Tucker, John Taylor

John Taylor Tucker was a Congregational missionary to Angola. Tucker was born in Fremington, Devon, England. Educated at the Congregational College in Montreal, Canada, in 1912 he began more than 35 years of missionary service in Angola, serving under the Congregational Foreign Missionary Society of Canada (now a part of the United Church of Canada) in conjunction with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Gaining early fluency in Umbundu, he taught, wrote and assisted in Bible translation. Appointed first principal of the Currie Institute at Dóndi-the forerunner of Emmanuel Seminary (1947) and Emmanuel United Seminary (1957)-Tucker began to train Angolan pastors.

A member of the Phelps-Stokes Commission investigating educational needs in West and South Africa in 1922, Tucker became the most prominent Protestant missionary in church-state relations in colonial Angola. A member of the ABCFM’s special commission to negotiate with the Portuguese on missionary matters, and since 1922 part-time secretary of the Missionary Conference of Angola, he worked to end forced labor and to promote the use of vernacular languages. Committed to united Christian witness, he led in the formation of the Aliança Evangélica de Angola, becoming its first full-time secretary in 1946. In 1949 he became the representative of all Angolan Protestant missions to the Portuguese government in Lisbon as director of the Liga Evangélica de Accão Missionária e Educational, and he became general secretary of the Aliança Evangélica Portuguesa in 1950.

Norman E. Thomas

Bibliography

A Tucker Treasury: Reminiscences and Stories of Angola, 1883-1958 (1984) is a compilation by Catherine Tucker Ward of her father’s writings. Other works by Tucker include Drums in the Darkness (1927), Old Ways and New Days in Angola [193?], Angola: The Land of the Blacksmith Prince (1933), Currie of Chissamba (1945), and Compendio de História de Missories (1954). Lawrence W. Henderson, The Church in Angola: A River of Many Currents (1992) contains assessments of Tucker’s ecumenical leadership.

This article is reproduced, with permission, from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, copyright © 1998, by Gerald H. Anderson, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All rights reserved.