Lee Compere: Persistently Pursuing Justice

 

BMS missionary Jacob Grigg started serving in Sierra Leone in 1795. John Fountain’s service in India began in 1796 and Lee Compere was the BMS’s second missionary to Jamaica, arriving there in January 19, 1816. The great British Baptist historian, John Briggs, who is known for his careful and detailed research and his balanced and cautious judgment, has called these three men “Baptist Missionary Society Radicals.” According to Briggs, “by 1799, newly appointed missionaries were given clear instructions on how to avoid the snare of politics.” However, the three men “found themselves in conflict with the authorities [because they wished] to achieve a more credible Christian presence in the world than the traditional options offered.”

Compere, Grigg and Fountain “realized they could not avoid political involvement if they were to be true to their own understanding of the Christian faith.” According to Briggs:

 

Compere suffered through being in Jamaica about fifteen years too soon. It needed the slave insurrection of 1831 and the public outcry which followed … before Baptists [in England] became aware of what they could do in the fight against slavery.

 Born in Halstead in the county of Essex, England, Lee Compere trained for missionary service at Bristol Baptist College. His commissioning service took place on October 18, 1815 and he sailed for Jamaica with Susannah, his wife, and two unnamed members of the Broadmead Baptist Church, who were said to be “skilful in the management of Sunday Schools.” They arrived in Jamaica on January 19, 1816. While on the journey to Jamaica, Compere organized services of worship on Sundays, where he shared the Good News of Christ Jesus with many of his fellow travellers.

Arriving in Jamaica, Compere commenced his ministry at an estate called “The Whim,” which was near Old Harbour. Soon, he moved to Kingston, where the city authorities gave him a license to preach. This enabled him to gather together some 200 members of the flock previously led by Nicholas Swigle and his associates. The group experienced rapid numerical growth. Within a short time, however, the future of Compere’s work was at risk, resulting from a climate of fear and oppression brought on by an insurrection in Barbados that was blamed on non-conformist ministers there and led to suspicion about the motives of similar ministers in Jamaica. To make matters worse, Compere’s health began to fail.

His health challenge was exacerbated by the Comperes’ incapacity to operate in a context where slavery was rampant and the orders he had received from BMS, the sending body, prevented him from opposing it publicly. This was the guidance that BMS had given:

 

We wish to assume no dominion over you but merely to direct your attention to those parts of the mind of Christ which relate to you directly and to your undertaking …. You are going to a people in a state of slavery and [we] require that you beware lest your feelings for them should lead you to say or do anything inconsistent with Christian duty. Most of the servants whom the apostle Paul addressed in his epistles to the churches were slaves, and he exhorts them to be obedient to their own masters in singleness of heart, fearing God…. These exhortations must be your guide and while you act upon them, no man can justly be offended with you.

Compere applied himself fervently to ministering in Christ’s name and spared no effort in declaring the counsels of God through his preaching. However, the unjust working environment drove Compere, a fierce abolitionist, to take drastic action. After completing less than eighteen months in Jamaica, he resigned from the BMS in 1817, and he and his wife Susannah sailed to America to begin a new phase of ministry. On the journey to North Carolina, they suffered the loss of their first child – a daughter – who was born while they were serving in Jamaica. Like John Rowe before him, Lee Compere’s stay in Jamaica was quite short. He left the country about June, 1817.

The BMS record states, concerning Compere’s stay in Jamaica:

 

For some time, his conduct has not altogether coincided with the views of the [BMS] Committee, so that he is no longer under our direction, but has embarked with his family for the United States of America

The Comperes first stop was in North Carolina, but they left there when they answered the call issued by Baptists from Georgia for persons to serve as missionaries to the Creek Indians in the community of Tuckabatchee, near modern-day Tallassee, Alabama.

Their assignment was to establish a school to serve the Native Americans in this town. According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama:

 

The Comperes largely ignored the terms of the official agreement between the Creeks and the Georgia Baptists: the Creeks wanted Western-style education for their children, but prohibited Christian evangelism. As they had done in Jamaica, when the Comperes found that politics and cultural beliefs conflicted with what they viewed as their calling, they followed their calling. This inevitably invited controversy…. The Comperes taught classes to the Creek students, ministered to small communities of Christians of various cultures living within the Creek Nation, and reported to their Baptist and U.S. government supporters all that they observed about the largely undocumented Creek culture. They were, in a sense, also missionaries from the Creeks to the whites, and their observations helped the government and other missionaries better understand southeastern Indian culture.

It was not long before Compere’s fierce advocacy on behalf of the Creek Indians caused Georgia Baptists to withdraw their support for the mission. Eventually, the prevailing disrespect for the human rights of the Creeks led the people to frustration, and violence erupted leading to an end to Compere’s ministry among the Native Americans in Tuckabatchee, Alabama in 1829.

The Comperes moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where they settled on a farm and established another school. They formed the First Baptist Church of Montgomery, and served in several roles in the Alabama Baptist Convention.

According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama:

 

In 1833 they moved to Benton, Mississippi, and Susannah [Mrs. Coultart] died on September 6 the following year while nursing victims of an epidemic. The family moved to Tennessee for a year, and then returned to Mississippi, settling in Holly Springs. In 1836, Compere married Sarah Jane Beck… and continued to preach in addition to earning a modest living at farming and managing small business ventures. In his final years, Lee lived with his son Thomas in Arkansas and Texas, and died near Corsicana, Texas, in 1871.

Concerning Compere’s work in Arkansas, the Encyclopedia of Arkansas notes that:

 

In 1845, Lee and Susannah’s oldest son, Thomas Hechigee Compere, began a preaching career. By 1850, [Lee Compere] … settled in Arkansas, where he engaged in missionary work among the native peoples in western Arkansas and Indian Territory. In 1858–1859, Thomas’s brother Ebenezer Lee Compere visited him and decided to join him in his missionary work. In 1859, Ebenezer accepted a call from the Cherokee Georgia Baptist Convention to minister to the Cherokees and was appointed Superintendent of Missions and Foreign Missions Secretary for the Baptist Association of Western Arkansas and Indian Territory. From 1859 to 1862, he pastored a Missionary Baptist church at Charleston (Franklin County); he also built a Baptist church at Fort Smith (Sebastian County), pastoring it as he continued his missionary work.

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas states further that:

 

Between 1850 and 1860, Lee Compere joined his sons in Arkansas, assisting in their missionary work and living with son Thomas, who moved to Navarro County, Texas, late in 1870. Lee Compere died in Navarro County on June 15, 1871, and is buried in the Hamilton-Beeman Cemetery at Retreat, Texas.

The Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, Tennessee, have a collection of Ebenezer Lee Compere’s papers documenting his pastoral and missionary work in Arkansas, and additional papers are held in the E. L. Compere Collection at the Arkansas State Archives.

His time of service in Jamaica was short. However, the scope, intensity and effectiveness of his service in colonial America, especially among Native Americans, continue to inspire admiration for Compere’s faithfulness to the God who calls and sends people on God’s own mission wherever God wills. Until his dying day, Compere was committed to bearing witness to “credible Christian presence in the world.”