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Copyright by Stephen Carter Dove 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Stephen Carter Dove certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Local Believers, Foreign Missionaries, and the Creation of Guatemalan Protestantism, 1882-1944 Committee: Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Supervisor Matthew Butler Neil Kamil Thomas Tweed Douglass Sullivan-González Local Believers, Foreign Missionaries, and the Creation of Guatemalan Protestantism, 1882-1944 by Stephen Carter Dove, B.A.; M.Div. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2012 Dedication To Megan, Samuel, Ruth, and Georgia Acknowledgments During the journey of researching, writing, and editing this dissertation, I have received the generous support of many people to whom I owe more debts than I can ever repay. First and foremost, I extend special thanks to my family: to my wife Megan for her patience through my graduate studies and for being excited to move to Guatemala; to Sam for reminding me again and again (and again) that “why” is the most important question to ask; to Ruth for letting me know that it was time to take a break and play; and to our chapina Georgia for allowing me to type with one hand and give her a midnight bottle with the other. The support of my parents, Joe and Maybelle Dove, and my in- laws, Bernie and Melodye Pieniazek, has also been unwavering. Thank you. Many of the questions in this dissertation would never have been asked, much less answered, without the steady guidance of my advisor Virginia Garrard-Burnett. Thank you for advocating on my behalf even before I arrived at The University of Texas and for introducing me to Guatemala. Thank you also to the other members of my dissertation committee: Matthew Butler, Neil Kamil, Thomas Tweed, and Douglass Sullivan- González. Your insights, feedback, and critiques greatly improved this dissertation. The staff and faculty of the history department at The University of Texas have also earned my deepest gratitude, especially Marilyn Lehman who helped me navigate everything from course schedules to funding options. Thank you to professors Jim Sidbury, Jacqueline Jones, Susan Deans-Smith, Ann Twinam, Anne Martínez, John McKiernan González, Howard Miller, Megan Seaholm, and Frank Guridy for your advice along the way. For your academic insights and personal friendships, I also thank my fellow v graduate students Juandrea Bates, Claudia Rueda, Felipe Cruz, Renny Keller, Jesse Cromwell, Angela Smith, Ryan Field, Becca Havens, D.B. Briscoe, Chris Heaney, Rachel Ozanne, Rachel Hermann, Jason Morgan, and Sofía Corona. Research for this dissertation was generously funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays Fellowship program, the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas, the History Department of The University of Texas, and the Presbyterian Historical Society. I could not have earned many of these grants without the help of Julie Hardwick and the Institute for Historical Studies. I also am indebted The University of Texas’s Mesoamerican Center for allowing me to use Casa Herrera. Thank you to David Stuart, Milady Casco, Rene Ozaeta, and Paola Bueche for putting up with a historian among archaeologists for two years. Last and certainly not least, thank you to the numerous individuals in Guatemala and the United States who helped me find the sources that made this research possible. This list is not exhaustive, but a special thank you for help along the way to: Dennis Smith, Karla Koll, Marcia Towers, Benajamín Yac Poz, Ivaz Paz, Edio Pérez, César Pérez, Ruthie Cordova, Cliff Holland, Édgar Madrid, Martha and Samuel Berberian, Édgar Díaz, Lidia Rivera de Aguilar, Steve Sywulka, Matt Samson, Robin Shoaps, and to the staffs of the Archivo General de Centroamérica, the Hemeroteca Nacional, the Presbyterian Historical Society, the Centro Evangélico de Estudios Pastorales en Centroamérica, the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, and the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. vi Local Believers, Foreign Missionaries, and the Creation of Guatemalan Protestantism, 1882-1944 Stephen Carter Dove, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Virginia Garrard-Burnett This dissertation examines how Guatemalan converts transformed missionary Protestantism into a locally contextualized religion in the late-nineteenth and early- twentieth centuries. Using archival materials from local religious groups and public archives in Guatemala alongside missionary documents from the United States, this research identifies how converts adopted certain missionary teachings but reinterpreted or rejected others. This selective application not only altered the definition of Protestantism in Guatemala but also affected the early growth of the movement by creating contextualized forms of Protestantism that attracted more interest than foreign versions. The first section of the dissertation analyzes the theologies and goals that early missionaries brought to Guatemala and explains the intramural conflicts that created the first Protestant communities in the country. Between 1882 and 1921, five North American Protestant denominations and several independent missionaries entered Guatemala, each with particular ideas about how to improve the country both spiritually and materially. This internal diversity provided new converts with the ability to choose vii between multiple versions of Protestantism, but more importantly it also taught them how to carve out their own space between imported religious ideologies. The second section of the dissertation analyzes how local believers reinterpreted Protestantism within those spaces by pursuing four important areas of innovation: theological primitivism, Pentecostalism, political involvement, and nationalism. Despite protests from many foreign missionaries, between 1920 and 1944 numerous Guatemalan Protestants adopted variations of these four themes in attempts to create a culturally and socially relevant religious product. As new converts opted for these new local communities over missionary-led options, these four themes became defining hallmarks of Guatemalan Protestantism, which by the twenty-first century was practiced by one- third of the country’s population. This dissertation argues that these contextualized challenges to missionary ideas in the early twentieth-century made Protestantism an attractive local product in Guatemala and sparked the movement’s growth. It also demonstrates how poor and working class Guatemalans in the early twentieth century used Protestantism as a tool to participate in national conversations about race, gender, and class. viii Table of Contents List of Figures.................................................................................................................. xii Introduction........................................................................................................................1 Outline of the Study.................................................................................................6 Prior Scholarship......................................................................................................9 Limits of the Study ................................................................................................23 Chapter 1: Missionaries, Liberalism, and the Search for “Proper” Guatemalans in the Nineteenth Century ................................................29 Progress and Civilization in Theological and Political Liberalisms......................32 The First Guatemalan Mission...............................................................................38 John Clark Hill and Luis Canal..............................................................................45 Edward Haymaker and the Rebirth of the Presbyterian Mission...........................55 Converts of Convenience.......................................................................................61 Fanatics ..................................................................................................................66 Model Converts......................................................................................................74 Conclusion .............................................................................................................87 Chapter 2: The De-Centering of Missionary Structures in the Twentieth Century ................................................................................................91 U.S. Protestantism in the Early 1900s ...................................................................94 Fundamentalist and Modernist Battles in Guatemala............................................99 Protestantism Beyond the Capital........................................................................110 Comity and Missionary Cooperation...................................................................118 De-Centering and the Role of Women ................................................................125 ix De-Centering and Indigenous Outreach ..............................................................137 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................145 Chapter 3: Theological Primitivism and the Foundations of Localism....................149 Cultural and Theological Primitivisms................................................................151