Heritage Column for June 9, 2005
By Fred Anderson
This week should find this columnist in Rome, making friends among the Italian Baptists. As this tourist ponders the glories of classical Roma, he is mindful that Virginia Baptists from the 19th century walked these same streets.
In 1872-133 years ago-Mary Catherine “Kate” and Jeremiah Bell Jeter of Richmond made a European trip which touched on almost every place on my summer itinerary-England, Scotland, Wales and, yes, Italy. In 1872, Jeter was at the height of his ministerial career as editor of the Religious Herald, which he and Kate (and Alfred Dickinson) had purchased after “the War.” Kate Jeter was an outstanding figure in her own right. Two years later, in 1874, she led in the formation of Woman's Missionary Union of Virginia.
In 1872 the Southern Baptist Convention's Foreign Mission Board appointed Jeter as a special commissioner to Rome to supervise its mission there. A contemporary suggested that “this summons fell upon him as a great surprise and filled him with embarrassment,” and added, “He was then an old man, unable to speak the Italian language and never set his foot on European soil.”
“He expressed grave misgivings as to his suitableness to the work,” the contemporary continuned. “But he did not know how to deny the wishes of his brethren. He modestly added that while he could not do anything well, he had never utterly failed in anything which he undertook, except poetry-making.”
Kate and Jerry Bell Jeter were on one of the greatest adventures of their lives. Great Britain was the first stop in an attempt to enlist English Baptists in the Italian work.
“In London he met startling rumors of disorders in the Italian mission. He was told that the Baptist cause in Rome had become a reproach to Protestantism.
“Upon his arrival, his worst fears were fully justified. He found disastrous strife.” The conflict was between an SBC missionary and a recent convert who had become a pastor.
Jeter assessed the situation and realized that both men needed to go. A contemporary described the struggle which ensued: “[The Italian pastor] was a man of immense cunning and malignity. When he ascertained that Dr. Jeter had recommended his dismissal, he was furious and undertook to destroy him. He preferred against him the charge of ecclesiastical tyranny and instituted proceedings against him in the court.
“Dr. Jeter became satisfied that plans were on foot for his arrest. He quietly withdrew from Rome and went to Geneva. This was evidentially the dictate of discretion. He was not afraid to do his duty, and a Roman prison had no terrors for him if it stood on the path of his duty. But he was a cool-headed old gentleman and had not a trace of that fool-hardy courage which courts persecution for the sake of notoriety.”
Other than avoiding arrest, Jeter's primary challenge in Rome was to arrange for the building of a Baptist chapel. Some $22,000 had been raised for the purpose, most of it coming from the impoverished post-war American South. Virginia Baptists had pledged some $5,000. Jeter was kept busy scouting possible locations and examined about 50 houses. He soon discovered that the money in hand was sufficient only for a building lot. The construction of a chapel would have to wait. At the very least, Jeter had saved the Italian mission from an early death.
Less than a year after his departure, Jeter returned home in June 1873 “painfully perplexed” over the Rome church. He held fast to hopes for the growth of the Italian mission. At the time of his visit there were only seven Baptist churches in the country with a combined total of 277 members. Today the Italian Baptist Union includes about 114 churches with a total of some 5,000 members and over 40 full-time pastors.
Not much survives from the Jeters' Italian trip. In my office at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society there is a portrait of Jeter which was painted in Italy. In the collection there is a little cloth handbag which Kate Jeter purchased in Italy. In their personal photograph album there is a curious photo for a Baptist minister's album-a photo of the Pope! Oh, and there are those Italian Baptist churches which survived and have multiplied. During the next three weeks this columnist will be visiting several of them.
Virginia Baptists were involved with the Italians at the beginnings of a Baptist witness in their country and today Virginia Baptists are once again closely linked through a missions partnership. Already church and associational groups from Virginia have visited and others will follow. They are walking in the footsteps of Kate and Jeremiah Bell Jeter.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be reached at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.