Long Road to Obsolescence: A North American Mission to Brazil

By Frank L. Arnold

In the nineteenth century American Presbyterians were among the many Western denominations that sent missionaries to countries around the world. They established foreign Missions as bases in those lands with the intention of starting indigenous churches there. Although the Mission structures were designed to function like scaffolding during the construction of a building, to be removed when the building is complete, the Presbyterian Mission structure in Brazil remained in place for 126 years, long after the Brazilian Presbyterian Church it founded became independent and self-supporting. It was the last of the Presbyterian Missions in the world to be dissolved. The story told here documents the contributions made by North American Presbyterians in Brazil and tackles the missiological question of just why it remained in place so long, and whether it should have.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465325921

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Copyright © 2009 by Frank L. Arnold.

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Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgement

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction

Chapter 1

The New Field in Latin America

Chapter 2

Now There are Two

Chapter 3

The Role of Education

Chapter 4

The Presbyterian Church of Brazil is Born

Chapter 5

Nationalism and Division

Chapter 6

The National Church is in Place—Now What?!

Chapter 7

The Plan for Brazil

Chapter 8

National Church Growth

Chapter 9

The Presbyterian Church of Brazil Organizes

Chapter 10

The Missions of the Northern Presbyterian Church

Chapter 11

The Missions of the Southern Presbyterian Church

Chapter 12

A Call for Change

Chapter 13

The Inter-Presbyterian Council Period: Adjusting to New Realities

Chapter 14

Mission Activity in the Final Decades

Chapter 15

Ten Whirlwind Years

Chapter 16

No New Agreement

Epilogue

Appendix

Bibliography

Endnotes

Foreword

Thanks to a fortunate coincidence this book is being published at the time of the sesquicentennial celebrations of Presbyterian work in Brazil. In August 1859 the Rev. Ashbel Green Simonton arrived in Rio de Janeiro as the first missionary sent to Brazil by the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PCUSA), the Northern Church. Ten years later, in 1869, the pioneers from the Southern Church (PCUS) also arrived—Revs. Edward Lane and George Nash Morton. Thanks to their efforts, and those of their native colleagues, the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil was organized in 1888 as an autonomous denomination, independent from the North-American mother churches. Thus, the Presbyterian Church was the first denomination of North-American extraction to be established in Brazil. The Anglican, Lutheran, and Congregational churches, which had arrived previously, were all European in origin.

Today, a century and a half later, the various Presbyterian branches in Brazil amount to over one million communicant and non-communicant members. In terms of its membership, Presbyterianism holds a middle position among the Protestant groups of Brazil. It is not as numerous as the Baptists and the Pentecostal churches, but far exceeds Episcopalians, Methodists, and Congregationalists. However, the importance of a church should not be evaluated merely on the basis of its numbers. Although Presbyterians represent only half percent of the Brazilian population, they have given significant contributions to the country by means of their evangelistic, social, and educational initiatives. For 150 years, their churches, schools, and hospitals have brought innumerable benefits to a large number of individuals, families, and communities.

The Brazilian Presbyterian churches acknowledge their immense debt towards the mother churches, which for over a century made an enormous human and financial investment in the evangelization of Brazil. Due to their piety, altruism, ability, and commitment to the gospel, many of the men and women who worked as missionaries in the huge South-American country attracted the sympathy and admiration of the nationals. They represented one of the most remarkable and fruitful developments in the history of Christianity—the Protestant missionary movement of the 19th century and a large part of the 20th.

The history of Brazilian Presbyterianism has already been told in detail by several authors. There are also some partial accounts of the Presbyterian missions that were active in Brazil. What was needed was a comprehensive narrative dealing with the whole history of the two missions (PCUSA and PCUS), as is the case with this book. For several reasons, Frank Arnold is specially cut out for the task: he worked as a missionary in Brazil for over thirty years and knows firsthand the subjects he addresses; his personal files hold a vast documentation that gives substance to the narrative; additionally, he has a positive attitude towards his topic, seeking to stress the constructive elements of the story being told and the lessons that can be relevant to the church’s continuing missionary effort.

Many observers who have studied the demise of North-American Presbyterian missions in Brazil in the 70’s and the 80’s see it as the outcome of increasing theological and missiological disagreements between the Presbyterian Church of Brazil and its counterparts in the United States. Frank Arnold opts for a different approach: the missions came to an end because they had already fulfilled their task and had become obsolete. Their main objective had been achieved long ago—planting a self-governing, self-sustaining national church. Now it was time to sound the call for withdrawal.

The challenge remains for Brazilian Presbyterians: to fulfill their Christian mandate in a context marked by painful difficulties, but also by wonderful opportunities for witness and service. The awareness of its history can help the church to reflect seriously about its mission in the world and be faithful to the task it received from Christ. This book certainly will contribute towards that end.

Rev. Alderi Souza de Matos, Th.D.

Historian of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil

Thanksgiving, 2008

This history is dedicated to all of the men and women who, over a period of 126 years, were members of one the North American Presbyterian Missions to Brazil. They are among the most hard working and committed people the Church has ever produced. Their affection for Brazil and solidarity with the Brazilians as well as their compassion for sharing the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been proven over and over through the 126 years of history covered in this book.

No one did more to help the home church, the national church, and the missionaries themselves to understand that the time had come to end the foreign Mission structure than the Rev. Emmit Young. Emmit worked tirelessly to make the eventual obsolescence of the Brazil Mission a planned one. He was highly respected by both his missionary and Brazilian colleagues and he combined a strong commitment to Christ with a keen missiological mind and evangelistic zeal. Emmit and two Brazilian colleagues died in an automobile accident on the road between Brasília and Anápolis on May 6, 1991.

Acknowledgement

While only a year in the writing, this book has been several decades in the making. History was a boring subject to me until I studied the history of the church under Paul Wooley at Westminster Theological Seminary and it came alive. Throughout the 33 years of our missionary career I collected materials, minutes and books hoping some day to write the story of American Presbyterians in Brazil, a day which finally came in our retirement years. I was encouraged in this project by former Secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Rev. Benjamin Gutierrez, and to the international mission agency of the PC(USA) for a grant to help cover expenses of research.

The author is grateful to the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, and acknowledges their permission to reproduce the photos from their archives appearing in chapters 1, 2 and 5. The same appreciation goes to the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. for permission to publish photos appearing in Chapters 9 to 11 from Board reports in General Assembly minutes.

My thanks are extended to archivists Linda Davis and Chris Paton at the John Bulow Campbell library at Columbia Theological Seminary, whose help was invaluable. Chris, with the blessing of the library, took a day of her time to scan a number of photographs from General Assembly minutes which I have used in the book. Archivist Naomi Nelson of Emory University scanned all of my own flat photographs. In addition my thanks go to missionary colleague Bill Jennings for reading the sections dealing with the Northern church’s Missions. I owe much to my son Daniel and daughter-in-law Angela for their constantly needed help in word processing and image transmission. Mrs. Jean Teare gave of her time and expertise as a former newspaper editor to edit the entire manuscript and Linda Massey lent her considerable creative skills to the design of the cover.

Finally I am indebted to my wife Hope and our children David, Deborah, John, Daniel and Steve, for their patience and support and their participation in the life of a missionary family in the great country of Brazil.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

BAC   Brazil Advisory Committee

BCC   Brazilian Committee on Cooperation

BNM   Board of National Missions

CAVE   Evangelical Audiovisual Center

COEMAR   Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations

CWS   Church World Service

DCE   Director of Christian Education

DIM   Division of International Mission

EC/BM   Executive Committee of the Brazil Mission

GA   General Assembly

GAMB   General Assembly Mission Board

EBM   East Brazil Mission

ICCC   International Council of Christian Churches

IPC   Inter-Presbyterian Council

IPCB   Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil

NBM   North Brazil Mission

JMC   José Monoel da Conceição

ORE   Office of Review and Evaluation

PCA   Presbyterian Church of America

PCPC   Presbyterian Commission on Cooperation

PCUS   Presbyterian Church in the United States

PCUSA   Presbyterian Church in the United States of America

PC(USA)   Presbyterian Church in the United States of America

SBM   South Brazil Mission

TEE   Theological Education for Extension

TMC   Teacher of Missionary Children

UPCB   United Presbyterian Church of Brazil

UPCUSA   United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America

WBM   West Brazil Mission

WCC   World Council of Churches

Introduction

This is the story of the relationship of a North American church with its Mission organization in Brazil and their Brazilian daughter church. The would-be church planters were Presbyterian missionaries sent to Brazil in 1859 by the Presbyterian Church in the USA just before the American Civil War. Although American Presbyterians separated into Northern and Southern branches by that traumatic struggle, they worked together in Brazil to plant one national Presbyterian body there. Following the practice of Western churches in the nineteenth century, the project began with the establishment, on Brazilian soil, of a foreign Mission structure made up of American missionaries who maintained a close relationship to the sending church in the home country.

North American Presbyterians did not go to Brazil with the intention of staying forever. The Mission which they set up in that country was intended to be like the scaffolding of a building: vital to the construction process, but to be removed when the building was complete and its supporting role no longer needed. If asked how long they expected their Mission organization would remain in existence, the pioneers probably would have replied that the Mission was intended to become obsolete and be dissolved once the national church was in place and able to assume its responsibilities. They would have acknowledged that the process would require planning and evaluation on their part. The pioneers, however, did not spend much time thinking about this: they were too absorbed in the hard work of establishing a national church where there had been none.

The Brazil Mission, established in 1859, was finally dissolved 126 years later when the national church it brought into being was well into its second century of life.

A major purpose for writing this account is to document the facts which may provide an answer to the following questions: could or should the Mission have been dissolved before it actually was; did the North Americans not recognize, or did they disregard, the signs of the national church’s maturity; was the Mission’s eventual dissolution a direct result of planning and evaluation on the part of the missionaries who followed the pioneers?

The story that unfolds in these pages is much more than a history of North American Presbyterians in Brazil. It is a missiological case study. This sub-plot makes for a fascinating account and one which yields valuable lessons for present mission work. While the story of the founding of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, as well as some of its history, has been told by both Brazilian and North American historians, little has been written about the history of the Mission itself and the process by which it reached an end. Our story focuses on the contribution of the North American mission to Brazil, but includes, to a lesser extent, the story of the national church. A source of frustration to the author was having to leave out, because of space limitations, so many names and so much of the fascinating detail of the work done by the many hundreds of U.S. Presbyterians who went and left their mark on Brazil over the 126 years covered here. To those whose names do not appear on these pages, many of them my own highly esteemed colleagues, my sincere apologies.

The story begins with the Mission’s planting of its daughter church in Brazil and continues through the extensive period in which the Mission operated as a parallel entity alongside the national church after the latter had been securely established. It includes the post Civil war period, when pressure to end the foreign Mission structure increased from both the national and the sending church, and ends with its dissolution in 1985. While American Presbyterians founded many Missions in countries around the world, and they in turn founded national churches in those countries, the Brazilian case is worthy of special attention to those concerned with world mission strategy, in part because the Brazil Mission was the one that held onto its institutional life the longest and was the last to go.

Although I have referred to the Brazil Mission in the singular, the fact is that over the decades the two U.S. Presbyterian denominations, because of the immense size of Brazil, established several geographically defined Mission organizations in the country. We shall follow the birth and passing of each until the last of them ended its existence. Included in our story will be the specific contributions of these Missions which, in the peak year of 1964, had 243 missionaries in the field, almost all of them North Americans.

In the process of telling the story of these Missions we shall describe, albeit in an encapsulated manner, the birth, activity and progress of the national church they helped to establish. The author spent thirty three years as a Presbyterian missionary in Brazil, encompassing the last three decades of the life of the Missions, exactly the period when they turned their responsibilities over to the national church and, having become obsolete, ceased to exist. As the last General Secretary of the Brazil Mission, I was personally involved in the negotiations for the changes that took place both in the national church and the home church, and in the Mission’s reaction to them. Many of the documentary sources for the information provided in this story are in my own library.

The reader should not take the passing of the Mission structure to mean the end of North American Presbyterians’ mission in Brazil, for that mission continued after the foreign Missions were dissolved.¹ It continues today as a partnership in which the reunited North American Church (PC(USA)) works together with its Brazilian partners to carry out mission in both of their countries as well as in others.

For those interested in how the world mission mandate of the church of Jesus Christ is being carried out by his disciples in these modern times, there is good reason to follow the long road to the obsolescence of the Brazil Mission. The story of American Presbyterians in Brazil stands as a lesson-filled case study for understanding the great foreign mission movement of the Western church in the nineteenth century. Our emphasis here is not academic but rather descriptive, as a starting point for thematic and critical studies. There are lessons to be learned, models to be followed and mistakes to be avoided. While the Western foreign Mission structures are mostly a thing of the past, mission workers in pioneer church planting situations today are still faced with decisions about when it is time to get out of the way and leave a church on its own. It is the author’s intention and hope that the story of the birth and passing of the Mission structures in Brazil will shed some light on this question and provide guidance to those who face it in a different form today.

Chapter 1

The New Field in Latin America

Brazil’s Turn

North American Presbyterians have been active participants in the worldwide mission effort of the church since the early nineteenth century. Even before organizing a denominational sending agency their missionaries were going out through the interdenominational American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions headquartered in Boston. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church formed its own Board of Foreign Missions in 1837 because it recognized that the world is a mission field and the church a missionary society. It took over the responsibility for forty-four missionaries already overseas or under appointment with the Western Foreign Missionary Society of the Synod of Pittsburgh, which it then replaced. In 1859, on the eve of the Civil War the Board counted 109 missionaries under appointment.¹ Presbyterian work overseas began in the Middle East, the only Latin American countries represented at that time being Argentina and Columbia.

Brazil was about to be added to the list. Ashbel Green Simonton, a young student at Princeton Seminary had been influenced, through a sermon by the distinguished professor Dr. Charles Hodge, to offer his life in foreign mission service and was seeking God’s guidance as to where to serve. Dr. J. L. Wilson, then Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board, urged Simonton to consider Brazil, which he saw as a land with a great need of the Gospel. Simonton agreed, the Board concurred, and on June 28, 1859 he sailed from Baltimore on the Banshee bound for Rio de Janeiro.

Religion in Brazil

Brazil’s religion, like that of all the other countries in South America, is nominally Roman Catholic. Shortly after Brazil’s discovery by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Alves Cabral, a French expedition which included a small number of Reformed Protestants had taken part in a colonization effort that ended in failure and the martyrdom of three of them. One more incursion of Protestants occurred in the seventeenth century when the Dutch invaded Brazil’s northeast coast and occupied a large area setting up a Reformed church which included several presbyteries and a synod. The Dutch remained for 24 years but, after they were expelled in 1654 by the Portuguese, no more Protestants were seen in Brazil for nearly 300 years.

Brazil was a monarchy, ruled by the open-minded emperor Dom Pedro II, when Presbyterians arrived in 1859. It had a rather liberal constitution for a Roman Catholic country in that day. While Catholicism was the official religion of the state, other religions were permitted with limitations. The fifth article of the Constitution read: The Roman Catholic church shall continue to be the established religion of the State, all other religions shall, however, be tolerated with their special worship in private houses and in houses designated for this purpose, without the exterior form of a temple. Pioneer missionary Alexander Blackford commented, The courts have decided that the phrase ‘without the external form of a temple’ means that non-Roman Catholic churches cannot have steeples and bells in them.² In 1910, following the signing of a commercial treaty with Portugal which opened Brazil’s ports to England, the Anglicans who came to Brazil were permitted to conduct worship subject to the above limitations prescribed by the Constitution. German and Swiss Protestant immigrants, who had been welcomed by the Brazilian government, followed the English in the early decades of the twentieth century and brought with them pastors who ministered exclusively to their own countrymen.

Two of the first Protestants from North America to visit Brazil were the Rev. Justin Spaulding and the Rev. Daniel Kidder. They were Methodists and representatives of the American Society of the Sailors’ Friends.³ Later came Presbyterian James Cooley Fletcher as a missionary of the same society. Like most expatriates, these men made their home in Rio de Janeiro, the country’s principal port and its largest and most developed city. Kidder and Fletcher lived in Brazil for many years and traveled extensively though they did not seek to start churches among Brazilians. A major source of information for North Americans about Brazil in mid eighteenth century was a book called "Brazil and the Brazilians, co-authored by Kidder and Fletcher.⁴ While they focus on geography and culture, some attention was given to the religious situation in the country. Since Roman Catholicism was the official religion of the country the salary of its professional clergy was paid by the government. Not only were there too few priests to attend to a population dispersed throughout Brazil’s immense geography, but they were ill-prepared and poorly motivated. A report from the government Ministry of Ecclesiastical Relations in 1834 said:

Even among those who do become ordained few dedicate themselves to the priesthood as such. Some go back to secular activities in search of greater advantages and positions for themselves while others become chaplains or find equal or better positions which don’t require as much effort or expense as does the priesthood.⁵

It is hard to find anyone of that period who did not find fault with the priesthood as it was then. The great insufficiency of clergy was described in detail by the priest Paschoal Lacroix in a book entitled Brazil’s Most Urgent Problem. The sad situation of the clergy was reflected in a spiritually impoverished and demoralized population and this was reported to the American people through the writings of Kidder, Fletcher and others:

The priests, to some extent, owe their loss of power to their shameful immorality. There is no class of men in the whole Empire whose lives and practices are so corrupt as those of the priesthood. It is notorious . . . Every newspaper from time to time contains articles to this effect . . . ⁶

There is little doubt that reports like this influenced the Foreign Mission Board’s decision to open a new field in Brazil.

The first foreign missionary to organize churches among the Brazilian people in modern times was the Rev. Robert R. Kalley, a Scotch Presbyterian turned Congregationalist. Kalley had served for several years on the Island of Madeira, where he learned Portuguese and narrowly escaped with his life when his well-attended Bible studies provoked a violent persecution on the part of fanatical Catholics. After several years of exile in the United States, Kalley, who had become a Congregationalist, went to Brazil in 1855. Although there were a number of Lutheran pastors already in the country when Kalley arrived, they worked exclusively with the Lutheran European immigrant communities and none had sought to begin a church among the natives of the land. That honor goes to Robert Kalley who organized the Fluminense church (Congregational) in Rio de Janeiro in 1858. It was the first Protestant church in Brazil to be organized with native Brazilians.

The Pioneer

The voyage of the first Presbyterian missionary to Brazil took 45 days and included a terrifying near collision with a larger vessel in mid-ocean on a dark night. A grateful Ashbel Green Simonton looked out at the harbor of Rio de Janeiro on August 11, 1859 and wrote in his diary, My main feelings are of happiness that the long journey is over and anxiety about the great responsibilities and the difficult work that await me.⁷ Simonton had no doubt about his call to serve God in a foreign land. A native of West Hanover, Pennsylvania, he was 26 years old and fresh out of Princeton Seminary with no experience in pastoral ministry. He was well aware of what he might face in his adopted land. While still in seminary he noted in his diary:

Whoever would save his life will lose it. The only security is found in complete submission to the purposes of God. Under his care there is security even in the place of danger; without his presence there is no security at all.⁸

image%2036.jpg

The Rev. Ashbel Green Simonton,

first North American Presbyterian missionary to Brazil.

Typical of the time, the Mission Board provided no cross-cultural orientation for new missionaries. Cultural anthropology and missiology were disciplines not yet developed. Without knowledge of the language, Simonton began his work with the sailors in the port of Rio using only English, but soon rented a room with a Portuguese-speaking family and began learning the language he was to dominate so well. He traded lessons in English and Hebrew for Portuguese and eight months after his arrival he led a service in Portuguese for the first time. He soon began Bible studies in Portuguese on Sunday afternoons in the rented second story of a building where he also held worship services in English in the morning. Simonton was ready to begin his work, mindful of the immensity of the task before him was. However, he was not to be alone for long.

Reinforcements Arrive

Given the turmoil in the United States between April, 1861 and April, 1865, the period of the Civil War