Jonas King

Jonas King ( Greek Ιωνάς Κινγκ ; born July 29, 1792 in Hawley , Massachusetts ; † May 22, 1869 in Athens , Greece ) was a missionary of the Congregational Church , who was mainly active in Greece.

Life

King received his education at Williams College , where he graduated in 1816, and at Andover Theological Seminary (graduated in 1819). On December 17, 1819, he was ordained in Charleston, South Carolina, to serve in the congregational ward. He served six months missionary work in South Carolina before returning to Andover to continue studying as a graduate. When Amherst College was founded in 1821 , he was appointed Professor of Oriental Languages ​​and Literatures. He held this post until 1825, although he worked from 1823-1825 for the Palestinian Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Syria . He distributed Bibles and sermons. In preparation for his missionary work, he had studied Arabic with De Sacy in Paris .

After a short stay in America in 1827/28 he was invited to accompany a ship that carried relief supplies for Greece. There he was initially on Poros. In 1829 he married the Greek Aspasia Mengkou (Ασπασία Μέγκου). He contacted the American Office in December and moved to Athens in 1831, where he spent the rest of his life as a missionary. As early as 1832, at the encouragement of Ioannis Kapodistrias, he had founded five schools, including the first girls' school in Tinos and the first grammar school in Athens. He maintained good relations with the Ministry of Education (Minister Rizos Neroulos - Ρίζος Νερουλός), to whom he supplied the school books in the first years after the liberation of Greece. In 1835 he began teaching a theology class. In 1832 he received a PhD from Princeton . In 1839 the construction of a school house was completed. He also maintained friendly relations with the Archimandrite Neofytos Vamvas (Νεόφυτος Βάμβας) and Theoklitos Farmakidis .

King's teaching soon attracted the attention of the Greek Orthodox hierarchs and in 1845 he was excommunicated by the Athens Synod. In 1846 and 1847 he was prosecuted. When a commotion broke out, he fled to Italy. However, when well-meaning priests gained the upper hand in 1848, he returned to Athens. In 1851 King was appointed US Consular Agent in Athens. On March 23, 1851, some Greeks who had come to the services in his house to disturb were driven away by showing the US flag. As a result, new state reprisals began. In March 1852, he was sentenced to fifteen days in prison and exiled. He had been charged with "vilifying the god of the universe and the Greek religion" despite having done nothing but preaching Calvinist teachings and although Greece nominally guaranteed religious freedom.

While in prison, King appealed to the Athens Supreme Court , which refused to overturn the lower court's decision. King then formally protested the conviction on behalf of the US government. He has been temporarily released. The following summer, George P. Marsh , the then US Ambassador to Turkey , was tasked with conducting a special investigation and also investigating the case of a land purchase which King was denied use for 20 years without compensation. The diplomatic correspondence, which comprises 200 pages of files, led to a decree by the King of Greece in 1854, which exempted King from his obligations and, overall, rendered great services to religious freedom in Greece. King then stayed in Athens until his death. A Greek Protestant church was built in Athens in 1874.

King was buried in the First Athens Cemetery .

Conflict with the Orthodox Church

In 1835, during a Sunday service, the Metropolitan of Athens Neophytos V (Νικόλαος Μεταξάς) condemned Jonas King in the strongest terms and threatened to excommunicate anyone who would send their children to King's school. This began a constant persecution of King by "various members of the newly established Church of Greece who were extremely conservative."

In 1844, King was accused in various Athens newspapers of worshiping neither icons nor the Virgin Mary. He answered these pamphlets with quotations from the Church Fathers Epiphany , Chrysostom , Basilius the Great , Irenaeus , Kliment and others, who, according to King, would have rejected the idolatry of the icons and the Blessed Mother as well. Mikhail Kalopothakis appeared in court as an exonerating witness for him. In the following year King presented his position in the booklet Apology by Jonas King (Απολογία Ιωνά Κιγκ), whereby he enraged the conservative Orthodox clergy even more. Thereupon he and his book were excommunicated by the Holy Synod and subsequently by the Ecumenical Patriarch.

King tried to go to court in Syros , but the climate was so hostile that he was advised against appearing in court. While returning, while still on board the ship, he was attacked by fanatical religious who threatened to kill him. He was just arriving home when he learned of a plot of 50 men who wanted to murder him. In September 100 copies of his apology were confiscated and burned. However, the denigrations of King were rejected by intellectuals and the few approved foreign newspapers reported positively on him.

In 1847 Konstantin Simonidis published in the magazine Aion (Αιών, "Age") a series of articles with fictitious content under the title Orgies von King (Όργια του Κιγκ). The harshness of these articles created such a hostile climate that the government was forced to put guards in front of King's house and advised him to leave Greece for a year. At the same time, a judicial investigation revealed that everything was an invention by Simonidis, who was subsequently arrested and convicted of forgery. In 1848 King left Greece with his family of nine. However, in 1851 he was appointed US ambassador to Greece and held that position for seven years. After a short time the anger towards him boiled up again and he was accused of "mocking the true God and the one church". He was often dragged to court and sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment and deportation, which even the Areopagus confirmed. Twelve distinguished attorneys from Athens denounced the scandal with all their might and proved that the decision of the Areopagus was incorrect.

There was resistance to the process from the US. A special committee of the Senate examined the files of the process on the basis of the Greek criminal law and found that the judgment was unconstitutional. At the suggestion of the new Justice Minister Spyros Pillikas King, the Greek government issued a royal decree annulling the conviction. Pillikas was one of the lawyers who condemned King's conviction.

As a result, King had the pleasure of being invited and warmly welcomed by the President of the Synod, who had spoken vehemently about the excommunication a few years earlier.

Works

King translated 16 books into Greek, including Richard Baxter's Saints' Rest and Lyman Beecher's Sermons on Intemperance . He published a suicide note in Arabic to his friends in Syria (1825), which was translated into several European languages and the index Expurgatorius the Vatican has been set. This letter also had a major impact on the Orthodox churches.

Other works:

• The Defense of Jonas King , (Greek, Athens, 1845)
• Speech before the Areopagus , (Greek, New York, 1847)
• Exposition of an Apostolic Church , (Greek, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1851; French and Italian translations in Malta)
• Religious Rites of an Apostolical Church , (Greek, Athens, 1851)
• Hermeneutics of the Sacred Scriptures , (Greek, 1857)
• Sermons , (Ομιλίαι Ιωνά Κινκ Εφωνηθείσαι κατά διαφόρους καιρούς εν Αθήναις, Τομ. Α ', 1859; 2 vols., Greek, 1859)
• Synoptical View of Palestine and Syria , in French (Greek translation, Athens, 1859; Συνοπτική Επιθεώρησις της Παλαιστίνης καλαιστίνης και Συρίας, μετά, τιλλΕα νγτοστά τινώώα ντ ι τ λ 26
• Miscellaneous Works , with documents relating to the various processes (Greek, Athens, 1859-1860)
• The Oriental Church and the Latin , (English, 1865)

Αστήρ, 9/1999, Η εμπειρία του παρελθόντος - μια παρακαταθήκη της Ευαγγγελικής Αναμορφφώσεως γαν τοών 21

Impact history

In the novel Thanos Vlekas , King is satirized in the person of the "American missionary".

literature

• King, Jonas . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 3 : Grinnell - Lockwood . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1887, p. 541 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • This again cites from: Life of Jonas King by FEHH New York 1879.
• Ananias Kavakas (Ανανίας Καβάκας): Η ιστορία των Ελληνικών Ευαγγελικών Εκκλησιών.
• P. Α. Hintzoglou: Reformed Communities in an Eastern Orthodox Culture. Fuller Theological Seminary, 1969.
• GD Draga (Γ. Δ. Δραγάς): Ιωνάς Κιγκ.
• MB Kyriakaki (Μ. Β. Κυριακάκη): Πρωτοπορεία και Πρωτοπόροι.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ King, Jonas. 1905
2. ↑ Irving L. Thomson: King, Jonas. 1933
3. ↑ "ορισμένα όργανα της νεοσυσταθείσης Eκκλησίας της Eλλάδος ακραίου συντηρητικού ήθους." - Hintzoglou P. Α .: Reformed Communities in an Eastern Orthodox Culture. Fuller Theological Seminary, 1969, pp. 92-94.
4. ↑ GD Draga (Δράγα Γ. Δ.): «Ιωνάς Κιγκ». 1972, pp. 86, 100.
5. ↑ DG Draga, Ιωνάς Κιγκ.
6. ↑ βλασφημεί τον αληθινό Θεό και τη μόνη Αποστολική Εκκλησία