Foundation and mission work in North America In 1700,
Henry Compton,
Bishop of London (1675–1713), requested the
Revd Thomas Bray to report on the state of the
Church of England in the
American Colonies. Bray, after extended travels in the region, reported that the Anglican church in America had "little spiritual vitality" and was "in a poor organizational condition". Under Bray's initiative, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was authorised by convocation and incorporated by Royal Charter on 16 June 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 new society had two main aims: Christian ministry to British people overseas; and evangelisation of the non-Christian races of the world. The society's first two missionaries, graduates of the
University of Aberdeen, George Keith and Patrick Gordon, sailed from England for
North America on 24 April 1702. By 1710 the Society's charter had expanded to include work among enslaved Africans in the
West Indies and Native Americans in North America. The SPG funded clergy and schoolmasters, dispatched books, and supported catechists through annual fundraising sermons in London that publicised the work of the mission society.
Queen Anne was a noted early supporter, contributing her own funds and authorising in 1711 the first of many annual Royal Letters requiring local parishes in England to raise a "liberal contribution" for the Society's work overseas. (d. 1825),
Old Burying Ground (Halifax, Nova Scotia) In New England, the Society had to compete with a growing
Congregational church movement, as the Anglican Church was not established here. With resourceful leadership it made significant inroads in more traditional
Puritan states such as Connecticut and Massachusetts. The SPG also helped to promote distinctive designs for new churches using local materials, and promoted the addition of steeples. The white church with steeple was copied by other groups and became associated with New England-style churches among the range of Protestant denominations. Such designs were also copied by church congregations in the Southern colonies. From 1702 until the
American Revolution, the SPG had recruited and employed more than 309 missionaries to the American colonies that came to form the United States. Many of the parishes founded by SPG clergy on the Eastern seaboard of the United States are now listed among the historic parishes of the
Episcopal Church. SPG clergy were instructed to live simply, but considerable funds were used on the construction of new church properties. The SPG clergy were ordained, university-educated men, described at one time by
Thomas Jefferson as "Anglican Jesuits." They were recruited from across the British Isles and further afield; only one third of the missionaries employed by the Society in the 18th century were English. Included in their number such notable individuals as
George Keith, and
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism (which was originally a movement within the Anglican Church). The SPG and all British officials were permanently expelled from North America in 1776.
West Indies Through a charitable bequest bestowed upon the SPG by Barbadian planter and colonial administrator
Christopher Codrington, the
Codrington Plantations (and the slaves working on them) came under the ownership of the Society. With the aim of supplying funding for
Codrington College in
Barbados, the SPG was the beneficiary of the
forced labour of thousands of
enslaved Africans on the
plantations. Many of the slaves on the plantations died from such diseases as
dysentery and
typhoid, after being weakened by overwork. The SPG even branded its slaves on the chest with the word SOCIETY to show who they belonged to. The ownership of the Codrington Plantations by the SPG started to come under scrutiny during the late 18th century, as the
British abolitionist movement started to emerge. In 1783, Bishop
Beilby Porteus, an early proponent of
abolitionism, used the occasion of the SPG's annual anniversary sermon to highlight the conditions at the Codrington Plantations and called for the SPG to end its connection with colonial slavery. However, the SPG did not relinquish ownership of its plantations in Barbados until the passage in
Parliament of the
Slavery Abolition Act 1833. At the February 2006 meeting of the Church of England's
General Synod, attendees commemorated the church's role in helping to pass the
Slave Trade Act 1807 to abolish Britain's involvement in the
slave trade. The attendees also voted unanimously to apologise to the descendants of slaves for the church's involvement in and support of the slave trade and slavery.
Tom Butler, the
bishop of Southwark, confirmed in a speech before the vote that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts had owned the Codrington Plantations. The project will be in partnership with Codrington Trust and the
Church in the Province of the West Indies (CPWI). The work will include four areas of work in collaboration with the descendants of the enslaved; community development and engagement; historical research & education; burial places & memorialisation, and family research. USPG has pledged, in response to proposals that Codrington Trust has advanced, 18M Barbadian dollars - (£7M) - to be spent in Barbados over the next 10–15 years to support this work.
Africa The Rev. Thomas Thompson, having first served as an SPG missionary in colonial
New Jersey, established the Society's first mission outpost at
Cape Coast Castle on the
Gold Coast in 1752. In 1754 he arranged for three local students to travel to England be trained as missionaries at the Society's expense. Two died from ill health, but the surviving student,
Philip Quaque, became the first African to receive ordination in the
Anglican Communion. He returned to the Gold Coast in 1765 and worked there in a missionary capacity until his death in 1816.
Children's branch The children's section of the society was called the King's Messengers.
Post-Second World War reorganisation The SPG, alongside the
Church Mission Society (CMS), continued to be one of the leading agencies for evangelistic mission and relief work for the Churches of England,
Wales, and
Ireland in the decades following the Second World War. In the context of decolonisation in Africa and India's independence in 1947, new models of global mission engagement between the interdependent member provinces of the Anglican Communion were required. In 1965 the SPG merged with the
Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), and in 1968 with the
Cambridge Mission to Delhi, to form the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG). The Society found a new role in support of clergy training and in the movement of community development specialists, resources and ideas around the world church. ==Notable churches, health care, and educational institutions==