Address by Pastor Juan C. Varetto at the Buenos Aires Regional Congress of the Congress on Christian Work in Panama (1916)

Abstract

This article introduces the address delivered by Baptist pastor Juan C. Varetto at the Buenos Aires Regional Congress, held in March 1916 as part of the regional meetings following the Congress on Christian Work in Panama. This Congress, framed within the Pan-Americanist movement of the early twentieth century, sought to reassess the Protestant mission in Latin America after the Edinburgh Congress of 1910, where the region had been considered already Christianized by Catholicism. The so-called 'Caldwell Declaration' of 1915, which proposed softening the conflict with the Catholic Church, generated intense controversy among evangelical leaders of the Río de la Plata. In this context of tension, Varetto presented his critical stance at the session of March 28, 1916, at the Iglesia Escocesa in Buenos Aires. His address, originally published in El Expositor Bautista, provoked diverse reactions in the evangelical circles of the time.