E.A. “Tata” Seamands

Archive: Missionary of the Century

by Jonathan Massey

A showdown was taking place in the dusty, turn-of-the-century streets of “rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ Tucson, Arizona.” Earl Arnett Seamands faced a merciless bully standing right in front of the meat market.

Being an expert with his slingshot, Arnett loaded it with a steel slug and aimed at his enemy’s forehead, 20 feet away. “Divine intervention alone saved that bully from sudden death,” he declares. “In a split second my angel jerked my aim down to his shin. The slug glanced off his shin and the cement sidewalk, went through the plate glass window, and struck the bookkeeper.”

Arnett, self-confessed “roughneck” of his high school class and practicing non-Christian, was saved from being a teen-age murderer. He became, instead, Tucson’s first Protestant foreign missionary, known to all as “Tata” (honored Grandfather), a special tribute given him by his beloved people of lndia.

E.A. Seamands was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on October 5, 1891. His father, John, worked as a railroad conductor. The family moved to Tucson in 1896 where John Seamands went to work as a conductor for the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Meanwhile, young Arnett grew up in the wilds surrounding Tucson. He loved athletics, was a first-rate baseball player, and enjoyed long camping expeditions, often walking 80 miles round trip.

This rigorous physical conditioning developed a powerful constitution that has lasted to this day. At 90 years of age, he is a tall, erect, vital, and energetic man who can be seen socializing almost any day around the environs of Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. While recounting the story of his life, he paces the floor of his study, gesturing to emphasize important facts.

John Seamands was a nominal Southern Methodist. But Jennie, Arnett’s mother, was “a beautiful Christian housewife, a Presbyterian.” She always took her children to Sunday school and church, and never forgot their bedtime prayers.  Although she died in 1903, Arnett continued the habit of going to church. His eyes sparkling with merriment at the paradox, he identifies himself as a Presbyterian baby “predestined to become a Methodist missionary!”

But no one could have predicted his destiny while he grew up in Tucson. Arnett admits he was “dangerously hardened by boyhood circumstances.” He recalls, “I didn’t like preachers and I didn’t want to be a Christian, though my mother was a godly woman. I had some idea that Christians were sissies and I was a lively guy, you see. I could pole vault eight feet!”

Fortunately, this “hardening” process was not advanced by common problems faced at schools today. He remembers that there was not a cigarette or cocktail in the entire high school. In fact, the girls had a motto, “The lips that touch wine shall never touch mine.”

The hardening was fueled by continual rejection of God’s grace. He remembers one Sunday morning during his senior year of high school when God spoke to him as he neared church. He was startled by a “still, small voice” within saying, “My son, give me your heart!” However, “this call was soon swamped in forgetfulness by my consuming purpose to be an engineer. I figured it all out: when I get to be old … with one foot slipping into the grave, I’ll join the church and make heaven! Not now.”

Arnett graduated from high school when the population of Tucson was only about 15,000. On May 27, 1910 he and nine others received diplomas—Tucson High School’s first graduating class. He is the only one of those first graduates alive today.

Forsaking the University of Arizona only a few blocks away, Arnett went east to enroll at the College of Engineering, University of Cincinnati, in late summer of 1911. The college had newly inaugurated a co-op technique of education where the students spent two weeks in the classroom, and the next two working on engineering projects—year round.

Arnett’s father was unable to help with his education. After his first year of college, he was forced to ask his maternal uncle, also named John, for financial aid. John invited him to spend a weekend with him at Camp Sychar in Mt. Vernon, Ohio.

The young engineer imagined it was a recreation resort where he could rest up, swim, and date pretty girls. He was surprised and disgusted to read the sign on the entrance gate: “CAMP SYCHAR—HOLINESS CAMP MEETING.” He would have turned around on the spot if he had not been in such sad financial straits.

Today he says that “the summer of 1912 was to unfold the decisive drama of my life. By love God lured me into the Camp Sychar Holiness Campmeeting.” An eternal showdown took place. God “let me become so confused He could literally ambush me … and work out His precious will in my life. I came under the influence of some of the most powerful evangelists of the day, including Henry Clay Morrison, founder of Asbury Theological Seminary.”

On Wednesday, “Missionary Day,” Bishop Lewis, a Methodist missionary to China, spoke (with Arnett sitting on the very last bench of the tabernacle!). The bishop was a forceful orator, and Arnett was fascinated as he spoke of the engineering challenges in China. Dreams of becoming a “big shot” in China and making a lot of money flooded his mind. But something happened to dispel the visions of grandeur. Seamands calls it “The Miracle.”

Suddenly, in the air over the head of Bishop Lewis, a fiery-red ribbon of light flashed before Arnett’s vision. There in silver colored block letters was spelled “INDIA“‘ The vision was so strong and totally unexpected that he almost fell backward off the bench.

His first reaction was violent rebellion. He remembered the Indians he’d met when he worked at a government levee job on the west bank of the Colorado River, about 25 miles south of Yuma, Arizona.  He’d seen many American Indians around Tucson, but these were different! These were coolies from India. Arnett looked at their long, wadded hair, listened to their strange language and chants, watched them worship idols, and smelled their curry and rice. He concluded, “These people are the scum of the earth!”

Seamands is convinced that this racial prejudice was a factor in God’s calling him to India. “I think God said, ‘Look what a boner this guy is pulling. The only way to cure him is to send him to India to serve these people for the rest of his life!’ After a tremendous struggle with conviction, I surrendered myself to Christ that Sunday.”

Seamands categorically states, “After that divine intervention, my life became a little bit of Heaven on earth. God lifted me to an amazing plane of victory which has remained to the present.”

Just as the Apostle Paul had to spend three years in Arabia, Arnett spent the next seven years preparing for missionary service to India, including four to complete his civil engineering degree.

The winter of 1915 was especially memorable because of two special events. The first happened on the night of January 7. While walking home from class, he consecrated himself totally to Christ and was filled with the Holy Spirit “and power!”

Scarcely a month later, on February 22, he was married to Yvonne E. Shields. They had met in the fall of 1911 while Arnett was working on a project in Cleveland, Ohio, during a two-week period outside of class. They courted largely by “remote control” for the next several years. The result—one of those lifelong unions “made in Heaven, delivered in Cleveland.”

The Seamands became missionaries under the Methodist Episcopal Church. On October 30, 1919 Arnett, Yvonne, and their young son, J.T., reached Kolar, South India. “It seemed to me the Heavenly Father had found someone to take from Indian territory in Arizona and send to the Indians in India. One place prepared me for the other. The climates are similar.  I traded rattlesnakes for cobras and pythons, and bobcats for panthers.  The food in both places can be hot as a firecracker. Yes, I was in missionary school while I was in Tucson, being mentally and physically prepared.”

Seamands immediately went to work in the Methodist Trades Institute, a large industrial school where boys were taught various trades.  Graduates “went forth into an unfriendly world as carpenters, cabinetmakers, iron workers, motor drivers, repairers—economically adequate for their lives ahead.” The Institute also manufactured modern agricultural implements. In this work they were pioneers in all of India. Agriculture was revolutionized in the State of Mysore.

Tata Seamands was an “evangelist-engineer.” He found a critical shortage of buildings as evangelism progressed. The Hindus and Muslims had magnificent temples and mosques. The cause of Christ could not be properly represented without churches. When he built his first church in 1941, there were only 11 Methodist churches in the whole South India Conference. From that time until 1958 when he retired, 57 churches were built. Including other projects, he constructed a total of 178 buildings.

Another problem faced Seamands. If Indian Christians remained true to Christ, they could not attend the enticing Hindu Jatros (religious festivals) which constitute a great part of India’s life. Christians must have a yearly event of equally dynamic proportions. So in November 1923, Seamands and M.D. Ross, a missionary colleague, founded the Dharur Jungle Jatra, an Indian Christian campmeeting patterned roughly after camp Sychar. Dharur camp has grown steadily throughout the years, and may now be the world’s largest campmeeting, with about 45,000 attending yearly.

While in India, a second son, David, was born to the Seamands. Both J.T. and David returned to India for missionary service after attending college and seminary in the United States.

Tata Seamands concedes his retirement has been unusual. Since 1958 he has made nine “shuttle service missions” back to India, serving a total of 15 months. He runs a sort of “Seamands Faith Missionary Society” out of his home. He laughs and says, “I’m president, secretary, typist, office boy, and promotional agent. Christ is the head, the Holy Spirit the Director. I’m refilled, retired, refired, rehired, and serve India as much as possible.”

He runs a never-ending fundraising campaign for building projects, as well as other needs in India. Since retirement, he has piloted a total of 139 building projects. His goal is 200 churches “by the time Christ calls or comes.” The “fields white unto harvest” include 200 to 300 village congregations in the South India Conference still without church buildings.

Tata is always quick to emphasize what a difference Christ makes in a life, and what a tremendous event it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He reminds us that he was once a racist toward Indians, but “in their midst, seeing personally the spiritual, physical, educational, and economic needs of the Indian people … I began to become all things to all men whereby the more could be saved.”

There is a special plaque on the wall of Arnett’s study. It commemorates that on October 17, 1976, Tata Seamands was named “Missionary of the Century, 1876-1976” by the South India Conference of the Methodist Church in Southern Asia. The award honors him for his years of service in India, the last 18 being in “active retirement.”

Tata Seamands realizes that a call to the mission field does not come to all people as it did to him. God had to use dramatic means to get Saul of Tarsus. So He did to get rebellious “Seamands of Tucson.”

He advises those who feel a call to “wait on the Lord. The needs of the world are so great and missionaries are so few. I don’t think God will delay revealing His will. Say, ‘Here I am, Lord. I’m ready.’ Work day to day in obedience and somewhere the call will be made specific.”

The Indians call E.A. “Tata” Seamands a “practical mystic.” They are used to holy men who lead solitary lives, striving only for their own salvation. The concept of a holy man active in the world, concerned with his fellow man and helping the less fortunate, was unusual. They found such a man in E. A. Seamands.

Ruth Seamands, daughter-in-law, brings the story up-to-date:

For the last three and one-half years, Arnett has been fiercely faithful in daily visits to his wife in the nursing home. When he couldn’t get a ride with family or friends, he’d go down to the gas station and hitch a ride. He carried a card file of both love songs and Christian songs which they sang together as long as possible. Then Arnett sang them alone to Yvonne. She died in September 1981.

At this writing, Seamands is now, age 90, making plans for another visit to India. He says, “I must see my people again. If I die there – well, India is very close to Heaven. let them cremate me and scatter some of my ashes near little David (his grandson who died in India at the age of nine months). Scatter some of my ashes at Dharur, and bring the rest home to bury beside Yvonne. I’m looking forward to India and to Heaven—for the end is not yet, praise the Lord!”