John A. Mackay - Mission Field

Mission Field

In 1916 Mackay and Jane Logan Wells, who had been recently married, sailed to Peru where they founded a school, Colegio Anglo Peruano, in Lima, Peru, under the auspices of the Free Church of Scotland. The school was a center for progressive ideas during a period when social and educational reforms were sweeping through Latin America. Haya de la Torre, a political leader in Latin America, taught at the school. The mission also started a mission station at Cajamarca in the northern Peru.

From his position as school master, Mackay entered intellectual circles and became a member of a literary group that included Victor Andres Belaunde, Professor of Philosophy at San Marcos University. Francisco Garcia Calderon Rey and his brother, Ventura, were the group’s European correspondents. Five members were corresponding members of the Spanish Academy. In 1925 Mackay was appointed to the Chair of Modern Philosophy at San Marcos and also accepted the chair in Metaphysics.

In 1926 the Colegio was sufficiently rooted to survive without his leadership. Mackay joined the Y.M.C.A. as an evangelist and religious teacher moving his family to Montevideo, Uruguay, where the Y.M.C.A. operated a leadership institute. During the next seven and one-half years, he traveled widely through Chile, Brazil, and Argentina as an evangelistic speaker. He attended the Jerusalem Conference of 1928 and traveled extensively in Europe during his furlough in 1930. From April to July 1930 Mackay and his family lived in Bonn, Germany where he attended the lectures of Karl Barth and began a friendship with him. Under the auspices of the Y.M.C.A. Mackay made many significant addresses in Mexico during the revolutionary period of religious persecution, including an address to over 2,000 men and women in the largest theatre in the town of Chihuahua. Over the years he was invited to speak at 35 Latin American universities.