Dr. Frederick (Fred) Sheldon Downs was born in Tura, Meghalaya, India on 15 February 1932. His parents – Dr. E. Sheldon Downs and Gladys Hall Downs – were American Baptist medical missionaries who served the people of Northeast India for forty years, from 1927 to 1967. Today, the Tura Baptist Church sits on the site of the bungalow in which he was born.

His early education was a combination of home schooling through the third grade in Tura, India, four schools in as many years in the United States during the Second World War, and three years of high school at Woodstock School (1946-1948), a boarding school established for the education of the children of missionaries in India. He did the last year in, and graduated from, Monroe High School in Rochester, New York in 1949.

Because he had attended so many schools in different states and countries, he had been successful in avoiding taking any high school courses in a subject he hated – history. To him, at the time, history consisted in the memorization of names and dates. “Chronology. Boring.” But if he were to graduate with the imprimatur of the New York State Regents he needed to take two history courses in that final year. One of the two was “exactly what he thought history was.” The other, however, was taught by Miss Bowman. He never knew whether she was a church person, but he believed that through her, God began to prepare him for his life work. She got him excited about “Real history. History for which the what, who, when and how questions only created the data on the basis of which one could answer the only questions that really mattered: the why questions. The questions that explain why we are what we are. Our identity.” He also noted that one of his greatest regrets in life was that Miss Bowman died before he could tell her how significantly she had changed his life.

He went on to major in history at the College of Wooster in Ohio (1950-1954) where he met Mary Lois Evans. They were married on 28 August 1954 in Hammond, New York.

Win Hudson introduced him to church history at Colgate Rochester Divinity School where Fred earned his Bachelor of Divinity in 1957. In seminary Fred became an “ecumaniac,” believing that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. He did his doctoral dissertation in that field. This six hundred plus page dissertation was a study of nineteenth and early twentieth century developments within the Anglican communion. He observed “it had little to do either with Baptists or with the part of India that God was preparing him to serve.”

He also reflected that as he was growing up, he had no clear idea of what he would do with his life. Only of one thing was he certain, he would “never be a missionary.” His parents wanted him to follow in their footsteps. But after watching his father doing “his surgical thing and finding himself out cold on the floor,” he decided that was “not for him.”

It was at seminary that he and Mary decided to enter missionary service in India. He had to pursue a doctorate as Indian visas were only issued to missionaries with advanced professional qualifications. And it was also the policy of the mission board only to send missionaries who had the qualifications sought by partner churches. In Northeast India that meant the Council of Baptist Churches in Northeast India (CBCNEI). In the early sixties the CBCNEI was looking for professionals in the fields of medicine, literature, agriculture, and theological education. Fred chose St. Andrews (1957-1960) for his doctorate, in part because he thought that a British degree might be given more value than an American one by the Indian government.

From its creation in 1950 the CBCNEI had recognized the importance of theological education. It upgraded what had been a middle school-level bible school at Jorhat with the goal of raising it to collegiate level (in India ‘theological college’ is the name given to what in the United States would be called a theological seminary or divinity school). By 1960, Eastern Theological College (ETC) in Jorhat, Assam was financially bankrupt and academically on life support (four faculty and forty students over the past decade). The CBCNEI invited Fred to join the ETC faculty as part of an effort to achieve their goals. Because he was the only faculty with a doctorate, he was also named Principal (equivalent to a President of an institution in the United States). He was 30 years old with no experience as a teacher or as an administrator. He reflected, “that the college survived at all in those early years was a minor miracle.” It survived because he was strongly committed to the American Baptist missiological principal “they shall increase, while we shall decrease.” The primary responsibility of the missionary was to work themselves out of a job. At ETC, that meant prioritizing the upgrading of faculty and appointment of an Indian as Principal.

He became aware of several things during his early years at Jorhat. The first thing he learned was that he hated administration and therefore felt he was not very good at it. In his words “at least not at the top level where, to quote President Truman, the buck stops.” The second thing he learned was that he enjoyed teaching. Because they were understaffed, and because most of the faculty had no specialized training, they all had to teach everything. Fred taught biblical courses, both Old and New Testaments, he taught theology, pastoralia, and, of course, all the church history courses.

Between teaching, interacting with students, and attending various CBCNEI conferences Fred began to realize he had a special calling to be a church historian for the Christians of Northeast India. This calling was not simply to give pastors an understanding of the highlights on nearly two thousand years of Christian history. It was a calling to help the Christian people of Northeast India find their identity. And through research and writing, to help the larger academic community of India understand who these Christians really were.

Fred was a member of the team that worked to upgrade ETC from an independent matric-level school to a Serampore affiliated L.Th. college. It was gradually upgraded to its present status as a college offering Serampore degrees up to the Doctor of Theology. Though those developments took place after he had moved to Bangalore (now Bengaluru) in 1970, he helped set the critical foundations for success.

 During his time at ETC (1961-1969) he wrote his first book, The Mighty Works of God in which he told the story of the beginnings and early development of the churches within what came to be the CBCNEI “from the local perspective, intended to be read by members of the churches concerned in Northeast India not outsiders.” He always believed it was imperfect because local sources for the churches of many different tribes are largely oral and in dozens of different languages and because it was still institutional history, but it was their history. In the book he recognized the problem of disunity among the CBCNEI churches, caused by regional and tribal interests. Even though the book was written before he viewed history more through socio-cultural approaches, more than 50 years after publication the book continues to serve as one of the standard reference works for historians in the region, though it has been revised, many times without Fred’s knowledge or consent. The churches own the book now, as their own.

The next chapter in Fred’s mission and historian journey began in 1970 when the Government of India began removing foreigners from Northeast India because of insurgency movements in that region. They were given the option of settling in other parts of the country. Several colleges traditionally related to the American Baptist Mission invited Fred to join their faculties. There were few scholars with doctorates in the History of Christianity field in India at that time. When he was invited to join the ecumenical United Theological College (UTC) in Bangalore (now Bengaluru), Karnataka some argued that UTC already had a historian with a doctorate and would soon have another, therefore he should go elsewhere. In the end UTC’s argument that it was necessary to concentrate scholars at one institution for a period of time so that advanced degree programs could be developed in India, convinced him. Indian scholars would not have to go overseas for such studies. And they would be studying in a context relevant to ministry in India. With the approval of the CBCNEI and International Ministries, Fred decided to be a part of that journey.

When he arrived, the history department at UTC had already begun a revolution in its field. Under Dr. Kaj Baago and Dr. T. V. Philip the study of the history of Christianity was both professionalized and reoriented. A subject that used to be taught by any faculty member who had some extra time was now being taught by historians. Historians with a new perspective. Western oriented institutional and mission history was being replaced by social history seen from an Indian perspective. This fit in well with the historiography Fred had already begun to develop at ETC.

Building on the foundations laid by Baago and Philip, and stimulated by other faculty colleagues, some of the most challenging and stimulating faculty interactions took place as UTC was pioneering the revival of the Serampore Doctor of Theology program. While the students may not have understood what was happening, Fred was sure that “their experience of watching faculty members from the different disciplines interacting with each other at the highest levels of professional debate had to contribute to their own academic development.”

As a result, Fred began to teach and write from a different perspective and introduced a systematic and scientific way of conducting socio-cultural history. He defined his view of history, its nature, purpose, and methodology in a seminar, held in February 1994 at UTC. He wrote:

“The purpose of all historical studies is to understand how people and institutions came to be what they are today. Historiographically, this is accomplished through dialogue between the present and the past – a dialogue the purpose of which is, through the application of analytical tools of historical study, to discover not only what happened to whom, when, and where, but why movements took place as they did.”

An important contribution Fred made was to get the history of Christianity in the Northeast included in the history of Christianity in India. History textbooks on the subject made references to it in only a couple of sentences, until in 1976 Fred wrote a chapter-length booklet on the subject. This was later incorporated as an appendix into the standard Indian Church History textbook. (Since, according to the Census of India, roughly one-quarter of the Christians in India live in the Northeast, that is quite an appendix!) Fred went on to write two more histories of Christianity in Northeast India, the last one being a separate volume in the Church History Association of India’s multi-volume history of Christianity in India. Whereas other histories published about Christianity were about a single tribe or denomination, these were the first and only histories to treat the region as a whole. However, he still mostly focused on four major tribal groups – the Garos, the Khasi-Jaintias, the Meezoes, and the Nagas.

Another contribution Fred has made to the history of Christianity, especially in Northeast India, has been what a colleague and friend, Dr. John Webster, has called “the Downs thesis,” first a conclusion from initial research and then a perspective from which that history was viewed and written. It has two components. The first was the recognition that the primary agent of change in the Northeast hill areas was the British government when it took over and administered the region directly. The second concerned the role of Christianity in this process of quite rapid change. What Christianity did was, to quote an early (1976) statement of the thesis, “to provide the people with an ideology and the means (literature, education) to make the changes without losing their sense of identity. It also ensured that they would retain control of their own institutions.” In short, it helped them modernize without losing their socio-cultural tribal identities. Fred’s perspective has heavily shaped subsequent histories of Christianity there – not all of which were written by Fred’s students. In a series of lectures near the end of his time in India Fred had the audacity to make one exception to his thesis. He found that while tribal women had made a lot of progress under Christian influence, their status relative to that of tribal men had declined. That was quite a bombshell and stirred up a lot of controversy – and women’s research.

It was during his last years at UTC, that he developed his interest in women’s history. He did so, by examining the question of the status of women in tribal societies in Northeast India. For him these were exciting times because it was forcing all historians to go to the sources with new questions. With new questions came new insights into historical movements. He also observed that it was theologically trained women who first brought the insights of the modern feminist movement to Northeast India. He captured many of his thoughts in the book, The Impact of Christianity on the Status of Women among the Hill Tribes of Northeast India.

All Fred’s research and publications were done in his spare time. He always saw his “main job as teaching history and working with his students”. Even as chair of the department, Fred always took up the challenge of teaching the introductory course. He wanted the incoming students to have his Miss Bowman experience, to become excited by historical study that challenged them to ask the difficult “why” questions, not just the boring “when” questions. He also wanted them to understand that sources for the answers to these questions lay in multiple sources not in a prescribed textbook.

Like all good academics Fred was open to feedback and appreciated being challenged by colleagues, current, and former students. One of the hardest critiques which he acknowledged was that he was not able to tap into more indigenous sources like oral tradition and folklore and therefore did not appreciate enough the role of the individual tribes and their religion in the conversion process.

His commitment to education in India also included a relationship with two Christian boarding schools in India, Woodstock School and Kodaikanal International School. He was an active member of the Woodstock School Board of Directors from 1974 to 1980, serving as Vice-President in 1974-75 and President from 1975 to 1980. He was also a member of the Kodaikanal Board of Directors from 1991 to 1996, serving as Vice-Chair from 1995 to 1996.

Fred has been honored by the institutions and his colleagues for his work in numerous ways, including, the current day auditorium at ETC named for him (and Mary), an endowed Church History Chair at UTC in his name, and an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Serampore College.

Fred had a special heart for developing leadership in Northeast India. He often said that the “future of the church lies in leadership development. Without giving importance to research, the church will become superficial and not be able to stand against the forces of modern-day challenges.” With this vision, Fred advocated for the IM-CBCNEI scholarships program for MTh and Doctoral students. This enabled many poor students to pursue higher theological studies. Today, there are 127 PhD/DTh degree holders from Northeast India serving in churches and theological seminaries all over India (some abroad) —a dream never imagined before Fred began his service.

Fred (and Mary) retired from missionary work in 1997, after 10 years at ETC and 26 years at UTC, to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Even in retirement Fred continued to help and mentor students and work with those students who had moved on to become academics and church leaders. As one former student observed, within a decade of his leaving, 50 percent of Principals of the sixty Protestant and Orthodox seminaries in India had been Fred’s students.

At Brewster Baptist Church (BBC), Brewster, Massachusetts, Fred served on their Mission Core Ministry team for nearly 20 years, hosted cookouts for new members, and served for years on the church Advisory Council. His class on “The Twelve Disciples Who Were with Jesus” was one of the most popular classes the church has ever offered. Fred led three trips to India for folks from BBC, as well as a few other folks from The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts.

Fred made his final move (with Mary) to Carolina Meadows retirement community Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 2017, and joined the Binkley Baptist Church. In 2022, on his 90th birthday many friends, colleagues, and former students celebrated his impact on all of them with messages, and in a book of essays written by his students. Tributes that touched him deeply.

Fred is survived by his wife of almost 70 years Mary, his three children Susan, Rick, and Milton, two grandchildren, Arjun and Julia, and his sister Jane.  He is predeceased by his sisters Joyce and Carol.

Gronjaskal Isol Nangmung Dongchong
(Garo hymn: God Be With You ‘Til We Meet Again)

If you recognize yourself in any of the language in this obituary, his family is appreciative for your thoughts about Fred, who was always humble and acknowledged he was but one of a team of people working together to accomplish change. He was always grateful for his colleagues and students, as their questions and curiosity led him to feel he learned as much from them as they learned from him. 

As Fred was a historian, his family thought it fitting to write an obituary using as their source mostly his own words and reflections (from his papers and presentations) about his life and work, as well as words of his students and colleagues. Not being historians, we have refrained from footnoting it!

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His family would like to share a “Life of Fred” video with you. When this is ready, the link will be posted here. 

In lieu of flowers, donations in remembrance of Fred may be made to
International Ministries General Fund
(choose: “dedicate my donation in the memory of someone.”)

If you are overseas or have questions, please contact:
imdonorservices@internationalministries.org

Memorial Service
Binkley Baptist Church
Chapel Hill, NC

July 26, 2024
1:00 PM (USA Eastern Time)

For Fred’s friends and family around the world, the memorial service will also be live streamed at this link: 
A Service of Celebration of the Life of Fred Downs (youtube.com)

If you would like to send messages and share memories with the family we invite you sign the Frederick Downs Memorial Guest Book (google.com).