Amy Carmichael

Amy Wilson Carmichael (16 December 1867 – 18 January 1951) was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for 55 years without furlough and wrote many books about the missionary work there.

Amy Wilson Carmichael was born in the small village of Millisle, County Down, Ireland in 1867; her parents were David Carmichael, a miller and his wife Catherine. Her parents were devout Presbyterians and she was the oldest of seven siblings. One possibly apocryphal story claims that as a child, Amy wished that she had blue eyes rather than brown, and often prayed that Jesus would change her eye color and was disappointed when it never happened. She loved to pinch her brother's cheeks to make the prettiest color blue in his eyes. But she always repented afterwards for hurting her brother. As an adult, however, she realized that her brown eye color probably helped her gain acceptance in India.

Amy's father moved the family to Belfast when she was 16, but he died two years later. In Belfast, Carmichael founded the Welcome Evangelical Church. In the mid-1880s, Carmichael started a Sunday-morning class for the ‘Shawlies’ (mill girls who wore shawls instead of hats) in the church hall of Rosemary Street Presbyterian. This mission grew and grew until they needed a hall to seat 500 people. At this time Amy saw an advertisement in The Christian, for an iron hall that could be erected for £500 and would seat 500 people. Two donations, £500 from Miss Kate Mitchell and one plot of land from a mill owner, led to the erection of the first "Welcome Hall" on the corner of Cambrai Street and Heather Street in 1887.

Amy continued at the Welcome until she received a call to work among the mill girls of Manchester in 1889, from which she moved on to missionary work, although in many ways she seemed an unlikely candidate for missionary work, suffering as she did from neuralgia, a disease of the nerves that made her whole body weak and achy and often put her in bed for weeks on end. But at the Keswick Convention of 1887, she heard Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission speak about missionary life; soon afterwards, she became convinced of her calling to missionary work. She applied to the China Inland Mission and lived in London at the training house for women, where she met author and missionary to China, Mary Geraldine Guinness, who encouraged her to pursue missionary work. She was ready to sail for Asia at one point, when it was determined that her health made her unfit for the work. She postponed her missionary career with the CIM and decided later to join the Church Missionary Society.

Initially Carmichael travelled to Japan for fifteen months, but fell ill and returned home. After a brief period of service in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), she went to Bangalore, India for her health and found her lifelong vocation. She was commissioned by the Church of England Zenana Mission. Carmichael's most notable work was with girls and young women, some of whom were saved from customs that amounted to forced prostitution. Hindu temple children were primarily young girls dedicated to the gods, then usually forced into prostitution to earn money for the priests (i.e., Devadasi).

Carmichael founded the Dohnavur Fellowship in 1901 to continue her work, as she later wrote in The Gold Cord (1932). A popular early work was Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India (1903). Dohnavur is situated in Tamil Nadu, thirty miles from India's southern tip. The name derives from Count Dohna, who initially funded German missionaries at the site in the early 19th century, on which Rev. Thomas Walker then established a school. Carmichael's fellowship transformed Dohnavur into a sanctuary for over one thousand children who would otherwise have faced a bleak future. Carmichael often said that her Ministry of rescuing temple children started with a girl named Preena. Having become a temple servant against her wishes, Preena managed to escape. Amy Carmichael provided her shelter and withstood the threats of those who insisted that the girl be returned either to the temple directly to continue her sexual assignments, or to her family for more indirect return to the temple. The number of such incidents soon grew, thus beginning Amy Carmichael's new Ministry. When the children were asked what drew them to Amy, they most often replied "It was love. Amma (Amy) loved us."

Respecting Indian culture, members of the organization wore Indian dress and gave the rescued children Indian names. Carmichael herself dressed in Indian clothes, dyed her skin with dark coffee, and often traveled long distances on India's hot, dusty roads to save just one child from suffering.

While serving in India, Amy received a letter from a young lady who was considering life as a missionary. She asked Amy, "What is missionary life like?" Amy wrote back saying simply, "Missionary life is simply a chance to die." Nonetheless, in 1912 Queen Mary recognized the missionary's work, and helped fund a hospital at Dohnavur. By 1913, the Dohnavur Fellowship was serving 130 girls. In 1918, Dohnavur added a home for young boys, many born to the former temple prostitutes. Meanwhile, in 1916 Carmichael formed a Protestant religious order called Sisters of the Common Life.

In 1931, a fall severely injured Carmichael, and she remained bedridden for much of her final two decades. However, it did not stop her from continuing her inspirational writing, for she published 16 additional books (including His Thoughts Said . . . His Father Said (1951), If (1953), Edges of His Ways (1955) and God's Missionary (1957)), as well as revised others she had previously published. Biographers differ on the number of her published works, which may have reached 35 or as many as six dozen, although only a few remain in print today.

Carmichael died in India in 1951 at the age of 83. She asked that no stone be put over her grave at Dohnavur. Instead, the children she had cared for put a bird bath over it with the single inscription "Amma", which means mother in the Tamil language.

Her example as a missionary inspired others (including Jim Elliot and his wife Elisabeth Elliot) to pursue a similar vocation. Many webpages include quotes from Carmichael's works, such as

India outlawed temple prostitution in 1948. However, the Dohnavur Fellowship continues, now supporting approximately 500 people on 400 acres with 16 nurseries and hospital. Rescued women can leave, or join the community, or return for important occasions, including the Christmas season. The foundation is now run by Indians under the jurisdiction of the C.S.I Tirunelveli Diocese, founded in 1896. Changed policies acknowledging Indian law require that all children born in or brought to Dohnavur are sent out for education in the 6th grade. Furthermore, since 1982, baby boys are adopted out rather than remain in the community.

(Partial List)

• From Sunrise Land: Letters from Japan, Marshall 1895
• Things as they are; mission work in southern India, London: Morgan and Scott (1905)
• Lotus Buds, London: Morgan and Scott (1912)
• Ragland, pioneer, Madras: S.P.C.K. Depository (1922) (biography of Thomas Gajetan Ragland)
• Walker of Tinnevelly, London: Morgan & Scott (1916) (biography of Thomas Walker)
• Candles in the Dark, Christian Literature Crusade (June 1982)
• Rose from Brier, Christian Literature Crusade (June 1972)
• Mimosa: A True Story, CLC Publications (September 2005)
• If, Christian Literature Crusade (June 1999)
• Gold Cord, Christian Literature Crusade (June 1957)
• Edges of His Ways, Fort Washington: Christian Literature Crusade (1955)
• Mountain Breezes: The Collected Poems of Amy Carmichael, Christian Literature Crusade (August 1999)
• Whispers of His Power, CLC Publications (June 1993)
• Thou Givest They Gather, CLC Publications (June 1970)
• Ploughed Under : The Story of a Little Lover, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) (1934)
• Kohila: The Shaping of an Indian Nurse, CLC Publications (July 2002)

• Elliot, Elisabeth, A Chance to Die: the Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael. Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1987. ISBN 978-0800730895
• Wellman, Sam, Amy Carmichael: A Life Abandoned to God. Barbour Publishing, 1998
• Bingham, Derick, The Wild-Bird Child: A Life of Amy Carmichael. Ambassador-Emerald International (2004) ISBN 1-84030-144-9, ISBN 978-1-84030-144-1
• Benge, Janet and Geoff Amy Carmichael: Rescuer of Precious Gems. YWAM Publishing 1998