christian Videos, Christian Films, Christian Movies, Religious Movies, Films, Movies, Entertainment, Feature Films, David Brainerd, Missionary, Missonaries, American Indians, Johnathan Edwards, 18th Century, Dr. Lucianne Lavin, Linford D. Fisher, John A. Grigg, Dr. Brian H. Cosby, Richard W. Pointer, David Brainerd: Missionary to the American Indians (2012) | Full Movie, Missionary to the American Indians

Id: -SP58fpTyD0

Length: 58min 57sec (3537 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020