'From Christian continent to mission field': The missional discourse of the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America and Protestant Latin Americans concerning the missional needs of Latin America (1910-1938

Latin America was excluded as a missionary field on the basis that it was a Christian continent in the World Missionary Conference of 1910 in Edinburgh. As a result, North American mission boards, with an established missionary endeavor in the continent, articulated a response to legitimize the missionary activity in the neighbor continent. Out of this missional response, the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America (CCLA) was created in 1916. This Committee became the most critical voice in the continuing effort to claim Latin America as a mission field.;The CCLA included North American missionary leaders and Latin American Protestants. This particular configuration allowed an inter-cultural dynamic unique to missionary organizations during this time. The available documents of the Committee embody the interplay between religious cultures, an encounter between North American Protestantism (its missionary face) and the emerging Latin American Protestant face. Moreover, the interplay between these religious cultures is also shaped by the ethos of the World Missionary Movement and its conference and the Roman Catholicism of the continent.;This dissertation explores the character of the encounter between these religious cultures through the missional discourse---the justification of Latin America as a mission field---of the CCLA. It seeks to find the Latin American Protestant identity construed through this encounter and discourse.