Pui Lan: Welcome to Just Conversations, a podcast of the Episcopal Divinity School. I am your host Kwok Pui Lan, a distinguished scholar of the school. In this series of conversations, we will introduce the mission and leaders of the different provinces and diocese of the Anglican Communion, focusing on those from the Global South.
In this episode, we'll learn about the ministry and mission of the Episcopal and Anglican Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean. Joining me today is Dr. Paolo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for United Society Partners in the Gospel. Welcome to the podcast.
Paulo: Thank you, Dr. Pui Lan. It's a pleasure to be here with you all.
Pui Lan: Can you introduce to the audience the Episcopal and Anglican Churches in Latin America?
Paulo: Uh, in Latin America, which is from Mexico to Chile, we do have both denominations, actually, some of our churches are called Episcopal Anglican Churches of Brazil, for instance, and some of them are called, uh, Episcopal, uh, Churches of some other places, and some of them is called Anglican Churches of some places. So it's a mix of Episcopalian tradition, but also from the Anglican, from the British tradition mixed all in the region. So we do have, in Mexico it's called uh, Anglican, so Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, which is Anglican Church of Mexico.
We have in the Central America, the province of IARCA, which is the church of the province of Central America. We have the Brazil, which is the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil. We have the South America province. Which they are called, uh, the Anglican Churches in South America, which is composed by five countries.
And we have the Anglican Church in Chile. It's another province. And we do have here in Latin America, three countries, uh, who belongs to the Episcopal Church, which is Venezuela, Ecuador, uh, and uh, Colombia. So it's a, as I said, a mix of, uh, different traditions, uh, from United States, but also from, uh, the British chaplaincy in the region.
Pui Lan: So you have English speaking, Portuguese speaking, and Spanish speaking churches.
Paulo: We have both. So the, the CPWI, which the church, the, the Church of the Province of West Indies, we do have English speaking islands and diocese, but also, uh, Spanish speaking diocese and some of them belongs to the, uh, the Episcopal Church, province nine and province two.
We have the Spanish speaking churches, which is Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador. Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. And we do have, uh, Portuguese speaking country, which is the province of Brazil. And also we do have a French speaking country in Creole, which is the Haiti who belongs actually to the Episcopal church in the region.
So here in, in that region, Latin America, the Caribbean, we have, uh, four different languages working on. Plus hundreds of local indigenous languages as well. So in Brazil for instance, there are 223 different languages just here. So you can, you can have more in Mexico and also Central America and other countries.
Pui Lan: Wow, this is quite a diverse, um, range of, uh, churches in terms of culture and background. And can you tell us, are the churches, um, usually quite small or can you characterize an average, uh, congregation for us?
Paulo: So here, boy, Latin American, the Caribbean, the churches are quite, in terms of numbers of, of constituency, they are, we can consider them small churches in terms of members of, uh, both congregations and membership, but at the same time, we can say that most of the Episcopal Anglican Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean, they are quite influential in the civil society and they're quite, uh, a presence and good public voice, especially when it comes to advocacy, when it comes to diaconia and when it comes to care for creation. For instance, indigenous and black traditional communities.
As you might know, the audiences of Latin American and Caribbean are, are colonized countries, colonized region, and the both a mix of, uh, indigenous communities. People coming from Europe or United States, but also out of the slave trade during 19 and beginning of 20th century. So it's quite a both indigenous and black tradition mixing with, uh, white people here in the region, which means lots of languages, cultures, foods, vestments, et cetera.
Pui Lan: In the United States, as you know, that uh, we have, uh, churches that are primarily for the black, uh, communities. And there are also churches for the indigenous, uh, communities. In, uh, Latin America and the Caribbean do you have that kind of, uh, different congregations or people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds will come to the same church?
Paulo: It's gonna be the latter. So we do not have the specialized churches for the kind of ethnical groups. So indigenous, uh, white people, and black people they all go together to the same churches uh, usually. Of course we do have, in some regions more presence of indigenous, or in some regions more presence of black traditional communities and some regions more white people. But, uh, mostly, so in general, they are all mixed. There are no such a thing as indigenous church or black traditional church here in the, in this region.
Pui Lan: Can you tell us more about the church in Brazil where you are located?
Paulo: Yes, I can. So as I, as you know, so I am a, I am a Brazilian, a mixed Brazilian, so my, I have an Italian father and a Japanese mother. I was born here in this country, which, which is a very, very diverse country, as I said before. So anyone can be Brazilian in terms of a biotype if you don't speak to be, to be frank. The church in Brazil, the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil, in the past it was called the Episcopal Church in Brazil because there are two origins that, uh, came to form the church in Brazil. One more ancient, so maybe 150 years ago, or a bit more, which is the, uh, British chaplaincy 18/19th century when the British Empire and Government came to Brazil to do business, they were established chaplaincies for their employees. So all in English and only for Brits to participate and to worship. And in 19th century, uh, seminarians from Virginia Seminary from VTS came to Brazil to plant a church here in a more evangelical way, you might say.
They started the church then in the south of Brazil. And, uh, it spread out very fast to the rest of the country from this first experience coming from, uh, VTS. And during the past, during maybe the 50, 60 years, both traditions also came together. This is why now the Brazilian church is called the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil because both traditions came together and, and formed the church in a way. And embraced both the more evangelical tradition coming to from United States, but also a bit more Anglo-Catholic tradition coming from the British chaplaincy. And then we'll still have in Brazil, one or two British chaplaincy, which is run by the Church of England yet, but in a very good communication with the the local church as well.
Brazil is a vast country, so we are the largest country in the South America is formed by nine dioceses. We have nine bishops and the one missionary district. Out of the nine bishops, we have three women. So one third of the House of Bishops is formed by women. The first one was, uh, consecrated in 2018. It was a long journey after 34 years of permission to have women ordained in the three orders, but only in 2018, actually a woman was elected and consecrated bishop.
It was a huge achievement and it was the first one in the South America as well, and currently this first woman elected bishop in 2018 now is she's the only woman primate within the Anglican communion, which the Archbishop Marinez, who is the Primate of Brazil, but also the Bishop of the Diocese of Amazonia, which comprises 43% of the national territory, actually.
The Brazil is a very diverse church in terms of, uh, constituency, in terms of ethnical background. So we have, uh, people coming from a Polish background, the German background, Italian background, Japanese background, black people, indigenous people, and there maybe one interesting fact of the Brazilian church, which some people do not know, is there is a huge influence in the beginning of the 20th century from the Japanese church.
The Sei Ko Kai Church in Japan came to Brazil to do mission because in the beginning of the 20th century, there was an agreement between the government of Brazil and Japan, and it was a huge wave of immigration coming from Japan. And with it, uh, an Anglican tradition came together. So we have now in Brazil at least four congregations who only speaks Japanese actually, so, and it's a, and then last year they celebrated a hundred years of mission from Japan into Brazil. It's a very interesting mixing here in terms of, uh, culture, mission, diaconia, and, uh, also constituency in our, in our church.
Pui Lan: Thank you very much for sharing this fascinating story of the history of the church in Brazil.
You work as a Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbeans for UPSG. Can you, uh, tell us some of, uh, your work?
Paulo: As a theological advisor for USPG, which is, which is stands for United Society Partners in the Gospel. It's a mission agency, uh, from Church of England, who of course, during the decades of work within the Communion now is partnering with 34 provinces out of the 42 that form the Anglican Communion.
And uh, currently the footprint of USPG in Latin America is Brazil and the the Caribbean, and also with relationships going on with Canada as well, with plans to extend our footprint here towards Central America. Maybe Mexico in the further years maybe.
So I do have two hats. One is a global hat, which the Theological Advisor. So I work with my colleague, Dr. Peniel Rajkumar, on a program called the FeAST, which the Fellowship of, uh, Anglican Scholars in Theology. Our purpose is offering a space for new theologians, new meaning age, but also new meaning early career, professional career.
So we offer us this opportunity for them to research and to share and to be challenged to review their, their work. And, uh, once a year we do an in-person conference for them to improve their ability, capacity to be more critical to learn to write better, to be more there in terms of their theological thinking, and to help the Communion to move forward in our theological conversation.
And also, it's part of my job to support diocese and provinces in their work in theology. Also in theological institutions. I, myself, I am a biblical scholar, so this is my expertise, but also I do, I do this liaison with other provinces and, and churches here.
The other part of my job is regional. So I do, I do manage actually the Americas because we want to be related to the whole America region, especially in terms of two things. One is mission, so how we do mission better, uh, mission here also, meaning diaconia. Planting churches, uh, equipping, forming, strengthening relationships, doing better theology, translating resources or producing resources from local, uh, experiences because we do believe that, uh, not everyone should speak English and, uh, maybe half of the Communion does not speak English.
So we do need to, to produce, to give birth to local and contextual resources. And this is what, this is a kind of a part of my job to foster and to strengthen and to support this kind of initiatives. Currently we are working in these three countries, so Canada, uh, Canada is more a relational conversation, so we want to know more the church, the, and the vice versa.
And we do have some projects going on in the Caribbean and uh, in Brazil, mostly connected to creation care, gender justice, human rights, territorial rights, and indigenous, uh, theologists. And, uh, also within my global hat, so one thing that USPG is very much interested is in fostering more conversations under what we are calling indigenous theologists.
And, uh, when we say indigenous theologists, we mean two things. One, it is impossible to do theology without actually tapping into the ancient and the millennial wisdom of our indigenous or first people communities. We, we needed that connection. We are in debt with this connection, so we needed to go there.
And also, it is, uh, impossible to work with indigenous communities without taking the theology as a kind of a proxy for doing advocacy and transformational work. Both internal of their communities, but also towards the general society. This is more or less my portfolio of working. One other thing, maybe it's good to mention, I work very closely with the Anglican Alliance, which is, uh, the development, advocacy, and humanitarian aid branch of the Anglican Communion. Also supporting them in, in theology and, uh, in networking, uh, within the Communion.
Pui Lan: In July 2025, the Commission on Theological Education for the Anglican Communion organized a workshop to discuss theological education in the Americas in Brazil. Uh, you are helping to organize that event. Can you share some of the goals or highlights from the meeting?
Paulo: So one important goal was to gather people. To gather different minds, different experiences, different theologists, different backgrounds, to try to work together in the same direction. So we don't need to be on the same page of the book, but at least we would love to make room to be in the same library. If we can do a metaphor here. So this is one of the goals, uh, bringing people together to stand maybe in the same library, maybe in different sections, but in the same room, so we can move forward and we can actually contribute and, uh, share knowledge, wisdom, and our skills to strength the theological education, uh, both in terms of institutional theological education with the theological institutes, but also in the theological programs of training.
I think it's good to realize that in, in Latin America, particularly, the formal or the ordinary seminary is no longer existing, so we had only a few experiences. Most of the training for ordinance or for laity is done actually, by weekends or during evenings, you know, sort of, uh, what we call theological training programs in every diocese and provinces. So we, for instance, Brazil does not have a proper seminary. Central America is, they do weekends, Mexico, they have maybe two seminaries only, but the rest is done actually at a distance or in some, uh, regular, uh, in-person meetings.
So this is one of the goals. The other goal is to challenge ourselves. So how do we produce local and contextual resources? Because most of the resources we have, unfortunately, is only in English, and uh, most of the people in Latin America can't do English. So if I may give an example, um, we have the whole history of our spirituality as Anglicans or our theological ground as as Anglicans.
So Anglicans, we do have theologians and theology, but we don't have this in Spanish. Not, we don't have this neither in Spanish, Portuguese, or even French. So how can we teach Anglican theology properly or how can we direct the students to read it if they can't do English? So we need either to translate or to promote the spaces when, where we can produce, or we can interpret our tradition in our own contextual languages.
Also, including tapping the black traditional knowledge and the indigenous knowledges on what it means to be Anglican or what it means to be Episcopalian in this kind of a context. So diverse and so, uh, complicated in a sense. And with so many challenges right now as we are living in.
A highlight of this meeting is actually, one is the attendance. So people from eight provinces are coming. This is a huge achievement to have eight provinces participating in a meeting in person for three full days to discuss theology. The other highlight is one of the main topics of the meeting would be teaching learning methodology. So how can we share and what can we learn from local context?
For instance, what can we learn from the huge experience that Latin America has on what we call popular education of the Paulo Freire philosophy and pedagogy? Or how can we learn the methodology and the mindset of, uh, indigenous learning? How do they learn? Can we learn something from that? How can we be challenged in our old ways of doing theology?
Can we change the architecture of the room in terms of teaching learning? Because sometimes it's kind of appeals, one behind the other. So can we do a circle of learning teaching process? So this is the big highlight is we discussed that and we were, we wanted to move forward on this, uh, challenge ways of, uh, teaching, but also challenging ways of learning.
And also this conversation between academics. Some people like us who have the privilege to go to a college, have a PhD, research, publish, but also how can we talk with and how can we learn from grassroots level communities? I'm a very geek person if I can say that, but I have huge experience of learning and changing my scholarship just by listening and walking with ordinary people, what we call ordinary theologians.
So they do make questions that sometimes we don't, and uh, this contextual presence and the footprint will help us actually to change our way of doing theology. Maybe another highlight here is this word, so for Latin Americas theology is not something that we think, or something we write about or something we speak about. Theology is an action. Theology is something that we do and we do together in collaboration. So this is the, uh, highlight and challenge that the meeting, uh, host was.
Pui Lan: This sounds very interesting. I can't wait to hear more about the outcome from the meeting. As you talk about the importance of contextualization of theology and theological education, and of course contextualization of liturgy is also important, and Brazil has a new version of the Book of Common Prayer. Can you say something about it?
Paulo: Yes, I can, and I hope I don't get stoned by it. So you know that the Book of Common Prayer or well liturgy itself, but let's talk about our Book of Common Prayer globally and also contextually. So the liturgy is a very good proxy for liberation, but also it's been used for millennia to colonization. To oppression.
So let's look at the vocabulary. Let's look at the images of God that some of our prayers or some of our Eucharistic prayers or, or collects present to us. Very colonial, very imperial, very monarchic, sometimes. Even the Book of Common Prayer in Brazil, despite being a very good and contextual book, so we did manage to do inclusive language. We did manage to do very contextual and, uh, realistic in terms of, uh, Eucharistic prayers and collects, and also our saints and the people that we celebrate in memory or in feasts. We managed to do all of this. But it's still, we still have some, uh, bits and nods of colonial language and colonial images in our book. Still that needs to be addressed.
One is, you do know we do have it in common. So many of the, when Eucharistic prayer, who celebrates the universe? So thanks God, because universe was created. You did that. You did that, this thing. But there is a phrase who said that you gave us dominion over the earth. So the Church of Canada changed this word dominion to stewardship, which is a very nice word, but it's still in the Book of Common Prayer in the American Book of Common Prayer, and in the Brazilian Book of Common Prayer, this phrase, so God gave us dominion over, it's still there. So it is, as you know. It slipped in our conversation, this kind of phrase.
And also, again, despite our book, it's very contextual and again, it's very gender justice, uh, focused. There are is still lots of theology of retribution. This kind of, uh, God, forgive me if I do something else that is, uh, maybe one or two absolutions that say that. So God forgives those who do that or do something else, which is a kind of a retribution theology that which goes to meritocracy, which we do, we do need to address in our conversation.
So this is why also maybe one another, another challenge we will have on doing theology and doing theological education is how we decolonize our vocabulary and how we decolonize our imagery when we go into the liturgy. Our ordinal for marriage is very good. I really praise the team that did it. But when you go into practice, when you go into liturgy itself, some of the liturgies, some of the rituals are still kind of a Medieval proprietary, you know, this kind of image that there is one package who is being traded. So from the father, the previous owner to the groom, the new owner.
Of course, people do not think about it. This is not what is going on there in terms of, uh, mindset, but the ritual actually is expressing it. And that we do needed to, to revisit how we do ritual and how we do. Liturgical vocabulary actually, especially in our prayers. And maybe there are other things, uh, that we needed to address, uh, and theology must be on this.
There are maybe, I dunno, 52 different ways of naming God, but most of our prayers start Almighty God. So there are so many other different ways to call God: Loving God, Merciful God, God who rescue me, or Rescuer, Savior, or whatever. But we still have this image of this almighty, all powerful, this complex of hero, which this colonial mindset still, uh, is embedded in us.
So maybe the image we have is, uh, people left Egypt from slavery and went through the desert to the promised land. But in the middle, if you, we can recall, Egypt did not leave them. Egypt was inside. So some of the Egypt inside of us needs to be washed out and I think it's the work of theology and liturgy, spirituality to do this, uh, work.
But again. It is very much needed for other provinces, I think, to do what Brazil and some other, some other provinces did, which is really contextualize our Book of Common Prayer. So of course we do have the common language, the common things that makes us what we are as Anglicans worldwide. But we do need the contextualization urgently and in many other provinces, and I, here I can say, particularly with the Spanish speaking countries, who unfortunately the Book of Common Prayer is the, is is just the translation done in the United States of the Book of Common Prayer from text. So I think that Mexico, Central America, South America, uh, would, would benefit a lot if, uh, some work in terms of contextualization could be done.
Pui Lan: You travel very widely within the Anglican Communion. Can you share with us your hopes, uh, for the Church?
Paulo: One hope is can we, I, I believe we can decolonize our way of being church. So I think that is a hope and that is a desire, and that is lots of rooms for decolonizing the way of being church everywhere and not only being many Englishes or many Episcopalians or, or Americans or many, you know, big countries without losing our common faith, without losing our common liturgy.
So we really can be more contextual, therefore be more decolonized. I think this is one of my, my hopes for the communion. Another hope is we find ways of stay together despite our disagreements. So you do know that in the Communion we are facing lots of divisions and lots of intolerance from many sides.
One of my hopes is that the way we've been walking together, we keep walking together to. Keep us in the same, maybe the same road if we can't walk side by side sometimes, but maybe we can walk in the same road, so towards the same direction with the the Kingdom of God or with some friends of mine from US, like to say to the beloved community so we can be a beloved community even when we, uh, disagree.
And another and two other hopes I do have for the Anglican Communion is that we do mission better. We can expand our presence. We can plant more churches. We can offer people who has in despair or who, who are in need. So we can offer a space for safety, worship, and, uh, belonging. So this is one of my, another, another hope that I do have for the Anglican Communion.
And of course, the, the, the, the name itself is, so, I do believe we can be a communion. So we can communicate among ourselves in a way that pleases God and that transforms the world. Bearing in mind our five marks of mission, which I think it's a good, uh, compass for us to follow and to be guided for.
Pui Lan: Thank you very much for joining the podcast today. If you enjoy this episode, please check out the other podcast in this series.
Paulo: Thank you Pui Lan for being here. Thank you for all of you listening. I don't expect you to agree with me in all, but anyway, please be in touch and let's keep talking.
Pui Lan: Thank you.
Paulo: Thank you, Pui Lan.
In this episode, we'll learn about the ministry and mission of the Episcopal and Anglican Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean. Joining me today is Dr. Paolo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for United Society Partners in the Gospel. Welcome to the podcast.
Paulo: Thank you, Dr. Pui Lan. It's a pleasure to be here with you all.
Pui Lan: Can you introduce to the audience the Episcopal and Anglican Churches in Latin America?
Paulo: Uh, in Latin America, which is from Mexico to Chile, we do have both denominations, actually, some of our churches are called Episcopal Anglican Churches of Brazil, for instance, and some of them are called, uh, Episcopal, uh, Churches of some other places, and some of them is called Anglican Churches of some places. So it's a mix of Episcopalian tradition, but also from the Anglican, from the British tradition mixed all in the region. So we do have, in Mexico it's called uh, Anglican, so Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico, which is Anglican Church of Mexico.
We have in the Central America, the province of IARCA, which is the church of the province of Central America. We have the Brazil, which is the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil. We have the South America province. Which they are called, uh, the Anglican Churches in South America, which is composed by five countries.
And we have the Anglican Church in Chile. It's another province. And we do have here in Latin America, three countries, uh, who belongs to the Episcopal Church, which is Venezuela, Ecuador, uh, and uh, Colombia. So it's a, as I said, a mix of, uh, different traditions, uh, from United States, but also from, uh, the British chaplaincy in the region.
Pui Lan: So you have English speaking, Portuguese speaking, and Spanish speaking churches.
Paulo: We have both. So the, the CPWI, which the church, the, the Church of the Province of West Indies, we do have English speaking islands and diocese, but also, uh, Spanish speaking diocese and some of them belongs to the, uh, the Episcopal Church, province nine and province two.
We have the Spanish speaking churches, which is Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador. Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. And we do have, uh, Portuguese speaking country, which is the province of Brazil. And also we do have a French speaking country in Creole, which is the Haiti who belongs actually to the Episcopal church in the region.
So here in, in that region, Latin America, the Caribbean, we have, uh, four different languages working on. Plus hundreds of local indigenous languages as well. So in Brazil for instance, there are 223 different languages just here. So you can, you can have more in Mexico and also Central America and other countries.
Pui Lan: Wow, this is quite a diverse, um, range of, uh, churches in terms of culture and background. And can you tell us, are the churches, um, usually quite small or can you characterize an average, uh, congregation for us?
Paulo: So here, boy, Latin American, the Caribbean, the churches are quite, in terms of numbers of, of constituency, they are, we can consider them small churches in terms of members of, uh, both congregations and membership, but at the same time, we can say that most of the Episcopal Anglican Churches in Latin America and the Caribbean, they are quite influential in the civil society and they're quite, uh, a presence and good public voice, especially when it comes to advocacy, when it comes to diaconia and when it comes to care for creation. For instance, indigenous and black traditional communities.
As you might know, the audiences of Latin American and Caribbean are, are colonized countries, colonized region, and the both a mix of, uh, indigenous communities. People coming from Europe or United States, but also out of the slave trade during 19 and beginning of 20th century. So it's quite a both indigenous and black tradition mixing with, uh, white people here in the region, which means lots of languages, cultures, foods, vestments, et cetera.
Pui Lan: In the United States, as you know, that uh, we have, uh, churches that are primarily for the black, uh, communities. And there are also churches for the indigenous, uh, communities. In, uh, Latin America and the Caribbean do you have that kind of, uh, different congregations or people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds will come to the same church?
Paulo: It's gonna be the latter. So we do not have the specialized churches for the kind of ethnical groups. So indigenous, uh, white people, and black people they all go together to the same churches uh, usually. Of course we do have, in some regions more presence of indigenous, or in some regions more presence of black traditional communities and some regions more white people. But, uh, mostly, so in general, they are all mixed. There are no such a thing as indigenous church or black traditional church here in the, in this region.
Pui Lan: Can you tell us more about the church in Brazil where you are located?
Paulo: Yes, I can. So as I, as you know, so I am a, I am a Brazilian, a mixed Brazilian, so my, I have an Italian father and a Japanese mother. I was born here in this country, which, which is a very, very diverse country, as I said before. So anyone can be Brazilian in terms of a biotype if you don't speak to be, to be frank. The church in Brazil, the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil, in the past it was called the Episcopal Church in Brazil because there are two origins that, uh, came to form the church in Brazil. One more ancient, so maybe 150 years ago, or a bit more, which is the, uh, British chaplaincy 18/19th century when the British Empire and Government came to Brazil to do business, they were established chaplaincies for their employees. So all in English and only for Brits to participate and to worship. And in 19th century, uh, seminarians from Virginia Seminary from VTS came to Brazil to plant a church here in a more evangelical way, you might say.
They started the church then in the south of Brazil. And, uh, it spread out very fast to the rest of the country from this first experience coming from, uh, VTS. And during the past, during maybe the 50, 60 years, both traditions also came together. This is why now the Brazilian church is called the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil because both traditions came together and, and formed the church in a way. And embraced both the more evangelical tradition coming to from United States, but also a bit more Anglo-Catholic tradition coming from the British chaplaincy. And then we'll still have in Brazil, one or two British chaplaincy, which is run by the Church of England yet, but in a very good communication with the the local church as well.
Brazil is a vast country, so we are the largest country in the South America is formed by nine dioceses. We have nine bishops and the one missionary district. Out of the nine bishops, we have three women. So one third of the House of Bishops is formed by women. The first one was, uh, consecrated in 2018. It was a long journey after 34 years of permission to have women ordained in the three orders, but only in 2018, actually a woman was elected and consecrated bishop.
It was a huge achievement and it was the first one in the South America as well, and currently this first woman elected bishop in 2018 now is she's the only woman primate within the Anglican communion, which the Archbishop Marinez, who is the Primate of Brazil, but also the Bishop of the Diocese of Amazonia, which comprises 43% of the national territory, actually.
The Brazil is a very diverse church in terms of, uh, constituency, in terms of ethnical background. So we have, uh, people coming from a Polish background, the German background, Italian background, Japanese background, black people, indigenous people, and there maybe one interesting fact of the Brazilian church, which some people do not know, is there is a huge influence in the beginning of the 20th century from the Japanese church.
The Sei Ko Kai Church in Japan came to Brazil to do mission because in the beginning of the 20th century, there was an agreement between the government of Brazil and Japan, and it was a huge wave of immigration coming from Japan. And with it, uh, an Anglican tradition came together. So we have now in Brazil at least four congregations who only speaks Japanese actually, so, and it's a, and then last year they celebrated a hundred years of mission from Japan into Brazil. It's a very interesting mixing here in terms of, uh, culture, mission, diaconia, and, uh, also constituency in our, in our church.
Pui Lan: Thank you very much for sharing this fascinating story of the history of the church in Brazil.
You work as a Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbeans for UPSG. Can you, uh, tell us some of, uh, your work?
Paulo: As a theological advisor for USPG, which is, which is stands for United Society Partners in the Gospel. It's a mission agency, uh, from Church of England, who of course, during the decades of work within the Communion now is partnering with 34 provinces out of the 42 that form the Anglican Communion.
And uh, currently the footprint of USPG in Latin America is Brazil and the the Caribbean, and also with relationships going on with Canada as well, with plans to extend our footprint here towards Central America. Maybe Mexico in the further years maybe.
So I do have two hats. One is a global hat, which the Theological Advisor. So I work with my colleague, Dr. Peniel Rajkumar, on a program called the FeAST, which the Fellowship of, uh, Anglican Scholars in Theology. Our purpose is offering a space for new theologians, new meaning age, but also new meaning early career, professional career.
So we offer us this opportunity for them to research and to share and to be challenged to review their, their work. And, uh, once a year we do an in-person conference for them to improve their ability, capacity to be more critical to learn to write better, to be more there in terms of their theological thinking, and to help the Communion to move forward in our theological conversation.
And also, it's part of my job to support diocese and provinces in their work in theology. Also in theological institutions. I, myself, I am a biblical scholar, so this is my expertise, but also I do, I do this liaison with other provinces and, and churches here.
The other part of my job is regional. So I do, I do manage actually the Americas because we want to be related to the whole America region, especially in terms of two things. One is mission, so how we do mission better, uh, mission here also, meaning diaconia. Planting churches, uh, equipping, forming, strengthening relationships, doing better theology, translating resources or producing resources from local, uh, experiences because we do believe that, uh, not everyone should speak English and, uh, maybe half of the Communion does not speak English.
So we do need to, to produce, to give birth to local and contextual resources. And this is what, this is a kind of a part of my job to foster and to strengthen and to support this kind of initiatives. Currently we are working in these three countries, so Canada, uh, Canada is more a relational conversation, so we want to know more the church, the, and the vice versa.
And we do have some projects going on in the Caribbean and uh, in Brazil, mostly connected to creation care, gender justice, human rights, territorial rights, and indigenous, uh, theologists. And, uh, also within my global hat, so one thing that USPG is very much interested is in fostering more conversations under what we are calling indigenous theologists.
And, uh, when we say indigenous theologists, we mean two things. One, it is impossible to do theology without actually tapping into the ancient and the millennial wisdom of our indigenous or first people communities. We, we needed that connection. We are in debt with this connection, so we needed to go there.
And also, it is, uh, impossible to work with indigenous communities without taking the theology as a kind of a proxy for doing advocacy and transformational work. Both internal of their communities, but also towards the general society. This is more or less my portfolio of working. One other thing, maybe it's good to mention, I work very closely with the Anglican Alliance, which is, uh, the development, advocacy, and humanitarian aid branch of the Anglican Communion. Also supporting them in, in theology and, uh, in networking, uh, within the Communion.
Pui Lan: In July 2025, the Commission on Theological Education for the Anglican Communion organized a workshop to discuss theological education in the Americas in Brazil. Uh, you are helping to organize that event. Can you share some of the goals or highlights from the meeting?
Paulo: So one important goal was to gather people. To gather different minds, different experiences, different theologists, different backgrounds, to try to work together in the same direction. So we don't need to be on the same page of the book, but at least we would love to make room to be in the same library. If we can do a metaphor here. So this is one of the goals, uh, bringing people together to stand maybe in the same library, maybe in different sections, but in the same room, so we can move forward and we can actually contribute and, uh, share knowledge, wisdom, and our skills to strength the theological education, uh, both in terms of institutional theological education with the theological institutes, but also in the theological programs of training.
I think it's good to realize that in, in Latin America, particularly, the formal or the ordinary seminary is no longer existing, so we had only a few experiences. Most of the training for ordinance or for laity is done actually, by weekends or during evenings, you know, sort of, uh, what we call theological training programs in every diocese and provinces. So we, for instance, Brazil does not have a proper seminary. Central America is, they do weekends, Mexico, they have maybe two seminaries only, but the rest is done actually at a distance or in some, uh, regular, uh, in-person meetings.
So this is one of the goals. The other goal is to challenge ourselves. So how do we produce local and contextual resources? Because most of the resources we have, unfortunately, is only in English, and uh, most of the people in Latin America can't do English. So if I may give an example, um, we have the whole history of our spirituality as Anglicans or our theological ground as as Anglicans.
So Anglicans, we do have theologians and theology, but we don't have this in Spanish. Not, we don't have this neither in Spanish, Portuguese, or even French. So how can we teach Anglican theology properly or how can we direct the students to read it if they can't do English? So we need either to translate or to promote the spaces when, where we can produce, or we can interpret our tradition in our own contextual languages.
Also, including tapping the black traditional knowledge and the indigenous knowledges on what it means to be Anglican or what it means to be Episcopalian in this kind of a context. So diverse and so, uh, complicated in a sense. And with so many challenges right now as we are living in.
A highlight of this meeting is actually, one is the attendance. So people from eight provinces are coming. This is a huge achievement to have eight provinces participating in a meeting in person for three full days to discuss theology. The other highlight is one of the main topics of the meeting would be teaching learning methodology. So how can we share and what can we learn from local context?
For instance, what can we learn from the huge experience that Latin America has on what we call popular education of the Paulo Freire philosophy and pedagogy? Or how can we learn the methodology and the mindset of, uh, indigenous learning? How do they learn? Can we learn something from that? How can we be challenged in our old ways of doing theology?
Can we change the architecture of the room in terms of teaching learning? Because sometimes it's kind of appeals, one behind the other. So can we do a circle of learning teaching process? So this is the big highlight is we discussed that and we were, we wanted to move forward on this, uh, challenge ways of, uh, teaching, but also challenging ways of learning.
And also this conversation between academics. Some people like us who have the privilege to go to a college, have a PhD, research, publish, but also how can we talk with and how can we learn from grassroots level communities? I'm a very geek person if I can say that, but I have huge experience of learning and changing my scholarship just by listening and walking with ordinary people, what we call ordinary theologians.
So they do make questions that sometimes we don't, and uh, this contextual presence and the footprint will help us actually to change our way of doing theology. Maybe another highlight here is this word, so for Latin Americas theology is not something that we think, or something we write about or something we speak about. Theology is an action. Theology is something that we do and we do together in collaboration. So this is the, uh, highlight and challenge that the meeting, uh, host was.
Pui Lan: This sounds very interesting. I can't wait to hear more about the outcome from the meeting. As you talk about the importance of contextualization of theology and theological education, and of course contextualization of liturgy is also important, and Brazil has a new version of the Book of Common Prayer. Can you say something about it?
Paulo: Yes, I can, and I hope I don't get stoned by it. So you know that the Book of Common Prayer or well liturgy itself, but let's talk about our Book of Common Prayer globally and also contextually. So the liturgy is a very good proxy for liberation, but also it's been used for millennia to colonization. To oppression.
So let's look at the vocabulary. Let's look at the images of God that some of our prayers or some of our Eucharistic prayers or, or collects present to us. Very colonial, very imperial, very monarchic, sometimes. Even the Book of Common Prayer in Brazil, despite being a very good and contextual book, so we did manage to do inclusive language. We did manage to do very contextual and, uh, realistic in terms of, uh, Eucharistic prayers and collects, and also our saints and the people that we celebrate in memory or in feasts. We managed to do all of this. But it's still, we still have some, uh, bits and nods of colonial language and colonial images in our book. Still that needs to be addressed.
One is, you do know we do have it in common. So many of the, when Eucharistic prayer, who celebrates the universe? So thanks God, because universe was created. You did that. You did that, this thing. But there is a phrase who said that you gave us dominion over the earth. So the Church of Canada changed this word dominion to stewardship, which is a very nice word, but it's still in the Book of Common Prayer in the American Book of Common Prayer, and in the Brazilian Book of Common Prayer, this phrase, so God gave us dominion over, it's still there. So it is, as you know. It slipped in our conversation, this kind of phrase.
And also, again, despite our book, it's very contextual and again, it's very gender justice, uh, focused. There are is still lots of theology of retribution. This kind of, uh, God, forgive me if I do something else that is, uh, maybe one or two absolutions that say that. So God forgives those who do that or do something else, which is a kind of a retribution theology that which goes to meritocracy, which we do, we do need to address in our conversation.
So this is why also maybe one another, another challenge we will have on doing theology and doing theological education is how we decolonize our vocabulary and how we decolonize our imagery when we go into the liturgy. Our ordinal for marriage is very good. I really praise the team that did it. But when you go into practice, when you go into liturgy itself, some of the liturgies, some of the rituals are still kind of a Medieval proprietary, you know, this kind of image that there is one package who is being traded. So from the father, the previous owner to the groom, the new owner.
Of course, people do not think about it. This is not what is going on there in terms of, uh, mindset, but the ritual actually is expressing it. And that we do needed to, to revisit how we do ritual and how we do. Liturgical vocabulary actually, especially in our prayers. And maybe there are other things, uh, that we needed to address, uh, and theology must be on this.
There are maybe, I dunno, 52 different ways of naming God, but most of our prayers start Almighty God. So there are so many other different ways to call God: Loving God, Merciful God, God who rescue me, or Rescuer, Savior, or whatever. But we still have this image of this almighty, all powerful, this complex of hero, which this colonial mindset still, uh, is embedded in us.
So maybe the image we have is, uh, people left Egypt from slavery and went through the desert to the promised land. But in the middle, if you, we can recall, Egypt did not leave them. Egypt was inside. So some of the Egypt inside of us needs to be washed out and I think it's the work of theology and liturgy, spirituality to do this, uh, work.
But again. It is very much needed for other provinces, I think, to do what Brazil and some other, some other provinces did, which is really contextualize our Book of Common Prayer. So of course we do have the common language, the common things that makes us what we are as Anglicans worldwide. But we do need the contextualization urgently and in many other provinces, and I, here I can say, particularly with the Spanish speaking countries, who unfortunately the Book of Common Prayer is the, is is just the translation done in the United States of the Book of Common Prayer from text. So I think that Mexico, Central America, South America, uh, would, would benefit a lot if, uh, some work in terms of contextualization could be done.
Pui Lan: You travel very widely within the Anglican Communion. Can you share with us your hopes, uh, for the Church?
Paulo: One hope is can we, I, I believe we can decolonize our way of being church. So I think that is a hope and that is a desire, and that is lots of rooms for decolonizing the way of being church everywhere and not only being many Englishes or many Episcopalians or, or Americans or many, you know, big countries without losing our common faith, without losing our common liturgy.
So we really can be more contextual, therefore be more decolonized. I think this is one of my, my hopes for the communion. Another hope is we find ways of stay together despite our disagreements. So you do know that in the Communion we are facing lots of divisions and lots of intolerance from many sides.
One of my hopes is that the way we've been walking together, we keep walking together to. Keep us in the same, maybe the same road if we can't walk side by side sometimes, but maybe we can walk in the same road, so towards the same direction with the the Kingdom of God or with some friends of mine from US, like to say to the beloved community so we can be a beloved community even when we, uh, disagree.
And another and two other hopes I do have for the Anglican Communion is that we do mission better. We can expand our presence. We can plant more churches. We can offer people who has in despair or who, who are in need. So we can offer a space for safety, worship, and, uh, belonging. So this is one of my, another, another hope that I do have for the Anglican Communion.
And of course, the, the, the, the name itself is, so, I do believe we can be a communion. So we can communicate among ourselves in a way that pleases God and that transforms the world. Bearing in mind our five marks of mission, which I think it's a good, uh, compass for us to follow and to be guided for.
Pui Lan: Thank you very much for joining the podcast today. If you enjoy this episode, please check out the other podcast in this series.
Paulo: Thank you Pui Lan for being here. Thank you for all of you listening. I don't expect you to agree with me in all, but anyway, please be in touch and let's keep talking.
Pui Lan: Thank you.
Paulo: Thank you, Pui Lan.
