CHAPTER 39
How the New World of Latin America Became a Source of New Life
Guillermo Robert and Andrés Guzmán
Guillermo Robert currently teaches at the Río de la Plata Biblical Institute and is also a history professor. He is a member of AMI (International Mission Agency) and collaborates in translation with LETRA Paraguay. He is an instructor for Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. He and his wife, Laura, have served as pastors for many years. Since January 2024, he has assumed, along with Laura, pastoral responsibilities at the Baptist Church of Barrio Norte in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
Andrés Guzmán (pseudonym) with his wife, Angélica, is among the first generation of global workers from Latin America. He has worked in holistic relief and development work for more than thirty years and has led many efforts to take the gospel to the least reached.
Two European colonial powers, Portugal and Spain, share common Latin (Roman) roots. Their colonizing efforts in the Western hemisphere resulted in calling the region from Mexico in the north to Chile in the south “Latin America.” Mexico in North America is connected to South America by the small isthmus called Central America. With few exceptions, this entire region consists of various Spanish-speaking countries and Portuguese-speaking Brazil, whose size and resources distinguish it as a world in itself. A proper understanding of God’s activity in today’s world is impossible without the history of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores (conquering soldiers) and the pathway that led to the region becoming a fertile segment of today’s global church. How did this happen?
Just as the region is defined by two colonial powers and two languages, there have been two main movements of God that prepared Latin America for the unprecedented growth of Christianity in the Global South and to become an important actor in God’s mission.
The First Movement: The Cross and the Sword
Unlike Asia, Africa, and Europe, whose history connects directly with biblical times, the continents of North and South America waited for centuries before the gospel of Christ would reach their shores. When God moves, He often moves in ways that we could never anticipate. The first major movement to shine His light on the New World began amidst the violence, persistent corruption, and religious confusion of the Crusades and the Reconquista. Overlapping and competing monarchies looked for ways to expand their power and influence, and colonization in recently discovered lands was the answer.
The evils of colonization are well documented and continue to have rippling effects to this day. Portuguese and Spanish conquistadores followed the promise of gold, silver, trade routes, and national expansion. They were followed, in turn, by greed, slavery, oppression, and even the massacre of indigenous peoples. It would be easy to simply write off this entire period as an example of the loathsome wickedness that human beings can inflict on each other. However, that would ignore a pattern clearly established in the Scriptures and repeated throughout history, that even in the worst times, God is always at work to carry out His purposes. Exploitation and the gospel shared space in the same ships, the sword and the cross as a testimony of the mysterious ways of God beyond our full understanding.
Christianity arrived in Latin America primarily through Roman Catholic missionaries. The Catholic rulers of Spain, Isabel and Fernando, had a sincere desire to bring their faith to the New World. They issued decrees and instructions to expedition leaders, mandating them to have priests and friars on their vessels to evangelize the inhabitants of the newly claimed and conquered lands. Isabel specifically asked them to do this “without using any force against them.” Two priests accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second trip to the New World.
However, history objectively documents that the sword often took preeminence over the cross and used the cross as a cover for its nefarious deeds. We must also acknowledge that the “evangelization” of the indigenous peoples of Latin America was often without genuine conversion on the part of the evangelized and sometimes at the point of the sword. This resulted in a superficial, syncretic, and superstitious Catholicism. However, despite its weaknesses and flaws, no one familiar with Latin America could doubt that Roman Catholicism became so deeply rooted in the culture of the civilized areas of the region that it became inseparable.
Again, when we look at the obvious, we can overlook the plan and power of Almighty God at work in the worst times. In the ranks of the Roman Catholic clerics who operated in the New World, there were those whose faith was beyond criticism and whose veracity was confirmed by their acts of love. Some, such as Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolomé de las Casas, who advocated for laws to protect indigenous peoples, are well known. Most have been long forgotten, yet they sowed seeds of the gospel not only by teaching sacraments and Bible stories but by faithfully living out God’s love in their daily lives.
The Second Movement: Immigration, Bibles, and Mission
For over three centuries, the Roman Catholic culture dominated the masses of Latin America. Then, something unexpected happened. God used the strict discipline, liturgy, and mystery of Catholicism brought by the conquerors, allowing it to saturate for centuries to create a sincere thirst for God. When the right time came, God added the seasoning of Protestant spirituality to the cauldron. There was no explosion, and the simmering would continue for quite some time, but God was doing something special.
A few Protestants had been sent earlier, including two missionaries to Brazil sent by John Calvin himself in 1556. But the first added ingredient to established Catholicism was the immigration of Europeans seeking opportunities and religious freedom. Most lacked missionary zeal, but they brought their ethnic and denominational church traditions with them. There are still pockets of ethnic communities throughout all of Latin America that stem from this steady flow of Europeans looking for a new home.
By the early 1800s, the British and North American Bible societies, among others, began to use merchants and sailors to distribute Bibles predominantly in coastal areas such as the long coast of Latin America. One such colporteur (distributor) was the Scotsman James (Diego) Thompson (1788–1854). After settling in Argentina, he established public schools there and in Chile, Uruguay, and Peru. After his marriage, he moved again and distributed Bibles in Mexico and the Caribbean. Thomson also promoted the translation of the Scriptures into indigenous languages. His work, and that of others like him, prepared the way for the more intensive evangelization that was to come.
Latin America Takes Its Place in Global Mission
Protestant missionaries arrived surprisingly late in Latin America. Even in 1910, at the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, no Protestant workers or organizations serving in Latin America were invited because European Protestants considered the region already “Christianized” by the Roman Catholics. In response, another conference was held in Panama in 1916 to officially consider Latin America as a mission field. Protestant missionaries had begun to reach many areas by the end of the nineteenth century, but this opened the door to a flow of missionaries during the twentieth century. At first, the missionaries came from practically every North American denomination and group that one could imagine. Over the next several decades, churches and seminaries were established, slowly at first, but they gained momentum.
Just as the gospel seed was sown by God working through the sword and crosses held by imperfect servants, these new Protestant missionaries in Latin America also had their flaws and shortcomings. They often failed to train and empower local leadership. They often appeared paternalistic and unwilling to adapt to local cultures. These missionaries represented many different approaches and theologies. Sometimes they were unwilling to acknowledge that some aspects of Latin American cultures were biblical and beautiful. This is why they were sometimes seen as foreign separatists who sought to isolate people from their own culture rather than building upon it to make it better and more biblical.
The universal principle here is that God is always at work and uses imperfect vessels. Despite their flaws, God used these sincere Protestant workers just as He did with Catholics before them. The mixture in the pot was about to boil.
In North America, the astonishing growth of Pentecostal and charismatic believers was gaining strength following the Azusa Street Revival in 1906. As the waves of this revival spread from tents and public meeting places to growing churches, it would not be long before a new group of missionaries arrived in Latin America to work among the poor. The spiritual vitality and transformation they brought were like a spark that ignited the entire region. Unlike many of the previous Protestant missionaries, these Pentecostal workers were willing to quickly train and empower local pastors and lay preachers. Today, one in five Latin Americans is Protestant, and three out of four of those are Pentecostals. How has Latin America become one of the greatest forces in God’s global mission? What can we learn? At the risk of generalizing too much, four clear accomplishments over the past half century have turned Latin America into a sending force of committed workers for the global harvest.
1. Forging Its Own Theology
By the middle of the twentieth century, Latin America was turning out its own leaders and theologians. These were men like René Padilla, Samuel Escobar, Pedro Arana, and Orlando Costas, who had the advantage of theological influences in their formative years from both Europe and North America but found them insufficient to deal with injustice, oppression, economic disparity, and revolution in the context in which they were living.
They were aware of a younger generation of Latin Americans seeking answers, and they knew they had to develop biblical responses to their challenges. To do this, they used tools for inductive Bible study that they learned in their youth, mainly through itinerant women missionaries serving the university student movements of the continent.
Thus, Latin American churches started to develop their own theology to grapple with societal needs while still clinging to historical orthodoxy that seeks to live in the fullness of Christ’s kingdom now while awaiting its ultimate establishment. They do not simply use what they were taught but built upon that foundation with their own distinct prophetic voices.
2. Becoming Comfortable in Its Own Spirituality
The unique alchemy of a Roman Catholic beginning, infused with the pietist influence of Protestant immigrants and missionaries and energized by a Pentecostal outpouring, eventually led to a Latin American Christianity that no longer waits for the latest styles to arrive from Europe or North America. Equipped with its own moods, methods, and music, Latin America is home to independent indigenous church movements that probably have more in common with their African counterparts than with those in the United States. While there are still many ecclesiastical connections with North America and Europe, the Latin American church today is comfortable and confident in its own identity, which depends first on its relationship with God, not on foreign missionary benefactors.
3. Connecting with the Greater Global Church
The history of the Latin American church is not just about a church that is maturing and developing its own identity. It is important to realize how quickly the Latin church has sacrificially committed to God’s global mission. Instead of isolating itself, the last half of the twentieth century is the tale of several global conferences and organizations that formed a link between the world missionary movement and Latin America.
As early as 1966, when Billy Graham sponsored the World Congress of Evangelism in Berlin, key future missionary leaders of Latin America, like Argentine pastor Federico Bertuzzi, were influenced to develop a passion for God’s work in the rest of the world. The next step was the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974. Latin Americans have since been active participants and contributors in a large number of activities, meetings, and conferences of the Lausanne movement.
Another key link between the world missionary movement and Latin America was the visits of Operation Mobilization mission ships to the coasts of various Latin American countries since the late 1970s. Many Latin Americans who later became key leaders in the missionary movement of the region were trained and received their ministry visions while involved in different ministries with the ships.
Brazil deserves a special paragraph in our history. Already active among the least-reached indigenous peoples in Brazil, the Brazilian church was also awakened to missions at the global scale, and in 1976 Brazil held the first Latin American Missionary Congress in Curitiba, stating: “The church is a missionary church, or it is not a church at all.”
4. Training and Sending Its Own People
Ten years after the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, the Latin American delegation was challenged to promote missionary awareness in Ibero-America. At the same time, in the Latin American context, a missionary movement was being developed that now transcended denominational differences. Such a movement gave birth, for example, to La Red de Misiones Mundiales (World Missions Network) in Argentina in 1982.
Finally, a coordinated effort throughout Latin America began to take place from the 1987 COMIBAM Congress, held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This event had 3,100 participants from different denominations, from twenty-six Latin American countries, from Spain and Portugal, and 350 observers from thirty-three other nations. COMIBAM ‘87, as it was called, was for the history of the missions in Ibero-America like an explosion that reached the entire continent. Luis Bush, one of the organizers of the congress, gave voice to the conviction shared by many: “In 1916 Latin America was declared a missionary field. In 1987 Latin America declares itself a missionary body.”
Since then, the Ibero-American churches have formed denominational and interdenominational mission agencies, sending tens of thousands of people to serve as cross-cultural mission workers everywhere in the world. Brazil is considered today the second-largest mission force in the world. Beginning with the least-reached indigenous peoples in their own region, the Latin American churches have stepped up to mobilize, train, send, and care for their own missionary workers. Some work with and lead traditional agencies of the Global North, while many others are sent out through newly formed Latin American agencies. Still others have gone to limited access areas to serve as professionals and entrepreneurs and employed many other ways to engage the least-reached.
The lands that were exploited by the conquistadores have become a light to the world. And the story of Latin America as a missionary force is only beginning. 