Rembao, Alberto (1895-1962)

Mexican-born ecumenical Protestant thinker, journalist, and advocate for social Christianity, democracy, and internationalism

Alberto was born on 26 September 1895 to Andrés Rembao and Francisca Solís in Chihuahua, Mexico, during the turbulent years of Porfirio Díaz (dictator 1876-1911). The anti-authoritarianism and anti-clericalism of his liberal free-thinker father caused him to send Alberto and his two sisters to schools run by American Protestants, not for religious conversion, but because Protestant schools were connected to the liberal trends that eventually led to the Mexican Revolution that began in 1910. The Rembao clan on his father’s side were notable leaders in the revolution.

Alberto too joined the revolution under the command of General Pascual Orozco, Jr. (1882-1915). During the Battle of Tierra Blanca (23-25 November 1913) near the border of El Paso, Texas, Rembao, then 18 years old, was nearly killed and had to have his right leg amputated. Protestant missionaries brought him safely to the U.S. where they oversaw his medical recovery and spiritual nurture. Protestant workers and friends also helped Rembao with financial assistance, gaining American citizenship, providing an artificial leg, employment, the completion of high school, and subsequent higher education and career. While Rembao was a lifelong critic of paternalistic and chauvinistic forms of mission, the spiritual and social ministry he witnessed and received during these years led to his conversion by the time he started college, and remained for him admirable examples of integral Christianity.

The period between the two world wars witnessed events that are important for understanding Rembao and his career trajectories. World friendship or internationalism arose in response to the unprecedented death and destruction of World War I. The failure of the self-proclaimed Christian West to avoid the horrors of war and other evils like imperialism, militarism, economic exploitation and racism, caused many around the globe to question longstanding Western claims of the superiority of its values and leadership. Internationalism labored to unite the world’s diverse peoples and to create open systems of international diplomacy and arbitration as means to ending war. Repentant Protestant churches sought to eliminate paternalistic mission programs to convert the world’s peoples to Western “Christian” civilization, and engaged in the promotion of international and interracial friendship and cooperation for global peace, unity and justice.

The interwar period also saw the showdown between Protestant theological liberals and conservatives that had been building since the 19th century. The fall-out hindered cooperation between the two camps, with conservatives emphasizing traditional orthodoxy, and mission as proclamation evangelism for individualistic spiritual conversion-salvation, while social gospel liberals stressed the social teachings of Jesus and taking a proactive role to bring justice, equity, and improved life conditions in this world.

In 1917, WWI was in its third year, the U.S. entered the conflict, and Rembao began studies at the Congregational Church’s non-sectarian Pomona College in California. He graduated in 1921 with a BA in Romance literature. While at Pomona, Rembao solidified his already growing love for journalism and edited the Student Life college newspaper during his senior year. He wrote numerous articles for that paper that reflect his developing ideas of participatory democracy first nurtured in revolutionary Mexico, as well as the values of internationalism and social concern that permeated mainline Protestant churches, missions and schools, as well as other organizations with which Rembao would work. Rembao never absorbed himself in the conservative-liberal divisions that have long been a central feature of North American Protestantism. Instead, he would work with those in the ecumenical Protestant missions community who sought to integrate the evangelistic mandate with social betterment.

After graduating college Rembao married Spanish-born Julia G. Garcia and worked as a teacher and principal of the Colegio Internacional, a high school for boys founded by the Congregational Church in Guadalajara, Mexico. (He also worked as a professor of Spanish literature and language at the Guadalajara University.) The Colegio flourished under his leadership, but after two years a controversy arose and Rembao’s American superiors determined he was insufficiently trained theologically. He resigned the Colegio Internacional and he and Julia returned to the U.S.

From 1924-28 Rembao studied at the Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in Berkeley, California, where he earned an M.A. and a Bachelor of Divinity (now called Masters of Divinity). During these years Rembao was also pastor of a small Spanish-speaking church in San Francisco, as well as editor of La Nueva Senda, the Spanish language newsletter of the Interdenominational Council on Spanish Speaking Work (ICSSW). Rembao’s pastoral years combined work for Christian conversion with social ministry, including education for Mexican migrants, visits at the state prison, and speaking and writing on behalf of Mexican workers. After graduation, Rembao was accepted to the Ph.D. program at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut, while Julia studied at the Congregationalist Schauffler Missionary Training School in Cleveland, Ohio. But he never completed more than a year or so of studies and earned no degree at Yale. Later, however, PSR awarded Rembao an honorary doctorate.

After U.S. entry into WWI, the federal government founded the Foreign Language Information Service (FLIS) in New York City to supply the foreign language press and radio across the country with information designed to promote immigrant loyalty to America and its part in the war. It was essentially one of the many Americanization agencies in the U.S. at the time. After the war, private groups took FLIS over in a decidedly internationalist direction.

Recognized as an ecumenical and internationalist social leader, Rembao was hired by FLIS in mid-1928 to establish and direct the first Spanish language division, while he continued to direct Nueva Senda and write articles for Spanish language newspapers. Although his focus was on helping Latino immigrants, Rembao dealt with broader issues. He was one of the earliest critics of “melting pot” ideas, believing that typical programs of Americanization were chauvinistic and racist, essentially demanding non-Anglo immigrants to commit cultural suicide. He traveled throughout the U.S. promoting and seeking support for FLIS and its approach of culturally sensitive assimilation that preserved the values and dignity of immigrants regardless of race or national origin.

In 1910, the World Missionary Conference that met in Edinburgh, Scotland, excluded Latin America as a field of Protestant missionary endeavor on the argument that it had long been a Catholic region. North American and Latin American Protestant missionary leaders disagreed. In 1916, they met in Panama and formed the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America (CCLA) to coordinate the mission work of its member denominations. In 1920, the CCLA launched its Spanish language journal La Nueva Democracia (ND).

In June 1929, Rembao attended the CCLA-sponsored ecumenical missions assembly in Havana, Cuba. Havana ’29 is seen as a milestone in the rise of Latino leadership and “Latinization” of Protestantism. Such an assessment ignores significant work along the same lines that was done before the formation of the CCLA, as well as outside of it, including by Rembao through his interdenominational missions work in the U.S., and writings and conferences before Havana. Nevertheless, Havana ’29 was the first missionary conference that was planned, organized, run, and its conclusions shaped by Latin Americans themselves. For most scholars, the role of Rembao (who was one of four conference vice-presidents and chair of one of the commissions) is usually that of a contributor to the Latinization. But some argue that the impact of Havana ’29 was limited, particularly by Rembao who is painted as in the thrall of North American bourgeois values and leadership to such an extent that he tried to stop any critique of U.S. imperial and paternalistic attitudes and practices in Latin America. The charge is untrue. Moreover, unaccounted for in scholarly interpretations of Havana ’29 is the influence of internationalism there.

Rembao had come to Havana as official representative of several internationalist-oriented organizations: his employer FLIS, the Presbyterian Church, the Congregational Church (his own denomination), and the Interdenominational Council on Spanish Speaking Work, which became a member of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation only a few weeks after the Havana conference. There were strong feelings of nationalism, anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism at Havana. Rembao helped bring conciliation through an internationalist message as an answer to imperialism, jingoistic and militant nationalism, economic exploitation of the working class, and other problems that divided peoples, caused great disparities in wealth and civil rights, and led to wars. In an article he published in the ND before the Havana conference and would have been known by the delegates, Rembao showcased the work of FLIS with new immigrants to the United States as a model in the promotion of interracial, intercultural, and international understanding and goodwill. The recommendations of the commission he led at Havana and the report he authored argued that economic imperialism against the poor was a reality and hindered the development of an autonomous, self-supporting, self-propagating Protestant church that reflected the culture and needs of the Latin American people. He called on the churches to work staunchly for fair and safe conditions for workers, full civil rights for women and lower classes, commitment to global peace, and ratification of the 1928 Treaty of Paris (Kellogg-Briand Pact) and the Pan American Treaties of Conciliation that renounced war and looked to diplomacy as the means of settling international disputes. Thus for Rembao the quest for Protestant Latinization was in harmony with the quest for world friendship.

Soon after the stock market crash of 1929, Rembao lost his job with FLIS. In the early 1930s, Rembao made the gradual transition to a permanent position with the CCLA’s journal La Nueva Democracia. By early 1933 he was general editor of the journal, a position he would hold until his death in 1962, although he continued working with FLIS throughout its many incarnations, as well as with other ecumenical, journalistic, and internationalist groups.

Up till now, Rembao had mostly worked on behalf of Latinos of the lower classes. But he and other leaders had long been concerned that Protestant missions neglected the elite, thereby forestalling the spread of the gospel and social improvement in Latin America. Leadership of the ND allowed Rembao to address his concerns. Published from CCLA headquarters in New York and disseminated throughout Latin America, the ND bore the unmistakable influences of the social gospel and internationalism of the period. The ND’s stated purpose was to reach the intellectual and influential classes of Latin America with the message of a “new democracy” that would lead to greater civilized progress marked by mutually beneficial friendship among nations, equal rights and justice regardless of gender, race and class, and persons and societies uplifted by the fine arts, science, philosophy, and religious spirituality.

The “new democracy” Rembao promoted in Latin America was not merely copied after the U.S. While he highlighted admirable ideals and examples of liberty in the American tradition, he critiqued the undemocratic and unchristian ways that blacks, Latinos, women and other minorities were treated, and declared openly that the U.S. was neither a Christian nation nor a consistent democracy. In the ND and his book Democracia Trascendente (1945) he harshly criticized capitalism as a system prone to corruption by elites that exploit the lower classes. Rembao went so far as to argue that capitalism could be as much a threat to democracy as was social Darwinism and Communism. Rembao promoted an end to militant nationalism, arms races, and savage market competiveness, calling instead for the interdependence of nations that enacted policies for their mutual benefit. He championed the U.S.-inspired League of Nations as an agent of diplomacy and peace. But he lamented that the League never had the power to enforce its covenants, not the least of which because the U.S., ironically, did not join it.

In December of 1938, Rembao went to the World Missionary Conference in Tambaram (then called Madras), India. After the conference he and Julia stayed at the ashram of Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi, and Rembao spoke with Gandhi personally. A year later, Rembo wrote a book on his experience in India (Mensaje, Movimiento Y Masa, 1939). Despite the well-known rise of fascism in Europe and threat of another world war, the place given to the national or “younger churches” at Madras ’38 gave Rembao hope that Christianity was entering a new stage of development: a “Masa Cristiana,” a globally fraternal Christ-centered church that kept alive distinctive regional identities while resisting captivity to any one culture or nation’s interests. In the Masa Cristiana, the younger churches would play an equal and critical role in mission and promoting a more united, democratic, just and peaceful world.

Throughout the rest of his life Rembao struggled through many writings, speeches, and activities to promote what he saw as socially just democracy and international peace and commerce based on principles he found in the Bible, above all in Jesus Christ, whom Rembao believed preached and modeled concern for spiritual transformation and social justice. He continued to hope in the ideals of Christian-based internationalism and holistic models of Christian mission even after WWII dashed the hopes of many a pacifist internationalist.

Rembao was a much sought after collaborator, activist, and speaker in many ventures of social improvement, world friendship, anti-war, ecumenical missions, and Hispanic concerns. He promoted Latino studies in America through his scholarly activities at the Hispanic Institute of Columbia University in New York City, which started the country’s first doctoral program in Latin American literature. The Rembao home, an apartment within sight of the university, also became a haven for visiting scholars, artists, and dignitaries from Latin America. He wrote on the cultural heritage of Mexico and the contributions of Mexican immigrants to America. His concern for the poor and needy took Rembao to places like Chile in 1946, where he worked with orphans. His concern for training the next generation of Latin American Protestant leadership took him to places like the Seminario Evangélico de Teología, in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1955-56, where he was visiting scholar. His lectures, preaching, and friendship left such an impression that the seminary dedicated a lecture hall in his honor.

In December of 1961, Rembao began to suffer from aphasia as the result of a stroke. Later he also contracted bronchitis. He and Julia continued to entertain visitors and he engaged in journalistic work as best he could from the confines of his apartment. Rembao died on 10 November 1962. He and his wife had no children. The final issue of the ND was devoted entirely in tribute to Rembao.

By Ruben Rivera

Bibliography

For a detailed biography on Rembao as well as a thorough bibliography see, Ruben Rivera, Alberto Rembao (1895-1962): Mexican American Protestant for Internationalism and Christian Holism (Germany: VDM, 2008). Princeton Theological Seminary’s Speer Library in New Jersey houses a file of letters and other items on Rembao, as well as other leaders of the CCLA. Pomona College’s Honnold/Mudd Library in California has Rembao’s editorials in the Student Life newspaper, college yearbooks, letters, and other items. The University of Minnesota’s Immigration History Research Center has the files of FLIS. The Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia has materials on the CCLA. The Library of Congress in Washington, DC has all but two volumes of the ND.

Primary

Rembao, Alberto. Lupita: A Story of Mexico in Revolution. Foreword by John A. Mackay. New York: Friendship Press, 1935.

_____. Meditaciones Neoyorkinas. Buenos Aires: Librería “La Aurora,” 1939.

_____. Mensaje, Movimiento y Masa. Buenos Aires: Librería “La Aurora,” 1939.

_____. Outlook in Mexico. New York: Friendship Press, 1942.

_____. “Prehispanic Religion in Latin America.” International Review of Mission 31 no. 2 (1942).

_____. Democracia Trascendente. Buenos Aires: Editorial “La Aurora”; Mexico, D.F.: Casa Unida de Publicaciones, 1945.
Democracia Trascendente

_____. Flor de Traslaciones: Ensayos de Tiempo de Angustia. Buenos Aires: “La Aurora”, 1947.
Flor De Traslaciones part 1
Flor De Traslaciones part 2

_____. “The Presence of Protestantism in Latin America.” International Review of Mission 37 no. 1 (1948).

_____. Discurso a la Nación Evangelica. Apuntaciones para un Estudio de la Transculturación Religiosa en el Mundo de Habla Española. Buenos Aires: Editorial “La Aurora,” 1949.

_____. Horseman of the Lord: Alfred Clarence Wright. Pamphlet. 24pp. New York: Friendship Press, 1951.

_____. Pneuma: Los Fundamentos Teológicos de la Cultura. Mexico, D.F.: Casa Unida de Publicaciones; Buenos Aires: Editorial La Aurora, 1957.

_____. “Protestant Latin America: Sight and Insight.” International Review of Mission 46 no. 181 (1957).

_____. The Reformation Comes to Hispanic America. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, [1957?].

_____. The Growing Church and its Changing Environment in Latin America: From Missions to Mission in Latin America: Study Conference of the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America. New York: The Committee on Cooperation in Latin America, 1958.

_____. Lecciones de Filosofia de la Religion. Matanzas, Cuba: Publicaciones del Seminario Evangélico de Teología, [1958].

_____. Mission Highlights. n.p.: n.p., 1959.

_____. La Vida Heroica. 2 vols in 1. Mexico, D.F.: Comité Regional de Mexico para e Comité Central de Educacion Religiosa en la America Latina, n.d.

Secondary

Rivera, Ruben. Alberto Rembao (1895-1962): Mexican American Protestant for Internationalism and Christian Holism. Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM, 2008.

Portraits

Alberto Rembao (no date). From La Nueva Democracia (January 1963), final edition devoted to Rembao tribute.