Women in Cultural Captivity: British Women and the Zenana Mission: In a Little Pamphlet Outlining the Work of Two British Baptist Women, Marianne Lewis and Elizabeth Sale: Pioneers of Missionary Work Among Women, (1) Ernest Payne Remarked That 1792 was a Key Year for Two Publications (Enquiry Into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen) (A Vindication of the Rights of Women‪)‬

Fist, William Carey wrote his Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, (2) which would result in the formation of the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen (later known as the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS). Second, Mary Wollstonecraft (3) published her remarkable and prophetic pamphlet, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. At first glance, perhaps these two individuals had little in common with one another: Carey, a British Baptist minister calling people to a greater concern for the proclamation of the gospel in distant lands, and Wollstonecraft, an English feminist woman who by this time had all but given up on Christian faith. Yet, both, in their own ways, were concerned with freedom. Carey would not have understood Wollstonecraft's thesis. His interpretation of "freedom in Christ" was directed to evangelism while Wollenscraft's cry for emancipation was rooted in a deeply held commitment to social justice for women. Later, however, as Baptist women began to respond to the call to serve the cause of Christ in far-flung places, the two concerns would meet. Indeed, as British Baptist women organized their own missionary society and sent out women as missionaries, they began to discover in new ways what it meant to say that when Christ "sets you free you are free indeed." (4) Early British Baptist Mission Work and the Role of Women