Circulation of Protestant Bibles and Religious Tolerance in Post-independent South America: The view of Luke Matthews, 1826-1829

Abstract

This article analyzes the travel accounts of Luke Matthews, an agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) who travelled across South America between 1826 and 1829. His mission was to circulate copies of the Protestant version of the Bible by following the same route that James Thomson had followed a few years before. While Thomson visited big cities and established relationships with local political and ecclesiastic authorities, Matthews travelled across small, isolated and recondite towns, and engaged with parish priests and common people. As shown in Matthews’s reports, reactions to both his own presence and the circulation of Protestant bibles were diverse and in many cases they were favorable. The availability of such bibles allowed many parish priests in small towns to solve practical problems of their own evangelizing mission. This led them to receive those bibles and even challenge the opinion of the ecclesiastic authorities. This shows that there was not a monolithic view about the presence of Protestant missionaries within the Catholic clergy. This also contradicts the idea that the spread of Protestant ideas and practices were resisted by a strong Catholic society.