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Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society

The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia

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This society is the largest and most influential working organization in the American Church. By means of it the Church shows how aggressive she is, for it has enabled her to place Bishops and Missionaries in many of the States and in all the Territories in the Union and also in foreign lands. This society is the Church's established agency, under the authority and direction of the General Convention, for the prosecution of missions among the negroes of the South, the Indians in the North, the people in the New States and Territories in the West and in some of the older Dioceses; in all the Society maintains work in forty-three Dioceses and seventeen Missionary Jurisdictions in this country. It also conducts missions among the nations in Africa, China, Japan, Haiti, Mexico, Porto Rico and the Philippines. It pays the salary and expenses of twenty-three Missionary Bishops and the Bishop of Haiti, and provides entire or partial support for sixteen hundred and thirty (1,630) other missionaries, besides maintaining many schools, orphanages and hospitals. For the prosecution of this work the Society expends about $700,000 a year, which amount it expects to receive from the devotions of the faithful. The Society should be remembered in making wills, and its constant needs should never be forgotten since it must regularly each and every year provide for so great a work.

The legal title of this important society is, "The Domestic and
Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
the United States of America." The Society was organized by the
General Convention in 1821 and incorporated by the State of New
York, May 13th, 1846, and is organized as follows: