Slavery and Protestant Missions in Imperial Brazil: "The Black Does Not Enter the Church, He Peeks in from Outside" (review)

Many British and North American Protestant denominations including Wesleyan Methodists, Presbyterians, and Quakers expressed opposition to slavery in doctrinal terms, emphasizing the immorality of slavery and its incompatibility with Jesus' teachings. José Carlos Barbosa's Slavery and Protestant Missions in Imperial Brazil examines how Protestant missionaries sought to reconcile their institutional history of abolitionism with their goals of winning converts in Catholic, slaveholding Brazil. Through his analysis, Barbosa unravels the seeming contradiction of traditionally anti-slavery Protestant denominations' collaboration with slaveholders in Brazil during an era when the very sustainability of slavery was in question. His use of travel accounts, missionaries' letters, and Brazilian newspapers' coverage of Protestant activities, as well as the theological debates in evangelical publications like the Presbyterian Imprensa Evangélica (1864–1892) allows him to analyze the institutional and rhetorical strategies taken by Catholics and Protestants, abolitionists and slaveholders, in the early decades of Protestant evangelization. Concerned that anti-slavery rhetoric might estrange influential Brazilian slaveholders, Protestant missionaries downplayed their abolitionist tenets and instead focused on winning converts and building social bases of support.

Chapter one analyzes the introduction of Protestantism in Brazil by North American missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century. The Methodists and the Methodist Episcopal Church were at the forefront of these efforts, although Barbosa also incorporates an analysis of Baptist and Presbyterian evangelization. Despite doctrinal tensions between the Protestant denominations, a sense of shared purpose to counter Catholic teaching culminated in Protestant "theological unity" in Brazil, including a common hymnal and the agreement not to establish competing churches in small towns (15). Barbosa argues that the Protestant conception of their congregants maintaining a pious cultural separation from mainstream Catholic society contributed to a fundamentally conservative Protestant culture out of step with larger changes in Brazilian society, including the growth of abolitionist sentiment after 1850.

In Chapter two, Barbosa analyzes Protestant missionary strategies. Their doctrinal emphasis on Bible reading as a path to salvation meant that many Protestant congregations focused on functional literacy. Protestants also established schools aimed at providing Brazilian elites with education based on the North American model of "individualism, liberalism and pragmatism" (30). In this way they hoped to win influential converts or at least build sympathy among elite Catholics. Barbosa interrogates the stereotypes that Protestants and Catholics developed in the periodical press; Protestant missionaries implied that Catholicism was impeding the moral, economic, and social progress of Brazil, while Catholics characterized Protestantism as a joyless, foreign doctrine not suitable for Brazilian traditions.

Chapter three, "Slavery and Protestantism," is the heart of Barbosa's analysis. He traces the tensions Protestant missionaries faced as they defined their goals in ministering to Brazilians. Protestant educational efforts focused on free Brazilians, but how should evangelical clergy minister to Brazilian slaves? Barbosa finds that Protestants took a pragmatic approach designed to increase their membership among influential Brazilians, focusing on slaves' access to faith rather than their temporal freedom. This preference for downplaying abolitionism was reinforced by the Southern doctrinal orientation of many American clergy and parishioners in Brazil. Many Evangelical Protestants had immigrated to Brazil because they believed life there would be preferable to the political and economic changes in the post-slavery South. Barbosa argues that the influence of Southern immigrants further exacerbated Protestantism's distance from the wider Brazilian acknowledgement that the end of slavery was inevitable.

Barbosa also considers the anti-slavery message of missionaries like Scottish doctor Robert Kalley in Rio de Janeiro who argued that slaveholding was incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Kalley actively sought to include slaves in his congregation, and advocated for his parishioners to free their slaves. Barbosa uses Kalley's example to show that the wider Protestant strategy to downplay abolitionism to gain followers was not the only tenable option.

One of the most compelling parts of Barbosa's book is...