Filipino Protestants gathered in downtown Manila’s gothic United Church last week to celebrate a milestone event: the commissioning of missionaries to foreign lands. The Rev. Jorge R. Quismundo, 29, was off with his wife to teach in Celebes, the Rev. Jose D. Estoye, 29, and his wife were bound for Thailand. They were the first missionaries to be sent abroad by the new United Church of the Philippines.
An experimental United Church was organized in Manila in 1924. During World War II, the occupying Japanese forced all Protestant bodies to join it for convenience in dealing with them. Though this shotgun partnership dissolved after V-J day, the United Church of Christ in the Philippines was formed again on a more solid footing in 1948, is now the largest purely Protestant body in the country. Its constituents: Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Church of Christ, Evangelical United Brethren and Philippine Methodists — 100,000-odd adults in 790-odd congregations.
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