1894–1982

Summary

Eric Burnham Hare was the pioneer Seventh-day Adventist missionary to the Karen people of eastern Burma and one of the most beloved storytellers of twentieth-century Adventism. Born in Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, on October 12, 1894, the second son of pioneer Australian-Adventist minister Robert Hare and his wife Henrietta, Eric was educated at Avondale, married Agnes Fulton (daughter of pioneer missionary J. E. Fulton) on June 24, 1915, and sailed for Burma three months later. From 1915 to 1934 — and again briefly in 1941–1942 — the Hares labored among the Karen at Kamamaung on the Salween River, learned the Karen language to a level no examiner had previously seen, established a brass band of Karen boys, founded dispensaries, and saw the first Karen Adventist Christians baptized. From 1946 to 1962 Eric served at the General Conference Sabbath School Department, championing children’s spiritual ministry. He died at Washington, D.C., on June 1, 1982, in his eighty-eighth year.

From Hawthorn to Avondale (1894–1915)

Per Lester Devine’s article in the Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists, Eric Burnham Hare was born in Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia, on October 12, 1894, the second son of Pastor Robert Hare and his wife Henrietta. His earliest schooling was at the Fitzroy School in Melbourne, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Roy Allan Anderson. He graduated from Avondale’s missionary course in 1911 and the biblical-academic course in 1913, served as tentmaster for E. B. Rudge and Harold Lukens at Port Pirie in 1911, and then joined J. W. Kent and J. H. Woods in a tent campaign at Richmond. By June 1914 he was enrolled in the nursing course at the Sydney Sanitarium. At a special session of the Australasian Union Conference Committee held June 8–22, 1915, he was appointed as a missionary to Burma. On June 24, 1915 — only days after his appointment — he married Agnes Fulton, daughter of pioneer South Pacific and Asian missionary J. E. Fulton. Agnes had been born at Bishop, California, on November 9, 1893.

To the Karen of the Salween (1915–1934)

The Hares left Sydney for Burma on Thursday, September 23, 1915, and on arrival devoted their first two years to language study and the establishment of medical work. Per ESDA, both received over ninety percent in their Karen language examinations; the examiner told Eric he had received the highest marks of any missionary he had ever examined. Eric, a gifted musician, gathered brass instruments on visits to churches across Australia and New Zealand and built a Karen brass band that became a defining feature of the mission’s outreach.

The Hares settled at Kamamaung on the Salween River in northeastern Burma, near the border with Siam (Thailand). Per ESDA, their first three years were marked by deep discouragement and not a single baptism; the first Karen convert was baptized in year four, after which the work grew steadily. Their oldest child Rosalind Agnes died on June 23, 1917, only nineteen days after her birth, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rangoon. Four more children — Eileen Nita, Leonard, Verna Mae, and Peter — were born to them in Burma. In 1919 Eric was ordained to the gospel ministry at the division meeting in Ranchi, India, by Agnes’s father J. E. Fulton, then president of the Southern Asia Division.

Ba Twe — The Karen Boy Who Would Not Pray

A. W. Spalding’s Sister White preserves the story of one of Hare’s most memorable Karen converts — a young man named Ba Twe whose conversion the church remembered for generations. Spalding’s introductory paragraph: “There was a Karen boy in Burma, which is far across the ocean, near India. This boy’s name was Ba Twe. He lived with his people away back in the jungle, and he knew nothing at all about Jesus. But there came into that land a company of missionaries, and made a school for the Karen boys and girls and young people, at Ohn Daw. And Ba Twe’s father sent him to this school” (Sister White, p. 109, par. 1; refcode SWhite 109.1).

Per Spalding, Ba Twe was unwilling at first to identify himself as a Christian or as a Buddhist, and so simply called himself a heathen — even after he had begun to love the Sabbath, sing the songs of Jesus, and learn the Bible verses. Then one summer at home, while herding his father’s two buffaloes, he fell asleep, the buffaloes wandered, and he climbed a tree to look for them. There a small voice (in Spalding’s account) told him to pray to God to find them. After a struggle with himself he prayed; the buffaloes appeared lowing under his very tree.

The change in his life was complete. Spalding’s record of his return to the school: “So back to school went Ba Twe. And now he told Brother Hare, and he told all the teachers and all the students, that he was a Christian, for God had just the same as talked to him. And he grew, like the boy Jesus, in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. He stayed in the school until he had finished it, and now he was a tall, big boy, fifteen years old or more” (Sister White, p. 111, par. 4; refcode SWhite 111.4).

Per Spalding, when Ba Twe finished his schooling he asked his father’s permission to go up into the hill country and teach the wild Karen people about Jesus, and his father granted it. Spalding’s record of the departure: “Ba Twe slung a bag of rice over his shoulder, and he put a pack of simple medicines on his back. And up into the hill country of the Karens he went. Nobody heard anything of him for a long time” (Sister White, p. 111, par. 7; refcode SWhite 111.7). When at length his older brother went after him to bring him home, the brother returned with the report that Ba Twe was healing diseases, teaching the people how to live, and showing pictures and telling stories to the children from a book about his Jesus.

Furlough and Return (1934–1942)

Per ESDA, after eighteen years on the Salween the Hares were invited in 1934 to relocate to the Northern California Conference; the move was driven in part by the need for assistance for their daughter Verna Mae, who was severely deaf. They departed Burma on April 12, 1934, leaving behind an established Karen church of 122 members and eight Sabbath Schools with a combined membership of 340. Eric served as Missionary Volunteer and Sabbath School Secretary in Northern California, and then as Sabbath School Secretary of the Southern California Conference at Glendale.

In 1941 — only months before war engulfed the Pacific — the Hares accepted a return appointment to Burma, this time at Rangoon. The Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942 forced their evacuation: Agnes and the children went by steamer to India, while Eric and a few fellow workers escaped overland through hostile country. After what Lest We Forget and Adventist memory recall as “many dangers and miraculous escapes,” he rejoined his family and the Hares returned to America.

General Conference Years (1946–1982)

Per ESDA, Eric was appointed Youth Department leader of the Southern California Conference, then Sabbath School director of the Pacific Union Conference, and at the 1946 General Conference Session was called to serve as associate secretary of the General Conference Sabbath School Department — a post he held until his retirement in 1962. Through these years he gave special attention to the role of the Sabbath School in child development and Christian formation; his work was a forerunner of the modern Children’s Ministries Department. Shortly after his appointment, his eldest surviving daughter Eileen, then on furlough from missionary service in India with her husband Ivan Higgins and their two daughters, was killed in a road accident at Van Horne, Texas.

Death (1982) and Legacy

Eric Hare died at Washington, D.C., on June 1, 1982, at the age of eighty-seven. Agnes died at Berrien Springs, Michigan, on April 25, 1983, in her ninetieth year. Per ESDA, Eric Hare wrote thirteen books — including Jungle Stories, Treasure from the Haunted Pagoda, Fuzzy Wuzzy Tales, Make God First, Skyscrapers, Curse-Proof, and Clever Queen — and recorded hundreds of children’s stories that shaped two generations of Adventist children with the lessons he had first preached to the Karen children of the Salween.