Luther Rice was one of the first foreign missionaries from the United States. Along with Adoniram Judson and three others, he was ordained a Congregationalist missionary in 1812. In India he and the Judsons accepted the Baptist view of baptism, joined a Baptist church, and consequently resigned as Congregationalist missionaries. Rice returned to America to seek Baptist support for himself and the Judsons, and he came to be called the Father of American Baptist Foreign Missions. Driven by a consuming desire to bring the Kingdom of God on Earth, he worked untiringly to inform Baptists of their mission opportunities and responsibilities, inspiring missionary concern so broadly that Baptist missionary societies were formed almost everywhere he spoke. He was also among the first to envision a national convention of Baptists made up of representatives of many bodies associating themselves for missions, a vision realized in 1814 with the formation of the General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States for foreign missions, the so-called Triennial Convention. Both Rice and Judson were appointed missionaries by its board, but Rice was asked to remain temporarily in America and continue promoting missions. He never returned to India, though he dreamed for years of rejoining Judson, and until his death in 1836 he urged Baptists in America to give and pray for both foreign and domestic missions and to provide adequate training for those called to become missionaries.