RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Missions to the Heathen
has to-day increased to over nine millions. Exact data of the work among Negroes are singularly lacking. The work was in progress long before the emancipation. In 1866 Baptists and Methodists alone counted 525,000 communicants among the Negro population, which was then 5,000,000. The work entered upon a phase of great activity after the Civil War, especially through the great development of the school system, in which almost all denominations took part. The Negroes themselves have been, however, the most zealous workers for the uplifting of their race, and have since emancipation raised for school purposes about $28,000,000 and for the building of churches $40,000,000. As a result of these energetic efforts, almost the whole of the Negro population is now under Christian influences, thirteen-fifteenths being Protestant. The great majority have formed independent churches, of the members of which 1,865,000 are Baptists, 1,412,000 Methodists, and about 100,000 are Presbyterians or Congregationalists. Although the Christianity of the majority may still be at a low level, especially in the matter of morality, it is nevertheless an important fact that here the Christianization of a whole people has taken place on a grand scale. The Chinese, numbering about 100,- 000, and the Japanese, with about 40,000, form a fluctuating element of the population, since they remain only temporarily in the United States, principally in the West. Of the 4,000-6,000 Chinese who are charges of the missions, many return as Christians to China, and of the Japanese more than 1,500 were baptized in the United States during the seven years 1893-1900. See Home Missions, § 1-3, 11; Negro Education and Evangelization.
Of the Greater Antilles, Cuba, Hayti, and Porto
Rico are nominally Catholic, and in the other West
Indian islands there is also a considerable Catholic
population. More especially since the
4. West cession of the Spanish possessions to
Indies, the United States, an increasingly active Evangelical propaganda is carried on in Cuba and Porto Rico, as already at an earlier period in Hayti. The principal missionary fields are Jamaica, the English and Danish Lesser Antilles, and the Bahama Islands. In the Danish islands of the Lesser Antilles (St. Thomas, etc.), the United Brethren began work in 1732, and soon embraced Jamaica and the British Lesser Antilles within their sphere. Their entire West Indian field shows 39,000 baptized Christians and is in process of development into a condition of independence. In 1786 the Methodists entered the field, at first through the individual effort of the fervent but restless Thomas Coke (q.v.), and in 1813 as an organized work. Gradually the four principal districts, Antigua, St. Vincent, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, were included, where there are to-day 160,000 Christians. The first three districts have for a long time formed an independent West Indian district. In 1813 the Baptists also sent their workers; and as early as 1872 they formed, with about 100,000 Christians, a Baptist Union of Jamaica, and to-day their adherents in all the West Indies number more than 165,000. The largest number of adherents belong to the English Church, which has
developed great activity, especially since the emancipation. It has placed the mission in the hands of the church organizations and has educated a capable body of native teachers. There are 380,000 Christian Negroes belonging to this church. Not very wide-spread but distinguished by its stability is the Scotch Presbyterian Church mission in Jamaica, with its Christian community of 21,000. Altogether in the West Indies there are about 840,000 Evangelical Christians.
Central America (q.v.) with its five small states has an entirely Catholic population of about 5,000,- 000, composed of Indian aborigines, half-breeds, and Negroes, among whom an Evangelical propaganda is carried on from the United States; besides this
the Society for the Propagation of the
5. Central Gospel, the English Wesleyan Meth-
and South odists, and the United Brethren work
America, among the heathen on the Mosquito
Coast belonging to Nicaragua. There are about 1,300 Evangelical converts. The great South American continent is a field of Evangelical missionary effort both in its extreme northern edge, that is, in Dutch and British Guiana (see Guiana), and at its southern extremity. Since a certain degree of religious liberty was accorded, a great number of North American denominations have undertaken mission work among the nominally Roman Catholic population. Also the Presbyterians of the United States have lately started a mission to the Indians, along the Amazon in Brazil, and in Paraguay, Argentina, and Chili (qq.v.) ; this work is also pursued by the English South American Missionary Society. In Dutch Guiana (Surinam), it is again the United Brethren, who have from 1738, although with interruptions, carried on a mission which shows to-day, grouped about twenty principal stations, a body of Christians numbering 30,- 000, composed in the main of former slaves; more than half of these are inhabitants of the capital Paramaribo. More extensive and richer in results is the Evangelical mission in the neighboring British Guiana. Here the way was opened in 1807 by the London Missionary Society. The society's zeal for independence induced it, in 1838, to render selfgoverning the 18,000 converts it had made up to that date; about 6,000 formed a Congregational Union, the others joined the English Church which, entering this work in 1839, has gained a following of 130,000. The English Wesleyan Methodists as well as the Plymouth Brethren and the United Brethren have gathered together here 20,000 Christians from among the heathen. The southern missionary field consists of Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands, sparsely inhabited by a population in the lowest grade of civilization. From 1844-1860, unavailing attempts were made to establish a mission here, three by Allen Gardiner, formerly an officer in the English navy; another attempt by the South American Missionary Society ended in the murder of all the participants. In 1862 a courageous missionary, Bishop Waite Hocking Stirling, at last succeeded in founding two settlements, where up to the present day 200 Christians have been gathered by heroic efforts.
Missions to the Heathen