Origin and Growth

Chapter I. Anglican Diocese in Argentina and Eastern South America

Argentina
The Argentine Chaco Mission
Uruguay
Paraguay
The Paraguayan Chaco Mission
Brazil
Diocesan Organization

Chapter II. Diocese of the Falkland Islands

Falkland Islands
Chile
Rio Douglas Mission, Tierra Del Fuego
The Araucanian Mission
Peru
The Missions to Seamen Society in S. America

The Protestant Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. Mission to Brazil, or the "Brazilian Episcopal Church

The South American Missionary Society

What Others are Doing

IT CANNOT but believe that a short volume describing generally the work of the Church of England in South America will be welcome both at home and in South America, and the present volume is an attempt to meet that need from the pen of the man most competent to write it. Bishop Every, as Bishop of the Falkland Islands (1902-1910), as the chief promoter of the new diocese for Argentina and the east portion of South America of which he became himself the first Bishop in 1910, and now, during the vacancy of the Bishopric of the Falkland Islands, in temporary charge, at the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury, of Anglican work on the west coast as well, has had unique opportunities of observing the nature of the work and its chief needs. There is no other man whose recent experience has been on so large a scale.

The vast financial interests of Great Britain in South America have been too little appreciated. They have led to a considerable population on both east and west coasts representing large mercantile enterprise, and the efforts made by mercantile houses and their representatives in South America to maintain strong chaplaincies have not always had justice done to them. The trade has involved great shipping interests, and what is stated in this volume as the work of the Missions to Seamen in that continent will be new to many. The South American Missionary Society, in addition to its work among the aborigines--a work which stirred the heart of so great a scientist as the late Charles Darwin, has all over the continent again and again fostered in early stages work that has developed into independent European chaplaincies. And the work of the Episcopal Church of the United States in Brazil has been too little known in England. This volume is an effort to describe and co-ordinate these various forms of Christian enterprise and to show, at a time when the opening of the Panama Canal is bringing South America into much greater prominence, what has already been done and what is chiefly needed now. I commend this little volume heartily to the attention of the public, and, if it should lead to a wider knowledge of, and deeper interest in the growth of the Church of England on the South American continent, I shall be profoundly thankful.

VERULAM HOUSE, ST. ALBANS, January 17, 1915.

HITHERTO there has been no general handbook of the Church's work in South America 1 (the Guianas and Venezuela excepted). The South American Missionary Society has dealt competently enough with the subject of its own Missions and chaplaincies--indeed recent works on the Paraguayan Chaco and its Mission, by Messrs. Grubb and Morrey m Jones, have reached and interested a very wide circle of readers--but that large section of the Church which is unconnected with the Society has been almost necessarily unrepresented and unknown. The present, therefore, is an attempt to do justice to the whole, to trace the origin of the Church in. the various republics and give a sketch of the work as it exists to-day. The number of Churchpeople who are really interested in the extension of their Church overseas, both among our own people and also non-Christian races, is happily increasing, and it is hoped that this little book will give them the basis of facts needed. The writer has been impelled to the task, somewhat unwillingly, by the consciousness that no one else has had such unique opportunity of becoming acquainted with the work at first hand. It seemed to him that the need existed and that it was his duty to meet it. It must be remembered that his experience of the Falkland Islands and West Coast is mostly anterior to 1910.

Project Canterbury