ABSTRACT

Falcón explores and recovers Edward Kenney’s all-but-forgotten missions to the enslaved and disadvantaged peoples of Cuba. He asks why, and by whom, was Kenney forgotten? The crucial answer to both these questions, Falcón concludes, is that Kenney was intentionally forgotten by two groups; the House of Episcopal Bishops in the United States, and the Cubans who converted to Episcopalian practice during their exile in the US and later returned to the island as minor leaders of the Church from Key West and New York. The former group neither accepted its responsibility for the mission nor supported Kenney with the financial and personnel provisions he needed. The latter did not embrace Kenney’s work and legacy as the official founder of the Episcopal Church in Cuba. Falcón illustrates that the reasons behind both groups’ abandonment were political and embroiled in the newly nationalist imperative to overthrow Spanish colonialism. His recovery of Kenney’s work thus exposes Cuba as a nexus of imperial competition and global Protestant networks that begs for more sustained scholarly attention on Cuba, as well as other bastions of Roman Catholicism, in our past and present understanding of global Protestantism.