Protestant Missions: preliminary notes
Edwards, Rick
Protestant missions are historically associated with the expansion of the imperialist culture of the Western powers. From the arrival in India of the first British Protestant missionary in 1792...
...government (Public Law 480) in relief programs and "development" projects...
...policy in the Third World and can easily be recruited into local American business concerns and cooperating host country agencies...
...Colombia 11...
...NORTH AMERICAN DOMINANCE At the turn of the century, only about one third of all Protestant missionaries were North Americans...
...For example, the 1.5 index for the Cayman Islands represents an extremely high concentration for this British dependency, which just happens to be the site of twelve low cost real estate developments for North Americans...
...They groom Americans for future employment as "area specialists" with the State Department, A.I.D., the Foreign Service, and pacification programs, and with U.S...
...Thus the growth of overseas Protestant missions since World War II is part of a generalized cultural expansion related to the establishment of military and economic hegemony of North American interests...
...MISSIONARY COUNTERINSURGENCY Aerial view of SIL installation at Loma Linda It not only draws attention away from the obvious manifestations of U.S...
...9. It would be useful to examine the new agencies and particularly the specialized agencies established in the same period to discover how many were formed for Latin American work, and what were the fields of specialization...
...An index of 1.0 indicates a very high concentration of missionaries (one for every thousand inhabitants), while an index of 100.0 indicates a very low concentration (one for every hundred thousand...
...Hong Kong 23...
...20-21...
...SIL, as a linguistics institute, enters a region at the invitation of the national government to record the languages of isolated peoples, often with financial assistance of AID...
...This compares with 10,112 actually accounted for in Latin America by our chart in these pages, the figures for which are drawn from NAPMO, 1970's country by country listing...
...By 1970, about 70 percent of the Protestant missionary force was North American...
...Missionaries have even cooperated in tge public relations of oil exploration teams confronted by hostile Amazonian Indian tribes...
...The tribe was engaged in guerrilla resistance to territorial encroachments by settlers backed by the U.S.-financed (Alliance for Progress) The Summer Institute of Linguistics, a North American organization based at Loma Linda, Puerto Lleras, entered into collaboration with the government's civic action program in Planas in order to attract the Indians who fight alongside Jaramillo [the former police inspector, organizer of a cooperative in the region, who became a guerrilla...
...have been oriented toward the ideological formation of the middle sectors...
...The international conference on Protestant missions at Edinburgh in 1910 did not even consider Latin America as a mission field since it was a nominally Christian area...
...2 9.9 11.0 91 47.3 3.5 NICARAGUA 19.8 3.0 110 1.8 3.5 PANAMA 37.5 5.5 268 1.9 3.2 PARAGUAY 15.2 11.0 47 2.2 32 PERU 61.9 6.5 98 12.8 3.1 UR UGUAY 21.8 70 78 2.8 1.2 VENEZUELA 46.9 14.0 q8 9.7 3.6 TOTAL q.915.4 10.0% 204 2o0.4 3.0 7. * Index of 100 equals 1.00 percent of population...
...North American U.S...
...The increasing complexity of the modern world has encouraged specialization among organizations including missionary agencies...
...See inset...
...With a few notable exceptions, Protestant interest in the region was limited until the United States occupied Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1898...
...agencies in underdeveloped countries (including the Agency for International Development, the United States Information Service, the Alliance for Progress) to promote an "alternative to communism...
...Following World War II however, there was a dramatic increase in the number of specialized agencies being founded...
...Total Population Protestant Index Catholic Missionaries WEST INDIES 1,394 1,049 2,443 Antigua 64,000 1 64.0 .. .. Bahamas 173,000 64 2.7 53 117 Barbados 300,000 33 9.1 ---- ---Caribbean - unspecified ----- 45 ---- ---- ---Cayman Islands 9,000 6 1.5 1 7 Cuba 8,200,000 7 1,171.4 1 8 Dominica 69,000 1 69.0 ---- ---Dominican Republic 4,200,000 124 33.9 35 159 Grenada 98,000 10 9.8 ---- ---Guadeloupe 320,000 13 24.6...
...The radio is now installed...
...periodicals -- Readers Digest, Time, etc...
...In the figures on the West Indies, Catholic data for the lesser Antilles are lumped together under the general headings of Windward and Leeward Islands...
...3. Loc...
...In addition to agencies which have been formed for the express purpose of carrying out a specialized ministry, many denominational boards and agencies have created subsidiary commissions and committees to conduct similar specialized tasks...
...Vincent 88,000 7 12.6 ---- ---Trinidad and Tobago 1,100,000 103 10.7 3 106 Virgin Islands - unspecified ----- 21 ---- 40 ---Windward Islands - unspecified ----- 37 ---- 25 ---West Indies - unspecified ----- 21 ---- ---- ---MIDDLE AMERICA 2,592 840 3,432 British Honduras (Belize) 118,000 68 1.7 87 155 Central America - unspecified ----- 56 -. . ---- ---Costa Rica 1,700,000 242 7.0 35 277 E1 Salvador 3,300,000 65 50.8 46 111 Guatemala 5,000,000 272 18.4 237 509 Honduras 2,500,000 245 10.2 80 325 Mexico 49,000,000 1,391 35.2 218 1,609 Nicaragua 2,000,000 120 16.7 73 193 Panama 1,400,000 133 10.5 64 197 SOUTH AMERICA 6,126 2,322 8,448 Argentina 24,000,000 409 58.7 66 475 Bolivia 4,500,000 556 8.1 342 898 Brazil 91,000,000 2,170 41.9 643 2,813 Chile 9,600,000 296 32.4 302 598 Colombia 21,400,000 703 30.4 102 805 Ecuador and Galapagos Islands 5,800,000 503 11.6 46 549 French Guiana 44,000 4 11.0 --- 4 Guyana 700,000 137 5.2 16 153 Paraguay 2,300,000 137 16.8 36 173 Peru 13,200,000 652 20.2 678 1,330 South America - unspecified ----- 14 ---- --- -Uruguay 2,900,000 145 20.0 11 156 Venezuela 10,400,000 400 26.0 80 480 LATIN AMERICA 10,112 4,211 14,323 Sources: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, 1970 U.S...
...6. New York Times, December 16, 1968...
...SIL is the secular front organization of the Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc., the second largest U.S...
...imperialism, such as the Green Berets, but because of its subtlety it is a dangerous extension of U.S...
...While Catholic missionary activity in the region began with the Spanish conquest in the 16th...
...Haiti 5,100,000 344 14.8 38 382 Jamaica 1,800,000 175 10.3 164 339 Leeward Islands - unspecified ----- 6 ---- 18 ---Lesser Antilles - unspecified ----- 11 ---- ---- ---Martinique 327,000 10 32.7 ---- ---Netherlands Antilles 213,000 122 1.7 ---- ---Puerto Rico 2,700,000 215 12.6 671 886 St...
...The Protestant community in Latin America today comprises about five percent of the region's 250 million inhabitants, most of whom are nominally Roman Catholic...
...NOTES 1. William R. Read, Victor Monterroso, and Harmon A. Johnson, Latin American Church Growth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), pp...
...Data presented in the directory to North American Protestant Ministries Overseas indicates that 61 of the 195 new mission agencies established since 1940 have been oriented to specialized services...
...hegemony, as part of a larger apparatus of cultural and institutional penetration, in what specific ways do they advance North American penetration of Third World areas...
...The 1.7 index for the Netherlands Antilles results from the concentration on the island of Bonaire of missionary broadcast personnel, who beam programs to South America and the Caribbean...
...In the context of a discussion of strategies for Protestant church growth in Latin America, the authors provide interesting projections on potential areas of expansion, naming cities, mining projects, etc...
...business interests overseas...3 The mission structures assemble considerable collective knowledge which individual missionaries have about a country or region, which is often accessible to others who use it for military or business purposes...
...Lucia 108,000 11 9.8 ---- ---St...
...missionary budget go to Latin America...
...In 1969, Brazil's rightist military dictatorship was host to some 2,170 North American (including Canadian) Protestant missionaries...
...The Third Latin American Evangelical Conference (III CELA), a fairly representative assemEVANGELICALS**IN LATIN AMERICA f COUNTRY * EVANGELICALS 0 POPULATION ' f967 $IU#AL IDEX OF MID-1969 COARNrT OMMUNNrsXkS CmWrT RATE PELATIVE TOTAL anwUAL o0_1at If960-1967 SIZE' (aIL,.J CTar P.AE ARGENTINA 249.5 5.0 % 107 23.9 1.5 % BOLIVIA 45.4 11.5 116 3.9 2.4 BRAZIL 3,313.2 11.0 375 88.3 3.2 CHILE 4'41.7 85 q85 9.1 2.2 COLOMBIA 73.9 12.0 38 19.7 3.2 COSTA RICA 14.2 7.0 89 1.6 3.5 ECUADOR 12.6 15.0 22 5.7 3.Y EL SALVADOR 35.8 5.5 109 3.3 3.7 GUATEMALA 77.2 9.0 158 4.9 3.1 HONDURAS 18.8 85 75 25 3.5 MEXICO...
...In short, it was the period of the Americanization of the Third World...
...5 Many missionaries who have served in tense or sensitive areas have reported being approached by U.S...
...North American Protestant interest in the area, however, insured that Latin America would not be overlooked...
...These agencies are precisely the structures of cultural imperialism essential to the orderly growth of the U.S...
...Nor is it suprising to find that the areas with the lowest concentration of missionaries are usually (1) already Protestant and friendly to the United States, (2) revolutionary socialist nations like China and Cuba, which have expelled large numbers of missionaries since World War II, or (3) predominantly Muslim areas such as the Arab world...
...4 The parallels are sufficient to suggest that the Peace Corps is indeed a modern and nonreligious manifestation of the missionary impulse...
...The demands of broadcasting, literature production and distribution, language analysis and translation, rural development and transportation of personnel have brought into being agencies which have a specialized ministry in one of these areas...
...In one case, Catholic Relief Services personnel used such goods to pay the families of Vietnamese serving in the Saigon government's militia...
...Second and third generation Protestants are beginning to break from missionary ideologies and models of behavior...
...Data from the 1969 survey indicated about 30-35 agencies which have given no indication of activity in recent years and whose present status is uncertain...
...The larger countries show lower concentrations, in most cases because of the development of national churches staffed by nationals...
...At the same time, a sharp drop occurred in the numbers of missionaries from the older colonial powers...
...Venezuela Percent # MissionPopulation Christian aries 91,000,000 102,100,000 536,900,000 53,700,000 49,000,000 37,100,000 17,100,000 1,658,000 10,600,000 21,400,000 24,400,000 13,800,000 13,200,000 31,200,000 115,400,000 4,500,000 19,600,000 4,800,000 5,800,000 1,200,000 34,700,000 4,000,000 131,600,000 24,000,000 10,400,000 99% 1 2 18 78 75 48 NA 25 79 50 5 86 9 7 96 48 23 80 16 .4 10 .8 97 84 Index 2,170 41.9 1,864 54.7 1,517 353.9 1,456 36.9 1,391 35.2 1,251 29.7 926 18.5 740 2.2 731 14.5 703 30.4 684 35.7 663 20.8 652 20.2 610 51.1 601 192.0 556 8.1 543 36.1 521 9.2 501 11.6 500 2.4 484 71.7 4S0 8.9 421 312.6 409 58.7 400 26.0 Source: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, 1970...
...China (Taiwan) 13...
...5. Mentioned in Michael Novak's "Reports from Vietnam," National Catholic Reporter, August 16 - September 20, 1967...
...missionaries are present chiefly in the sphere of U.S...
...makes friends for America" abroad who will become the future supporters of and apologists for U.S...
...It is not suprising, therefore, to find large numbers of missionary personnel in countries like Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, or South Africa, where U.S...
...Indonesia 16...
...Missionaries who work with agricultural surplus channeled through Church World Service or Catholic Relief Services employ goods obtained and monitored by the U.S...
...imperialism and an openness to revolutionary change...
...Still, however, tremendous numbers of North American missionaries are at work in the region, and large amounts of the U.S...
...For more on this, see the Chicago Daily News, July 20, 1968...
...The schools and colleges organized by the Methodists in Brazil, for example, explicitly sought to employ North American models "to educate for Christian character" and proudly report that many of their graduates have risen to positions of prominence in government and buPROTESTANT MISSIONARY FORCE INCREASED OVER 200 PERCENT, 1900-1970 5) -1 k 9 v 0 'I 0 0 v ro `d 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 *data unavailable Source: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, 1970- 20 - siness...
...See box...
...Emilio Castro, president of the Uruguayan Methodist community and former director of the Latin American ecumenical group UNELAM, wrote in 1968 that Latin American Protestantism is changing, however...
...Bolivia 17...
...This is nothing more than a kind of "development" along lines which American interests can control for their own benefit -- a goal which can only be assured by frustrating the development of the people's awarness of their own self-interest, which might well take the form of socialist revolution...
...Coxill et al., eds., World Christian Handbook (London: Lutterworth Press, 1968), pp...
...In 1959, of all countries in the world, Brazil was fifth in number of Protestant missionaries received from North America, while India headed the list...
...From North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, 1970, pp...
...For example, in the 1880's, Methodist women were holding "flag festivals" in local churches throughout the country to raise money for the purchase of U.S...
...What is not precisely known is the number of agencies which have ceased operating...
...penetration and control of Third World raw material sources, industrial sectors, internal markets and their growth, internal and external trade, banking, mass media, and, in the last decade, the universities...
...South Africa 18...
...TABLE : FIRST TWENTY-FIVE COUNTRIES RANKED BY NUMBER OF NORTH AMERICAN PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES Country 1. Brazil 2. Japan 3. India 4. Nigeria 5. Mexico 6. Philippines 7. Congo (Kinshasa) 8. New Guinea (Trust Territory) 9. Kenya 10...
...For example, like the Peace Corps, the missionary program...
...Indeed, in the decade since the Cuban revolution came to power in 1959, "Latin America has displaced Asia as the continent receiving the most Protestant missionaries from North America...
...empire...
...Pakistan 24...
...Formerly missionary-dominated churches and institutions are coming under the control of nationals, and student movements (Latin American Union of Evangelical Youth -- ULAJE, and Student Christian Movement -- MEC) or other ecumenical groups (Church and Society in Latin America -- ISAL) are "trying to develop a Latin American consciousness" among Protestants...
...2 They collaborate with other U.S...
...AID in order to keep in touch "with mission headquarters...
...Church Perqnnel qprvina thp Chu1rch in I.,tin Amrna.in 1970...
...When SIL has recorded a language, staff members, acting now as Wycliffe personnel, translate the Bible...
...The "index" figures presented in the third column refer to Protestant missionaries only, and indicate the relationship of the number of missionaries to the number of inhabitants...
...penetration and domination of the Third World...
...Reprinted in NACLA Newsletter, II, 8, December 1968, p. 15...
...Moreover, such institutions have required long-term subsidy funds and personnel from the U.S.based mission boards...
...Southern Rhodesia 19...
...Argentina 25...
...imperial hegemony, observed both in the numerical expansion of U.S...
...Since the total number of missionaries abroad reported in 1969 was 3,910 higher than in 1959, this means that nearly 85 percent of all the new missionary positions that came into being in the 1960's were in Latin America, causing an increase of nearly 50 percent in the number of Worth American Protestant missionaries in that region...
...2. "CRV: 'Abolish Peace Corps,"' NACLA Newsletter, III, 7, November 1969, p. 7. In this and the two following quotations the words "the missionary program" or "they" (implying missionaries) have been substituted for the words "Peace Corps" in the original text...
...Close relationships are usually maintained with businessmen and military to take advantage of services difficult or expensive to obtain elsewhere...
...Ethiopia 12...
...During the same decades of the 1950's and 1960's, the publicists' ideologies of the "white man's burden" and the "Good Neighbor" were replaced successively by those of "containment of Communism," "internationalization" or "denationalization" of the local economies, and a "developmentalist" ideology for the multi-national conglomerates...
...32 percent of 33,290 missionaries equals 10,653...
...North American control of Protestant missions has brought about the cultural isolation of the Protestant community in Latin America...
...A large portion of missionary personnel in Latin America today are working in educational plants, agricultural or cooperative missions, broadcasting, publishing and many other activities serving the newly created national church structures...
...360-362...
...29, Setiembre 1969, p. 8. MAIL TO: Resource Center - 12 B Church Center for the UN 777 UN Plaza New York, New York 10017 Make checks payable to: CUBA PACKET single copies $2 BOX: RECENT GROWTH OF MISSION AGENCIES...
...flags to be flown over foreign missionary stations...
...Source: Read, Monterroso, Johnson, Latin American Church Growth TYPES OF CHURCHES: MISSIONARIES AND MEMBERS A) COMMUNICANT MEMBERS B) MISSIONARY DEPLOYMENT FAI/T MISSIONS E22 PENTECOSTAL CURCIES E NEWER DENOMINATION5 ZM ADVENTIST CHURCHES _ TRADITIONAL .ENOMINAT1ONS Source: Read, Monterroso, Johnson, Latin American Church Growth- 22 - bly of Latin American Protestants meeting in 1969, spoke of the necessity that the church be truly indigenous and autonomous, stripping itself of that covering which does not permit it to express itself in form anj 2 thought born of the Latin American experience...
...Quoted in Hector Borrat, "Hacia un protestantismo latinoamericano," Protestantes en America Latina, Cuadernos de Marcha (Montevideo), Num...
...Many missionaries have been given radio transmitters by U.S...
...history is dotted with instances which indicate a strong nationalistic orientation...
...Liberia 21...
...One projected area is Ciudad Bolivar, the vast development of Bethlehem Steel in Venezuela.1 IMPERIALIST FUNCTIONS OF MISSIONARIES There are many parallels between the imperialist function of the missionaries and that of the Peace Corps...
...Soon after the U.S...
...Peru 14...
...21 - Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform...
...From the 1880's until World War II missionary agencies were founded at a rate of 30 to 40 per decade...
...recommended _ I__ v 10, kovrs- 23 - NORTH AMERICAN CHURCH PERSONNEL WORKING IN LATIN AMERICA, 1969 The figures presented below for Protestant missionaries include both those from the United States and those from Canada (a much smaller group...
...victory over Spain in 1898 and military occupation of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, missionaries and businessmen were the first civilians to arrive on the scene...
...Today, Brazil is at the top, while India, having instituted controls over missionaries, has dropped to third place...
...Century, Protestants did not really begin to penetrate until well after the Latin American countries became independent from Spain and Portugal between 1810 and 1830...
...Some contents of the "Position Paper on the Peace Corps" of the Committee of Returned Volunteers are relevant to the present discussion...
...If U.S...
...Thailand 22...
...Most of the activities of the "mainline" North American church bodies (United Methodist, United Presbyterian in the U.S.A., Episcopal, etc...
...MISSIONARIES IN LATIN AMERICA While most North American would remember the tremendous attention the missionary enterprise had given to China before 1950, and to India and Africa, still, few would be aware that of the 33,290 North American Protestant missionaries working abroad in 1969, 32 percent were operating in Latin America...
...intelligence personnel for information of various types...
...The period of growth in missionary deployment after World War II coincided with increasing U.S...
...business, military, and technical assistance personnel overseas and in the growth of Protestant missions...
...The real impetus to Protestant missionary organizations from North America came after World War II with a high of 70 organizations beign founded in the decade 1960-69...
...The incident was uncovered by a team of Catholic investigators/observers of which Novak was a member...
...mining concerns...
...Translated from Juan Gossain, "Violencia en los Llanos: Fracaso Cooperativo Origino la Rebelion," El Espectador (Bogota), February 27, 1970...
...Kitts - Nevis - Anguilla 57,000 7 8.1 ---- ---St...
...Ecuador 20...
...Evangelicals" -- another term for Protestants...
...After a setback in the North American share during the depression of the 1930's, and lasting through World War II, the number of missionaries from the United States and Canada began to rise sharply, doubling in the decade of the 1950's...
...Their task is to serve as direct spokesmen with the Indians in their own languages or dialects in order to convince them that they should return with the assurance that they will not be punished...
...Note: for explanation of "index" column, see chart on page 23...
...From the arrival in India of the first British Protestant missionary in 1792 to the present, missionaries have been sent from the "great powers" to the areas in which they were achieving dominance...
...Ibid., p. 21...
...6 Moreover, many missionaries tend to hold on to chauvinist points of view by maintaining U.S...
...Several professors of the Linguistics Institute have begun to work in the area...
...In recent months in the eastern plains of Colombia, linguists of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) have used their skills as well as their elaborate air transport and communications systems in the region to aid the Colombian army in suppressing an insurgency of the Guahibo Indians...
...interests are firmly entrenched, or in India, the Philippines, and Thailand, where they are threatened...
...1 0 Concretely, this means an increase in Latin America of some 3,300 missionaries...
...South Korea 15...
...The background of overseas missions in U.S...
...Current missions planning groups suggest concentrated work in areas with high projected economic growth in Latin America, finding potential converts in the uprooted peasants flowing into new urbanizing areas, or the workers employed by U.S...
...Missionary organizations have served the interests of imperial security in still other ways...
...15-16...
...7 PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF NORTH AMERICAN PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES BY REGIONS, 1959 AND 1969 1959 Latin America Asia (including Middle East) Europe and Oceania Africa 1969 25% 32%8 38 29 5 32 10 29 Protestantism came to Latin America in two ways: the immigration of Protestant communities and missionary work...
...military...
...7. North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, 1970 (hereinafter referred to as NAPMO, 1970), a directory published biennially for the Missionary Research Library (New York City) by the Missions Advanced Research and Communication Center (Monrovia, California), p. 3. 8. The figures in this table are from the introductory discussion in NAPMO, 1970...
...1 While these ecumenical groups labor against the legacy of North American individualism and antiCatholicism in their churches, their progress in "conscientizing" fellow Protestants will permit them to join progressive Catholics in a more critical stance toward U.S...
...The discrepancy was still unaccounted for as this newsletter went to press...
...Prior to 1940, the total number of such specialized agencies did not exceed two dozen...
...These ideologies reflected the establishment of the U.S...
...Protestant data are in most cases given site by site, though a few are lumped under general area headings...
...Catholic figures are for personnel from the United States only...
...Moreover, the daily activities of missionaries keep them in contact with American government, military, and business personnel...
...In the period after World War I, the proportion grew to nearly one half...
...Moreover, in the decades since 1950, the Pentecostal movement, in many respects more indigenous than traditional denominations, and with little missionary support (see graph), has become the numerically dominant sector of Latin American Protestants...
...The result, however, has been similar in both cases: the constitution of islands which were religiously as well as culturally separated from the community...
...middle class" life styles and living standards in the field and by keeping up on events through U.S...
...missionary-sending agency, which has ome 1,762 anthropologists, linguists, and other specialists around the world...
...The ultimate goal of this process is the Americanization of the entire world...
...For example, a missionary might hitchhike to an isolated area on a plane belonging to a North American oil company working in his region or another belonging to the U.S...
...4. Loc...
...Also the Linguistics Institute provided the radio equipment in order to establish direct communications between the police station in Planas and the departmental capital...
Vol. 4 • December 1970 • No. 8
