American missionaries in Puerto Rico were important to the Americanization of the island, which in turn furthered the influence of the American empire. However, beyond American missionaries, native Puerto Ricans also retained some agency to adapt and spread Protestantism. Most of the current scholarship on American missionaries in Puerto Rico tends to focus on one perspective or approach. This is because they focus solely on a specific set of evidence or people. By including multiple perspectives from missionaries and Puerto Ricans alike, this project aims to widen and complicate the understanding of religion and missionary work in Puerto Rico.
In her chapter “Working towards Health, Christianity and Democracy: American Colonial and Missionary Nurses in Puerto Rico, 1900–30” in the book Colonial Caring: A History of Colonial and Post-Colonial Nursing, historian Winnifred C. Connorton examines American Imperialism through American missionary nurses. In the chapter, she argues that these missionary nurses were complicit in the colonial agenda and that the growth of colonial control, the project of “Americanization,” and the growth of Protestantism in Puerto Rico are all of the mission. Winnifred C. Connorton is a historian of nursing and a practicing midwife, her research focuses on United States nurses who work in colonial territories of the United States.
To make her argument, Connorton pulls from primary sources from United States nurses and uses evidence from the lives of specific missionary nurses and doctors. Additionally, she uses a few modern historians (who work in American Imperial studies, missionary history, and nursing history) to corroborate her point. In her analysis of this evidence, Connorton concludes that American missionary nurses were complicit in the Americanization campaign, specifically when related to health. Connorton writes, The Superior Board of Health and the Protestant missions’ goals were similar: the education of communities in an American way of health. Nurses served as models for Puerto Rican nursing students in both government and mission schools, and they modeled more than just nursing care” (Connorton 140). Connorton goes on to explain that government and missionary nurses served as models of ideal American citizenship and that this tactic of medical and religious change was a “distinctly American style of imperialism – one of ideology rather than physical territory and occupation” (Connorton 141).
The source clearly explains how American missionary nurses were important not only to the missionary cause of converting people to Protestantism but also in the mission to bring territories under American influence. In other words, Connorton sees the purpose of missionaries as to bring territories under the imperial control of the United States. I agree that the missionaries played an important role in the Americanization campaign of Puerto Rico and that they likely understood that they were assisting in this campaign. However, I would argue that viewing American missionaries exclusively as imperial tools flattens their complexities.
In his article, author Angel Santiago-Vendrell argues that although American missionaries came to Puerto Rico with the express goal of preparing the region for American rule, native Puerto Ricans also played a role in the spread of Protestantism. Additionally, a minority of missionaries had “a clear vision of indigenization/contextualization for the emerging church based on language (Spanish) and culture (Puerto Rican)” (Santiago-Vendrell 1).
To illustrate this point, Santiago-Vendrell mostly uses the writings of early Presbyterian missionaries and native agents. These writings were pulled from books, magazines, and newspapers and the publishers generally had religious affiliations. Then Santiago-Vendrell uses two case studies of “native helpers” to support his argument. These “helpers” were converted Puerto Ricans who assisted in the evangelization of the island. From these sources, Santiago-Vendrell concludes “new converts saw in the gospel of Jesus Christ a viable solution to their personal problems and the problems of the island.” (Santiago-Vendrell 8) In other words, he is arguing that missionary work and Protestantism provided agency for Puerto Ricans. This clearly conflicts with Connorton’s understanding of missionary work as a mode of Americanization by the United States government. In essence, Santiago-Vendrell argues that “native helpers” or missionary-trained Puerto Ricans were not complicit in the Americanization campaign of the United States and understood their work as evangelicals in the context of religious adherence and the necessity of spreading the gospel.
I find Santiago-Vendrell’s argument compelling for a number of reasons. First, I appreciate his call to recognize the religious importance of “spreading the gospel,” this adds depth and complexity to missionaries who came to the island. Furthermore, I agree that it is important to highlight native Puerto Rican voices and show how they were valid religious actors who worked to evangelize the island. However, I disagree that this form of missionary work had few ties to the Americanization campaign of the United States. I think that these native actors and their teachers understood that their evangelical work had political consequences for Puerto Rico.
In her article “Finding My Place as a Lady Missionary,” gender and religious studies professor Beth E. Graybill is interested in the roles that religious calling and gender play in missionary work. Specifically, Graybill is investigating Mennonite missionaries after World War II and uses interviews with women who did missionary work in Puerto Rico as the main source of her evidence. From these interviews, Graybill is able to see the interplay between religiosity and gender, including ways that women justified their religious callings and perceived capability to conform to gendered expectations. For example, most women Graybill interviewed said that they did not feel capable when they first started their missionary work but instead relied on God and their religiosity to reassure themselves that they could participate in missionary activity (Graybill, 156). Additionally, all women who participated in these missions were required to have permission from a male relative and were still excepted to fulfill all of their “womanly” responsibilities (Graybill, 156). Based on these interviews, Graybill concludes that despite having to still work within gender constraints, missionary work in Puerto Rico gave women a chance to participate in church building and preaching, opportunities not provided in North American Mennonite Churches.
What I like most about Graybill’s work is her interdisciplinary approach to missionary work. She wants to investigate how gender intertwines with religiosity and missionary calling. Additionally, like Angel Santiago-Vendrell she recognizes religiosity as a valid reason for missionary work. The main reason these women wanted to go to Puerto Rico was that they felt that God had called them to. Although their actions may have had additional political or social consequences, Graybill takes seriously their claims of a religious calling.
In short, the history of American missionary work in Puerto Rico is best understood when varied perspectives are taken into account. All of the discussed historians tend to focus their approach to explain missionary work in Puerto Rico, whether that be Americanization, native agency, or gender and religious calling. I am asking you as readers to take all of these approaches and apply them at the same time in order to try and get a more complex picture of American missionaries in Puerto Rico.
Sources
Connerton, Winifred C. “Working towards Health, Christianity and Democracy: American Colonial and Missionary Nurses in Puerto Rico, 1900–30.” In Colonial Caring: A History of Colonial and Post-Colonial Nursing, edited by Helen Sweet and Sue Hawkins, 126–44. Manchester University Press, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18dzrdn.12.
Graybill, Beth E. 1999. “‘Finding My Place as a Lady Missionary:’ Mennonite Women Missionaries to Puerto Rico, 1945-1960.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 17 (January): 152–73. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=38119974&site=ehost-live.
antiago-Vendrell, Angel. 2021. “Give Them Christ: Native Agency in the Evangelization of Puerto Rico, 1900 to 1917.” Religions 12: 196. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12030196