Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), formed in 1701, was a missionary organization of the Church of England. In 1965, the SPG merged with Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) to form the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG). In 1968 the Cambridge Mission to Delhi (CMD) also joined the USPG.

History of the SPG

Around the start of the 18th century, Henry Compton the Bishop of London requested Rev. Dr. Thomas Bray to report on the state of the Church of England in the American Colonies. Dr. Bray reported that the Anglican Church in America had "little spiritual vitality" and was "in a poor organisational condition". On June 16, 1701 King William III issued a charter establishing the SPG as "an organisation able to send priests and schoolteachers to America to help provide the Church's ministry to the colonists". The society’s first missionaries started work in North America in 1702, and in the West Indies in 1703. Its charter soon expanded to include "evangelisation of slaves and Native Americans." By 1710 SPG officials stated that "conversion of heathens and infidels ought to be prosecuted preferably to all others." By the time of the American Revolution, the SPG had employed about 300 missionaries in North America and soon expanded to Australia, New Zealand and West Africa. The SPG was also important in the establishment of the Episcopal Church.

In 1820 the SPG sent missionaries to India, and in 1821 to South Africa. It later expanded outside the British Empire, to China in 1863 and Japan 1873. By then the society's focus was more on the care for indigenous people than for colonists. In 1866 the SPG established the:

"Ladies’ Association for Promoting the Education of Females in India and other Heathen Countries in Connection with the Missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel."

In 1895 this group was updated to the:

"Women’s Mission Association for the Promotion of Female Education in the Missions of the SPG,"

which allowed British and Irish women themselves to become missionaries. During this period the SPG also supported increasing numbers of indigenous missionaries of both sexes, as well as medical missionary work. The SPG continued is the missionary work for Churches of England, Wales, and Ireland until its merger in with the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa in 1965.

SPG in Australia

Extract from Kuchel family history (1838-1970) Hahndorf, South Australia:

"Kirchenbergen comprised three sections of land totalling about 240 acres km² out of 400 acres km² of Crown lands in a special survey that was purchased by the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts on 15th May, 1841. It cannot be ascertained under what tenure the Kuchels held Kirchenbergen originally, but in 1863 the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel granted them a lease (in which they were described as "farmers") for a period of 20 years.

The rent was fixed at 89 pounds a year for the first seven years and 89 pounds a year for the remainder of the term, so they allowed for inflation in those days. Among the conditions of the lease were:

- to cultivate and to plant on the said land during the first seven years 4.5 acres m² of vines,

- to repair, uphold, amend and keep in repair the erections, buildings and fences upon the said premises, and

- not to let, underlet or assign over or otherwise part with any portion of the said premises without the consent in writing of the said Society."

Slave owning by the SPG

The SPG was a major slave owner in Barbados in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Codrington Plantation was bequeathed to the Society in 1710 by Christopher Codrington. In 1740, 30 years after the Church took over, four out of every 10 slaves bought by the plantation died within three years. This contrasted with some Southern US plantations where the death rate was lower, suggesting a deliberate "work to death" policy was in operation, as was more commonly the case in the West Indies and South America. The planters relied on a steady new stream of slaves from Africa, and the remote Church shareholders were chiefly concerned with profitability. 1

It was the situation in the West Indies and at the SPG’s Codrington Estates in particular, which prompted Dr Beilby Porteus, Bishop of Chester and later Bishop of London, to use the opportunity of preaching the 1783 Anniversary sermon of the SPG at St Mary le Bow, Cheapside, London to issue a call to the Church of England to cease its involvement in the slave trade and to formulate a workable policy to draw attention to and improve the conditions of the Afro-Caribbean slaves in Barbados. However, the Church generally only relinquished slaveholdings because it was forced to. (see ref above). Biblical justification for slavery was commonly deployed against criticism of such policies. (for example, in Haynes, Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (OUP), 2.)

Over two hundred years later, during the February 2006 meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England bishops voted unanimously to apologise to the descendants of slaves for the church’s involvement in the slave trade. Rev Simon Bessant reported in a speech before the vote that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts owned the Codrington Plantation in Barbados, where slaves had the word "Society" branded on their chests with a red-hot iron. Many bishops were slave-owners, claimed the Rev Bessant,who went on to say that when the emancipation of slaves took place in 1833, compensation was paid not to the slaves but to their owners. In one case, he said. the then Bishop of Exeter, Henry Phillpotts and three colleagues were paid nearly £13,000 in compensation for 665 slaves, then a vast sum.

The details of the bishops' slave-holdings were not given although the Rev Bessant seemed to suggest that all the slaves for which this compensation was paid were owned by, or perhaps leased or hired to, the Codrington plantation. However, the figures recorded in Adam Hochschilds's definitive history of the slave trade Bury the Chains demonstrate this to be unlikely : Hochschild says "when the compensation money was finally passed out, the Church of England's Codrington plantation was rewarded with 8,823 British pounds, 8 shillings, 9 pence or some $950,000 in today's money for its 411 slaves"—some 3 pounds more per slave than the Bishop of Exeter was paid. Further compensation, within the 13,000 pounds which is said by the Rev Simon Bessant to have been paid to the Bishop of Exeter, must have been then for another 254 slaves housed on the plantation whose presence there went unrecorded.

It was said that individual churchmen were often personally rewarded for the loss of what had originally been church property, but investigation of the records of such private ownership may make it clear whether the clergymen and the bishops owned the slaves in their own name or on behalf of the Church.

External links

References

Haynes, Stephen R. Noah's Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Oxford: University Press, 2002)
Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains, The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery (Macmillan, 2005)

Church of England | Christian missions | 1701 establishments

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts

History of the SPG

SPG in Australia

Slave owning by the SPG

External links

References