History of the Reformation and Reformed Churches — Unit 9: Reformed Missions and Churches in Latin America, Africa, and Asia

Key Verse

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain that the Reformed faith has been carried across the world from the sixteenth century onward, and name early examples.

2. Describe the beginning of Reformed and Presbyterian churches in Latin America, with Brazil as the main example, and the setting for Mexico.

3. Describe the growth of the Presbyterian church in Korea and the principles that guided it.

4. Describe Reformed missions in Africa, including both their fruit and the failure of the Dutch Reformed Church over apartheid.

5. State the main objections and historians' debates about Reformed missions and answer them from the Reformed side.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the Reformed tradition for students who belong to it, or who wish to understand it from within. It is conservative and confessional. When it says "we," it means the Reformed and Presbyterian churches that hold Scripture to be God's inspired and inerrant Word and that confess the doctrines of grace. Where historians disagree, or where other Christians see things differently, we state their views fairly and then give our answer. Many students of this seminary live in the lands named in this unit. This unit is written to be careful and honest, and it names only what can be said with confidence. Where we do not know the details, we leave them out.

Reformed Faith and the Great Commission

Some people think that the Reformed faith has little interest in missions. The history of the church says otherwise. The Reformed tradition holds that God has people in every nation. Jesus told His disciples to make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19). In Revelation 5:9 the redeemed come from "every tribe and tongue and people and nation." The doctrines of grace do not take away the command to go. They give hope that the work will bear fruit, because God Himself calls His sheep. Paul was able to stay in Corinth and preach when he was afraid, because the Lord told him, "I have many people in this city" (Acts 18:10).

The Canons of Dort, which you studied in Unit 6, say that the promise of the gospel is to be proclaimed to all people without distinction. The Reformed churches have taken this seriously. William Carey, who sailed to India in 1793, was a Particular Baptist who held the doctrines of grace, and he is often called the father of modern missions.

Early Reformed Missions

Geneva and Brazil, 1557. The first Reformed missions reached the Americas in the sixteenth century. A French nobleman founded a small colony in Guanabara Bay, near what is today Rio de Janeiro, and asked Geneva to send pastors. Calvin and the Genevan church sent ministers there in 1557. The colony did not last. The Portuguese destroyed it in 1560. But it shows that Geneva's interest in missions began early. One of the colonists, Jean de Léry, wrote an account of his time in Brazil, which was published in 1578.

The Dutch Reformed overseas. In the seventeenth century the Dutch carried their church with them in trade and settlement. Dutch Reformed churches were planted in the northeast of Brazil during the Dutch occupation, from 1630 to 1654. Dutch Reformed ministers also served in Asia under the Dutch company, and the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa began with the settlement at the Cape in 1652.

The Spanish Bible. Many of our students read the Bible in Spanish, and its history is part of the Reformed story. The first complete Protestant Bible in Spanish was published in 1569 in Basel by Casiodoro de Reina, a Spanish Protestant in exile. Cipriano de Valera, another exile, revised it, and his revision was published in 1602. Valera also translated Calvin's Institutes into Spanish, published in 1597. Thus the Spanish-speaking Protestant churches have a Reformation Bible from the sixteenth century, and the Reformed faith has been available in Spanish for over four hundred years.

The modern missionary movement. In the nineteenth century, Presbyterian and Reformed churches in Scotland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Britain and the United States organized missionary societies and boards. Alexander Duff, a Scottish Presbyterian, arrived in Calcutta in 1830 and opened a school to teach Christian truth and modern learning together. Presbyterian missions also served in Latin America, Africa and the Far East.

Latin America

The Reformed faith had a hard road in Latin America. For centuries Rome was the established church, and the Reformation was closed out of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. In the nineteenth century, after the wars of independence, new governments opened the door for Protestant missionaries. In Mexico, the liberal reforms in the middle of the century widened religious freedom, and in the 1870s Presbyterian missionaries from the United States began work there. A Mexican Presbyterian church grew from this work, and today the Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México is among the Presbyterian churches of the country. Presbyterian and Reformed churches also exist in Colombia, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba and many other Latin American lands.

Brazil. The best-known story is Brazil. Ashbel Green Simonton, a young American Presbyterian, arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1859. He learned Portuguese, preached, taught, and in 1862 organized the first Presbyterian church in Rio. The church grew through preaching, schools, the distribution of Bibles and the work of Brazilian ministers. A synod was formed in 1888. The Presbyterian Church of Brazil became one of the major Reformed churches of Latin America and a missionary-sending church. It faced the usual troubles of all churches, including divisions, and we do not claim that its history is simple. But it shows that the Reformed faith can take root in a Portuguese-speaking land and be led by Brazilians.

In both Mexico and Brazil, as elsewhere in Latin America, Reformed churches are today small compared with the Catholic and Pentecostal communities. The Reformed contribution has been teaching, schools, Scripture translation, confessions and trained pastors. We honor brothers in other evangelical traditions, and we hold fast to the truths we believe Scripture teaches.

Korea

Korea is one of the most remarkable stories in Reformed history. Presbyterian missionaries arrived in the 1880s. Horace Allen, a medical missionary, came in 1884, and Horace Underwood, a Presbyterian minister, came in 1885. In 1890 John Nevius, an American Presbyterian missionary in China, visited Korea and taught the missionaries principles for planting churches. The "Nevius method" included these ideas: each believer should keep working at his own job and witness; the church should govern itself through its own leaders; the church should pay its own way; the church should build in the local style; and new believers should study the Bible together in classes. The Korean churches received this teaching and made it their own.

Koreans translated the Bible, prayed and gave. In 1907 a great revival came to Pyongyang, marked by confession of sin and prayer. In that same year the Korean Presbyterians formed their first independent presbytery and ordained their first Korean ministers. A General Assembly followed in 1912.

The Korean church later suffered under Japanese rule, which began in 1910. In the 1930s the rulers pressed all Koreans to take part in Shinto shrine ceremonies. Many Christians refused, because they believed it was idolatry (Exodus 20:3-5), and some were imprisoned. Some church leaders yielded, and the church was divided on how to answer. After 1945 Korean Presbyterianism divided many times, and today there are many Presbyterian denominations in Korea. Korean churches now send missionaries around the world.

Taiwan and India

George Mackay, a Canadian Presbyterian, began work in northern Taiwan in 1872 and trained local preachers. In India, Duff's school was followed by many others. In both lands the Reformed churches have remained small minorities but have given a large service in education and medicine. We name them to remind students that the Reformed faith in Asia is wider than Korea.

Africa

The Reformed faith came to Africa through Dutch, Scottish, Swiss and American churches.

South Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church began with the Dutch settlement at the Cape in 1652. Its mission work among African people produced Reformed believers and later separate "daughter" churches. Andrew Murray (1828-1917), a Dutch Reformed minister, wrote devotional books that are read around the world. But the Dutch Reformed Church also gave a theological defense of racial separation under the system called apartheid. This was a grievous failure, and we say so plainly. In 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches declared that apartheid and its defense were contrary to the gospel and suspended the membership of two white South African Reformed churches. The same year, black Reformed Christians in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church drafted the Belhar Confession, which was adopted in 1986. It confesses unity, reconciliation and justice. Reformed churches around the world have debated whether it should stand beside the older confessions. We honor its protest against racial injustice, and we hold that Scripture, not any single confession, is our final authority. Course 3 will treat the question of confessions.

Scottish missions. Scottish Presbyterian missionaries founded the school at Lovedale in the Eastern Cape in 1841, which trained African teachers and ministers. Scottish missions also began Livingstonia in 1875 and Blantyre in 1876 in what is now Malawi.

West Africa. The Basel Mission began work on the Gold Coast in 1828, and the Presbyterian Church of Ghana grew from that work. In Calabar, in what is now Nigeria, Scottish Presbyterians began a mission in 1846. Mary Slessor, a Scottish Presbyterian, arrived there in 1876 and served among the people for many years.

Congo. William Sheppard, an African American Presbyterian missionary, went to the Congo in 1890. He told the world about the cruelty of the rubber trade under King Leopold's rule, and he was tried for it and acquitted. His life shows that missionaries sometimes stood against evil, not with it.

Reformed churches in Africa today are mostly led by Africans. Many have strong programs for training pastors, and many struggle with poverty, with divisions, and with the competing claims of teachers who promise wealth through faith. These are pressures that the Reformed faith, with its stress on the whole counsel of Scripture and trained ministers, is able to answer.

Objections and Answers

Objection 1: Missions served colonial powers. Historians note that missionaries often traveled on the same ships as soldiers and traders, shared the attitudes of their time, and sometimes defended colonial rule. Our answer. This is true in part, and we do not defend the sins of missionaries or of the churches that sent them. The apartheid failure is the clearest example. But the record also shows missionaries who opposed injustice, like Sheppard, and who translated Scripture and trained local ministers. The Nevius method aimed at churches that governed and supported themselves, and the churches of Korea, Brazil and Africa became their own.

Objection 2: Calvinism kills missions. Some think that a doctrine of election makes evangelism pointless. Our answer. History disagrees. The Canons of Dort command that the gospel be preached to all. Carey, Duff, Simonton, Mackay, Mary Slessor and many others held to the doctrines of grace and went. Election gives the missionary confidence that God will gather His people.

Objection 3: Protestant churches are foreign in Latin America. A Catholic neighbor may say, "Your church came from America." Our answer. The seed is Scripture, which belongs to all nations. The Spanish Bible, and the Spanish Institutes of Calvin, were made by Spaniards in the sixteenth century. Geneva sent pastors to Brazil in 1557, before most American churches existed. We say this kindly, without mocking anyone. The test of a church is not its place of origin but whether it teaches the Word of God.

Objection 4: The Reformed churches are small compared with Pentecostal churches. Our answer. This is true in much of Latin America and Africa. Numbers do not measure the Lord's approval. We value the gifts of the church that He gives to Reformed churches: teaching, careful order and a faith that is held with a confession. We rejoice in all that is true in other churches, while we differ on baptism of the Spirit, on church government and on the gifts. We do these things in love.

Pastoral Application

A pastor in a Presbyterian church in Mexico hears that a neighbor of a new member has said, "Your church is an American religion. It is not ours." The new member, who came from a Catholic family, is hurt and confused.

First, the pastor listens and takes the question seriously. The member needs comfort, not a lecture.

Second, he goes first to Scripture. The gospel is for all nations (Matthew 28:19), and the church is built on Christ and not on a nation.

Third, he gives the history in a few clear lines: the Bible in Spanish was made in the sixteenth century by Spanish believers, and Geneva sent pastors to Brazil in 1557.

Fourth, he reminds the member that the church in Mexico is led by Mexican pastors and elders and supported by Mexican offerings, as the Nevius method taught. He asks the member to answer the neighbor with kindness and an invitation to read the Bible together.

Summary

The Reformed faith has been a missionary faith since Geneva sent pastors to Brazil in 1557. Dutch, Scottish, Swiss and American churches carried it to Latin America, Africa and Asia. In Brazil, Simonton arrived in 1859 and the first church was organized in 1862. In Mexico, Presbyterian work began in the 1870s. In Korea, the Nevius method and the revival of 1907 produced a large Presbyterian church that suffered under Japanese rule. In Africa, Scottish, Swiss and American missions planted churches, while the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa gave a failed theological defense of apartheid, which the wider Reformed family rejected. Critics say that missions served colonial powers, that election kills missions, and that Reformed churches are foreign. We answer from Scripture and history, admit real faults, and hold that the gospel belongs to every nation.

Further Reading

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845).

• The Canons of Dort (1619), on the free proclamation of the gospel.

• Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (1578), a primary source.

• Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) and Heidelberg Catechism (1563).

• The Belhar Confession (1986), noted here for later study.

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