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 SAMUEL GUY INMAN 
 
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 Christian Woman’s 
 Board of Missions 
 
 College of Missions Building 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 
 
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 Panama Congress 
 
 and the 
 
 dples of Christ 
 
 
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 Published by the Christian Woman’s Board of 
 Missions, College of Missions Building, Indianapolis, 
 Indiana. Price 5 cents each; 50 cents per dozen. 
 
 217 
 
THE PANAMA CONGRESS AND THE 
 DISCIPLES OF CHRIST. 
 
 Samuel Guy Inman. 
 
 Christianity is a world religion. It bears 
 the burden of the world on its shoulders. It 
 carries the horizon of the world in its eyes. 
 It is a good shepherd religion and its heart 
 can find no rest so long as there is one single 
 sheep out of the fold. As it goes on its way 
 it picks up the continents, the little ones and 
 the big ones, and seeks out diligently the 
 islands of the sea. It wishes to whisper some- 
 thing to them. It wishes to tell them “God 
 is love.” The Congress on Christian Work in 
 Latin America, which was held at Panama 
 February, 1916, is a part of the great mission- 
 ary strategy which Christianity as a world 
 religion has been developing especially dur- 
 ing the last century. It has been my priv- 
 ilege for the last two years to be closely asso- 
 ciated with the two leaders who more than 
 any other living men embody the idea of mis- 
 sionary strategy, Mr. Robert E. Speer and 
 Mr. John R. Mott, and to sit in the council of 
 those great interdenominational and interna- 
 tional organizations which are doing most to 
 develop for the missionary enterprise what 
 the French call in the present war “grand 
 strategy” — that is a plan which takes in the 
 whole field and moves unitedly and determin- 
 edly to accomplishment of one supreme object. 
 3 
 
And so remarkably lias tliis strategy devel- 
 oped that at the present time no foreign mis- 
 sionary society dares project its program in 
 any field without taking into consideration 
 what other like agencies are doing, and what 
 its peculiar contribution can be to that one 
 far off divine event to which the whole mis- 
 sionary enterprise moves. Let us hope that 
 the same may become true of the home mission 
 field. 
 
 In the development of this missionary strat- 
 egy, conferences, such as the one held at Pan- 
 ama, have played a large part. The first in- 
 terdenominational missionary conference held 
 at the home base met in New York in 1854. 
 Like conferences, each marking an advance, 
 followed, in Liverpool in 1860 and in London 
 in 1878 and 1888. The great Ecumenical Con- 
 ference was held in New York ill 1900. Fol- 
 lowing this was the World Missionary Confer- 
 ence in Edinburgh in 1910, which marked a 
 great advance on preceding conferences, es- 
 pecially because of the exhaustive investiga- 
 tions made by the commissions, which showed 
 as never before the demand for unity in the 
 foreign fields. The Chairman of the Commis- 
 sion on Survey said that without increasing 
 the missionary force by a single man the work 
 could be easily doubled by uniting the present 
 forces in the field. 
 
 Latin America as a mission field was not 
 considered at Edinburgh. However, a little 
 company of those from Latin America, who 
 were there in other capacities, met together 
 4 
 
several times and with tlie encouragement of 
 a few American board secretaries, decided that 
 at some future time a meeting should be held 
 that would do for Latin America what Edin- 
 burgh did for the Oriental fields. Four years 
 later when I was starting on a trip for my 
 own board through Latin America, I was re- 
 quested to consult with the missionaries as to 
 the advisability of having such a conference, 
 and the time, place and character of the meet- 
 ing. On rendering my report when I re- 
 turned, a representative committee of the 
 boards decided to have the conference at Pan- 
 ama, February 10-20, 1916. 
 
 The preparation for the congress required 
 more than a year’s work. The eight commis- 
 sion reports which form the most exhaustive 
 studies of Latin-American life ever made, 
 should be in the hands of everyone desiring an 
 accurate knowledge of the subject. These re- 
 ports pointed out with such scientific accuracy 
 the need of uniting the forces that the repre- 
 sentatives present from twenty-two nations 
 and fifty denominational organizations spent 
 most of the ten days in studying how this co- 
 operative program should be put into effect. 
 
 As a result there was organized what many 
 consider the most effective co-operative move- 
 ment, taking in both the missionary boards at 
 home and the forces on the field, that has been 
 developed in the history of missions. Besides 
 the central Committee on Co-operation in 
 Latin America, composed of a representation 
 of thirty Mission Boards doing work in Latin 
 5 
 
America, there was organized by the Regional 
 Conferences following Panama a Co-operative 
 Committee in every center in Latin America, 
 so that from the central office in New York 
 there extends a perfect chain connecting each 
 Mission Board with every other one and with 
 every worker in every part of Latin America. 
 By February, 1917, it is expected that the home 
 end of the problem will be far enough worked 
 out for the Executive Secretary to take a six 
 months’ trip through South America to co-or- 
 dinate the forces in the field. 
 
 Besides the matter of Christian Union, the 
 Panama Congress faced two other tremen- 
 dously impelling situations. The first one was 
 the immensity of the task of evangelizing 
 Latin America. Think of the mere physical 
 size of the field ! 
 
 Beginning at the Rio Grande and stretching 
 on down through Mexico and across the rich 
 fruit belt of Central America, through the 
 West Indies, across Panama and down through 
 Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and on 
 through the abounding plains of Argentina to 
 the Strait of Magellan there is the largest 
 stretch of undeveloped, fertile land in the en- 
 tire world. While the nations of Europe pro- 
 fess to be fighting for a place under the sun, 
 in Latin America there is room for the popu- 
 lation of the entire globe without being more 
 than one-third as crowded as are today the 
 people of the little island of Porto Rico. 
 
 Just one of these twenty republics, Brazil, 
 is larger than the whole of the United States. 
 
 6 
 
Argentina is larger than the United States 
 east of the Mississippi plus the first tier of 
 states to the west. Out of seven hundred fifty- 
 eight million acres of tillable land in Argen- 
 tina, only fifty million acres are now being 
 cultivated. There is more undiscovered terri- 
 tory in Brazil than there is in the whole con- 
 tinent vf Africa. No one who visits these 
 lands can doubt the truth of the saying of 
 keen prophets that just as the most remark- 
 able developments of the nineteenth century 
 took place in North America, so the most re- 
 markable developments of the twentieth cen- 
 tury are to take place in Latin America. 
 Cities like Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, San- 
 tiago, Havana and Mexico are among the most 
 beautiful of the entire world. Buenos Aires, 
 the third largest city on the American conti- 
 nent, has the finest theater building in the 
 world, the largest newspaper building in the 
 world, the finest jockey club in the world and 
 a municipal organization which is the won- 
 der of all who study it. Here the problems of 
 the city beautiful have been solved in a re- 
 markable way. No cost is too great for the 
 building of a park, the cutting of a new street, 
 the erection of a new municipal palace or 
 whatever else is found necessary to remove 
 ugliness and create charm. 
 
 The beauty of her cities and the material re- 
 sources of her mountains and plains make 
 Latin America the wonder of the world. But 
 when we turn to her inner life, what do we 
 find? In practically every one of these great 
 7 
 
cities tlie educated classes either have turned 
 in violent opposition to the church of their 
 fathers, or have grown so indifferent that it 
 has no influence upon their lives. You speak 
 to men who are leaders in philanthropic and 
 educational enterprises about religion and 
 they will say: “What! Religion? That is the 
 thing above all things for which we have no 
 use. Religion' has been the cause of our rev- 
 olutions; religion has opposed our progress; 
 on account of religion from fifty to eighty per 
 cent of our people are unable to read and 
 write. In the name of progress, deliver us 
 from religion.” In this wonderful city of 
 Buenos Aires, there are not one hundred 
 churches of all kinds, Protestant, Catholic, 
 Jewish and Mohammedan. There are some 
 fifty Catholic churches in this city, where Ro- 
 man Catholicism is the state religion. As for 
 Protestant churches with services in the lan- 
 guages of the people, there is not a baker’s 
 dozen, counting our own little chapel in the 
 suburbs, which seats barely a hundred people. 
 That means one evangelical church for about 
 every one hundred twenty-five thousand peo- 
 ple, and one place of worship of any kind, 
 Christian or heathen, for every seventeen 
 thousand people. There is probably no city 
 in the world, including those of the Orient, 
 that is so neglected religiously. In the capital 
 city of Paraguay, Asuncion, there are posters 
 on the street corners saying: “Abcijo con la 
 Religion ” (“Down with Religion”). It is 
 needless to say that this lack and often hate 
 8 
 
of religion is bringing results which can be 
 seen in every department of Latin- American 
 life. 
 
 Over against these conditions which show 
 that these neighbors of ours are fast becom- 
 ing a people without a religion, there was 
 placed before us at Panama the harrowing 
 picture of the paucity of effort being made by 
 evangelical Christianity to stem this tide 
 which threatens to sweep a whole continent 
 away from the moorings of a Christian faith. 
 Let us glance at the map of evangelical activ- 
 ities in these twenty republics. In Mexico 
 there are fourteen out of twenty-seven states 
 without a foreign missionary, and in some 
 others only one to a million of the population. 
 In three of the five republics of Central Amer- 
 ica there is no organized Mission Board doing 
 work. In four of them we do not sustain even 
 a primary school. In all five republics there 
 are only ten small evangelical church build- 
 ings. 
 
 When one goes down to Panama and sees 
 that marvelous work whereby the United 
 States, by the spending of four hundred mil- 
 lions of dollars has carried out the dream of 
 the ages and united the world’s two greatest 
 oceans, he goes away a living, breathing 
 Fourth of July. And yet in, this little repub- 
 lic which owes its very existence to Christian 
 United States, there is only one evangelical 
 missionary to preach the Gospel in their own 
 tongue to its four hundred thousand inhabi- 
 tants. 
 
 9 
 
There are four ordained missionaries in the 
 republic of Venezuela with a population of 
 nearly three million people. To educate the 
 eighty-five per cent of her population who 
 cannot read and write, we are supporting two 
 little primary schools with an enrollment of 
 eighty-eight children. In the whole history of 
 this republic there has never been but one 
 building, a military academy, erected for 
 school purposes. 
 
 For Colombia there was reported at Panama 
 only one ordained missionary to every million 
 of the population. There has never been 
 erected a Protestant church building in Co- 
 lombia. 
 
 In the republic of Ecuador there is not one 
 organized Mission Board doing work. 
 
 In the northern half of Peru, a stretch of 
 territory larger than our thirteen original col- 
 onies, there is not one evangelical missionary. 
 There are ten provinces in this historic re- 
 public, all larger than Holland, where there is 
 absolutely no evangelical work. 
 
 In Bolivia there have scarcely been won so 
 far one hundred members to the evangelical 
 church. Great stretches of territory in Chile 
 and Argentina are unoccupied. Only the 
 fringes along the ocean and river fronts of 
 Uruguay and Brazil are occupied. There is 
 not one American Missionary Society at work 
 in the whole republic of Paraguay. Place 
 yourself on the boundary line between Para- 
 guay and Brazil and look north for one thou- 
 sand five hundred miles, turn gradually to the 
 10 
 
northwest until you can see two thousand 
 miles; shorten by degrees your vision until 
 you are looking due west for five hundred 
 miles, and you will not find one lone evangel- 
 ical missionary and probably not a dozen 
 Catholic missionaries in all that vast stretch 
 of country. 
 
 The awful facts of this appalling neglect 
 were what broke our hearts at Panama. On 
 the other hand, the teeming riches, the ma- 
 terial prosperity, the assured promise of a 
 wonderful future, and above all the insistent 
 invitation of many of the best known leaders 
 of Latin America, who believe as Juarez that 
 the future of their nation is wrapped up in 
 evangelical Christianity, led the congress to 
 project a great united program to give the 
 unsearchable riches of Christ to these lands. 
 
 What part will the Disciples of Christ have 
 in the enlarged program? Leaving to your 
 own consciences the appeal of our Christ on 
 the cross dying for the sins of the world, and 
 the appeal of the awful need of Latin America, 
 let me point out a few other reasons which 
 stress the fact that the part of the Disciples 
 of Christ should be very large. 
 
 In the first place our brethren of the other 
 churches expect it of us. For the first time in 
 the history of interdenominational gatherings, 
 the Disciples of Christ had a prominent part 
 in the preparation and program of the Pan- 
 ama Congress. This is encouraging others to 
 a belief that we are in earnest in our desire 
 for Christian Union, and that we are really 
 11 
 
becoming a Bible people, willing to take our 
 proper share in giving this Book to all who 
 have it not. The Interdenominational Com- 
 mittee on Co-operation passed a special reso- 
 lution at Panama inviting us to take a large 
 share in Latin-American evangelization. As 
 executive secretary of this committee I bring 
 you officially this invitation. In considering 
 it we should remember that the imperative 
 needs are forcing every Board in Latin Amer- 
 ica to enlarge, and that we, the sixth in 
 strength, are thirteenth in our contribution to 
 Latin-American missions. This should not be, 
 when such a Christian statesman as Dr. John 
 R. Mott took time in the great presure of en- 
 gagements at Panama to appear before our 
 delegation and urge that we enlarge our work 
 in Latin America because he believed that 
 our simple presentation of the Gospel is pe- 
 culiarly adapted to the needs of the Latin- 
 American people. 
 
 Again, while we are by no means adequately 
 occupying them, God has placed us in fields in 
 Latin America that are among the most stra- 
 tegic centers possible to be found. In Mexico 
 our missions are located in the two progres- 
 sive border states of Coahuila and Nuevo 
 Leon, from which have come a large majority 
 of the leaders of the present democratic move- 
 ment. Any number of the pupils of our 
 schools and admiring observers of our work 
 are now occupying prominent places in the 
 Mexican government. The Southern Presby- 
 terian church is now petitioning us to take 
 12 
 
over their work in Tamaulipas, another one 
 of these rich, progressive border states. For 
 many years these northern states will occupy 
 a predominant place in Mexico’s life. 
 
 The strategic position of Porto Rico, our 
 second field, has been emphasized lately by the 
 proposed purchase by our government of three 
 other islands close to it because of their im- 
 portant position in reference to the Panama 
 Canal. Porto Rico, though small, is the one 
 country in all of Latin America which fur- 
 nishes a laboratory for the working out of the 
 political, educational and social relationship 
 of Anglo-Saxons and Latins. Her school sys- 
 tem is so remarkably developed that the Re- 
 public of Venezuela has recently requested 
 that two hundred of her school teachers- be 
 sent to Venezuela to lead in the organization 
 of her educational system. 
 
 Buenos Aires, our third center, is the larg- 
 est city in all Latin America, the second city 
 in the Latin World. It is to South America 
 what New York and Washington combined are 
 to North America, and what London and Paris 
 are to Europe. We can not boast of the very 
 small station that we have at present in the 
 suburbs of this great city; but the point is 
 that we are located there with plans to build 
 a great institute in the city, and project our 
 work into the rich provinces of Entre Rios, 
 Corrientes and Misiones, and the Republic of 
 Paraguay. By the proper development of 
 these three fields of northern Mexico, Porto 
 Rico and Argentina, we shall show that mis- 
 13 
 
sionary strategy that led the Apostle Paul to 
 emphasize the work in Antioch, Ephesus and 
 Rome. 
 
 Then, the Disciples of Christ should have a 
 large influence in Latin America, because it 
 looks now as though the problems of Christian 
 union were going to be worked out more rap- 
 idly in these fields than in any other part of 
 the world. Already a number of laboratories 
 — conspicuously the one in Porto Rico — are 
 experimenting on this, the greatest problem 
 of Christendom. No doubt many mistakes 
 will be made; many experiments must be tried 
 out before the goal of our Lord is reached. 
 Certainly after pleading for this union for a 
 hundred years the Disciples of Christ should 
 be foremost in influence in these fields, where 
 there seem to be fewer obstacles to its attain- 
 ment than in any other part of the world. 
 
 Another reason why the Disciples of Christ 
 should have a large work in Latin America is 
 that by God’s leadership we have already 
 made a marked contribution to the strategy 
 of missions by discovering the means of reach- 
 ing the upper classes and influencing the com- 
 munity life of these people. When we saw 
 the present revolution in Mexico coming, we 
 asked ourselves what message the evangelical 
 church had to speak to the Mexican people at 
 such a crisis. We were forced to realize that 
 while our work had been well done among in- 
 dividuals, principally among the uneducated 
 classes, the Church of Christ had no means of 
 speaking to Mexico as a whole. 
 
 14 
 
In order that the community as a unit 
 might receive the impact of our Christianity, 
 and appreciate the social and political, as well 
 as the theological significance of the teachings 
 of Jesus, the People’s Institute at Piedras 
 Negras was organized. It was frankly under- 
 taken as an experiment, but its five years of 
 successful operation during a period when 
 much of the other mission work had to be 
 closed, has demonstrated beyond question the 
 great opportunities for planting similar work 
 in all parts of Latin America. The unique- 
 ness of the institute does not consist so much 
 in its methods of service — such as night 
 classes, circulating libraries, out-door gym- 
 nasium, cooking classes, community debating 
 clubs, lectures on social, educational and re- 
 ligious themes, and such things. It consists 
 rather in the persistent insistence that this 
 movement is of, for and by the people. It was 
 because the institute said to the people, “We 
 are here to help you solve your problems, to 
 lose ourselves in your life and your struggles,” 
 instead of saying, “We are here to ask you to 
 help us build up an organization which we, 
 as foreigners, have found to be the saving 
 quality in our own nation’s life,” that the 
 work became known and loved, to a remark- 
 able degree by its own community. The state 
 contributed $100 per month toward its sup- 
 port, and President Madero summoned its di- 
 rector to the national palace to discuss plans 
 for its enlargement. 
 
 And yet the home church so slightly regards 
 
 15 
 
this work that this institute has been without 
 a director for the last two years, because it has 
 been impossible to find the man of caliber and 
 consecration to lead it. Here is a position that 
 gives one a chance to rub elbows with presi- 
 dents, to advise with governors, to assist super- 
 intendents of schools to outline educational 
 systems — a position big enough to challenge 
 any man, whether he be college president, sec- 
 retary of a great missionary society, pastor of 
 one of our great churches or the director of a 
 great social movement. Hoav long will the 
 leaders among the Disciples of Christ let this 
 position go unfilled and hinder the organiza- 
 tion of other such institutions because of the 
 lack of men and money to develop them? 
 
 The Mexican Question! 
 
 The United States has been distracted be- 
 yond measure for the last five years with it. 
 And that distraction will continue until we 
 get sense enough to realize that it is not the 
 question of stopping a fight, but the matter of 
 solving a problem. It makes one sick to hear 
 the irresponsible talk about the matter being 
 settled by the capture of Villa, the elimination 
 of Carranza, intervention by our soldiers or the 
 election of a president with an iron hand, 
 either in Mexico or the United States! Let 
 us stop fooling ourselves with the fond hope 
 that some morning we will wake up to find the 
 papers announcing that by some shuffling of 
 the cards the Mexican problem has been solved. 
 Mexico is endeavoring to change from sixteenth 
 century to twentieth century conditions. It is 
 16 
 
not the case of a revolution that must be 
 squelched, but an evolution that must be guid- 
 ed. We might as well settle down to the fact 
 that it is the problem of slowly changing a 
 nation into the image of God — a God whose 
 very name is unknown to one-fifth of the popu- 
 lation and whose Book can not be read by four- 
 fifths of its people. The Mexican people are 
 not to blame for the chaotic condition of their 
 country. I challenge you to tell me what 
 nation under the sun has ever developed a real 
 democracy without having had preached and 
 ground into its life the principles of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount. I repeat that we may 
 expect no permanent settlement of the Mexican 
 problem until her people have been imbued 
 with the democratic teachings of Jesus. But 
 you say this is the word of a missionary enthu- 
 siast. Let me then give you the word of an- 
 other : 
 
 Sitting in the reception room of the People’s 
 Institute after having examined its work, then 
 Governor now President Carranza, said that if 
 there were twenty-five such institutions scat- 
 tered over Mexico the problem of revolution 
 would soon be solved. And that sentiment has 
 been echoed by hundred Mexicans who care 
 little for the propaganda of a foreign religion, 
 but who recognized the saving power of a Gos- 
 pel such as is there exemplified. 
 
 There would be no Mexican problem today if 
 the United States had displayed the same inter- 
 est in the development of Mexico’s soul as we 
 have in the exploiting of her natural resources. 
 17 
 
American capital has invested $1,000,000,000 
 in Mexico. Protestant missionary forces have 
 invested in her property about $2,000,000, or 
 one five -hundredth of the former sum. Before 
 the present revolution an official of the Gug- 
 genheim corporation told me that they and 
 allied interests had dependent upon them for 
 support one million Mexicans — one out of 
 every fifteen of the population. At that same 
 time the evangelical churches of the whole 
 world had dependent upon them the support of 
 two hundred ordained ministers, including both 
 foreigners and Mexicans, or one to every sev- 
 enty-five thousand of the population. For the 
 Christianizing of the three million Indians, 
 many of whom have recently been taking part 
 in raids on our border, Protestant Christianity 
 is not sustaining one lone worker. Yet the 
 United States has assigned to pay for the pres- 
 ent troop movements to protect our border the 
 sum of $130,000,000. This amount is too tre- 
 mendous for us to grasp; but listen to me and 
 I will tell you how far it would go toward the 
 real solution of the Mexican problem. It would 
 place in every town and city of Mexico with 
 more than four thousand people a People’s 
 Institute, a college, a hospital and a church, all 
 magnificently equipped, and sustain an ample 
 corps of workers in all these institutions for a 
 period of ten years; and over and above this it 
 would enable us to endow the public school 
 funds of each of these municipalities with the 
 sum of $750,000, the annual interest of 6 per 
 cent, on which would be more than the Mexi- 
 18 
 
can government has ever paid for education in 
 any single year of its history. 
 
 These figures apply to the whole nation. Let 
 us bring them closer home. The Disciples of 
 Christ, granting that they represent a good 
 average type of American citizen, have them- 
 selves paid for the troop movement to Mexico 
 this year the sum of $6,000,000 — that is the 
 amount that the Men and Millions Movement 
 is asking these same people to give in five years 
 for all our educational and missionary enter- 
 prises in Mexico, the United States and all 
 other parts of the world. Do not be deceived; 
 you have paid this money. Because it lias 
 come through taxes and tariffs and ingenious 
 levyings, through increased cost of living, and 
 not through direct appeal from pastor and mis- 
 sionary secretary for lump subscriptions, the 
 extraction has been more of the painless kind. 
 But you have paid it just as surely as you 
 have paid your missionary subscriptions. 
 
 Yet in our opulence we have not felt it. Dur- 
 ing the last two years the wealth of the United 
 States of America has increased $40,000,000,- 
 000. That means an average increase of capital 
 of $400 each for every man, woman and child 
 in this country. The present unbounding pros- 
 perity of this nation brings it face to face with 
 the most awful peril of its history. While 
 other nations are stretched on a Calvary cross, 
 shedding the last drop of their blood for what 
 they believe is right, we wax fat and sleep and 
 live in such luxury and extravagance that we 
 are a stench in the nostrils of all who suffer. 
 
 19 
 
Because of the European war this nation today 
 practically holds a mortgage on the world 
 financially. But the world holds a mortgage 
 on our soul. God pity us and save us! 
 
 “God of our fathers, known of old, 
 
 Lord of our far-flung battle line, 
 Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
 Dominion over palm and pine — 
 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 
 Lest we forget — Lest we forget!” 
 
 20