Pioneer Builders: The Bagbys took the Gospel to Brazil—139 years later, the entire country is changed

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the spring 2020 issue of Southwestern News (pgs. 48-54) alongside a larger feature about mission work in Brazil. 

In terms of pioneer mission work, Buck and Anne Bagby are to Brazil what Lottie Moon is to China. The first Baptist missionaries to Brazil, arriving in Rio de Janeiro in 1881, the Bagbys were used by the Holy Spirit of God to lay much of the groundwork for millions of Brazilians coming to know the Lord in the ensuing 139 years.

Born in Texas in 1855, William “Buck” Bagby studied theology under B.H. Carroll at Waco University in the 1870s. His daughter, Helen Bagby (’27), recalls in her account of her parents’ ministry, The Bagbys of Brazil, that her father used to say “with amused pretense to boastfulness” that he and Carroll founded The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary together.

“He was the faculty and I was the student body,” Bagby joked.

Bagby graduated in 1875 and married Anne Luther five years later. A number of influences, not the least the Spirit of God, led the Bagbys to pursue mission work in Brazil. Several Texas Baptists, including Carroll, committed to pray for them every day, and Carroll even presented their “Brazilian Mission” at associational meetings in order to raise their financial support.

The Bagbys arrived in Rio in 1881, followed by fellow missionaries Z.C. and Kate Taylor in 1882. These four, along with Brazilian national Alfonso Teixeira, founded the first Baptist church in Brazil (in Salvador, Bahia, specifically) on Oct. 15, 1882. Two years later, they founded another church in Rio.

In 1901, the Bagbys moved to São Paulo, where Anne organized and operated a school while Bagby traveled extensively to help organize churches and assist in the formation of associations and conventions. He also took up preaching assignments in Chile and other South American countries.

In the late 1930s, L.R. Scarborough, B.H. Carroll’s successor as president of Southwestern Seminary, went on a tour of South America. He recounted his experiences in the 1937 publication A Blaze of Evangelism Across the Equator, which he dedicated to “to all missionaries in South America,” beginning with “the immortal Bagbys—the foundation-layers and pioneer builders.”

“Everywhere in Brazil, we saw deep Bagby tracks,” Scarborough wrote, “some churches they had founded, schools they had built, great leaders they had won to Christ and trained for His service, or some other triumphs of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“The last thing I saw dear Dr. W.B. Bagby do was to bring a young woman down the aisle to profession of faith in Christ,” Scarborough recalled, “and the glow of a holy radiance was on his face and a joy charming to the angels of God was in his heart. … He is still feeling the urge of lost men and the compassion for their salvation.”

Bagby died in 1939, and Anne followed three years later. A report to the Foreign Mission Board after Anne’s death recounted:

The testimony of those two faithful believers [Buck and Anne Bagby] has been multiplied into 70,000 witnesses; now 780 Baptist churches stand where was none, 62 years ago; instead of one missionary couple, there are now 102 missionaries; and from one Baptist minister, the number has grown to 383.

By 2020, these numbers have grown exponentially, and the pioneer work of Buck and Anne Bagby continues to reap dividends.