"Consists of a historical sketch of the society and synopses of its standing committees; brief biographies of some 60 members of the society who became missionaries to the American Indians or missionaries in foreign lands; a selection of letters received from these missionaries; and dissertations read before the society. Of particular interest is a Report of the committee on Colonization (pp. 296-317) on a plan to resettle the free black population of the United States on the coast of Africa. To achieve this end, the committee resolves to support the work of the American ColonizationSociety and to callt he public's attention to the matter."--Book dealer's description.

"Consists of a historical sketch of the society and synopses of its standing committees; brief biographies of some 60 members of the society who became missionaries to the American Indians or missionaries in foreign lands; a selection of letters received from these missionaries; and dissertations read before the society. Of particular interest is a Report of the committee on Colonization (pp. 296-317) on a plan to resettle the free black population of the United States on the coast of Africa. To achieve this end, the committee resolves to support the work of the American ColonizationSociety and to callt he public's attention to the matter."--Book dealer's description.

Inventories were received from archives of the governing bodies of the various Protestant churches and of their missionary societies and from the libraries of their theological seminaries, colleges, and historical societies.

The foreign missionary movement of the early 19th century grew out of the efforts of churches in New England to deal with the changes then taking place in society. The erosion of traditional institutional structures and social values plus the rise of Unitarianism threatened the destruction of the traditional faith. Mr. Andrew holds that the Congregational clergy used foreign missions not only to implant New England culture in heathen lands but also to awaken a sense of community at home.

Nathaniel Taylor was arguably the most influential and the most frequently misrepresented American theologian of his generation. While he claimed to be an Edwardsian Calvinist, very few people believed him. This book attempts to understand how Taylor and his associates could have counted themselves Edwardsians. In the process, it explores what it meant to be an Edwardsian minister and intellectual in the 19th century.

Uncovers what Christian seminaries taught about Islam in their formative years Throughout the nineteenth century, Islam appeared regularly in the curricula of American Protestant seminaries. Islam was not only the focus of Christian missions, but was studied as part of the history of the Church as well as in the new field of comparative religions. Moreover, Arabic was taught as a cognate biblical language to help students better understand biblical Hebrew. Passages from the Qur’an were sometimes read as part of language instruction. Christian seminaries were themselves new institutions in the nineteenth century. Though Islam had already been present in the Americas since the beginning of the slave trade, it was only in the nineteenth century that the American public became more aware of Islam and had increasing contact with Muslims. It was during this period that extensive trade with the Ottoman empire emerged and more feasible travel opportunities to the Middle East became available due to the development of the steamship. Providing an in-depth look at the information about Islam that was available in seminaries throughout the nineteenth century, Muhammad in the Seminary examines what Protestant seminaries were teaching about this tradition in the formative years of pastoral education. In charting how American Christian leaders’ ideas about Islam were shaped by their seminary experiences, this volume offers new insight into American religious history and the study of Christian-Muslim relations.

This book seeks to frame the “the idea of India” in the American imaginary within a transnational lens that is attentive to global flows of goods, people, and ideas within the circuits of imperial and maritime economies in nineteenth century America (roughly 1780s-1880s). This diverse and interdisciplinary volume – with essays by upcoming as well as established scholars – aims to add to an understanding of the fast changing terrain of economic, political, and cultural life in the US as it emerged from being a British colony to having imperial ambitions of its own on the global stage. The essays trace, variously, the evolution of the changing self-image of a nation embodying a surprisingly cosmopolitan sensibility, open to different cultural values and customs in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to one that slowly adopted rigid and discriminatory racial and cultural attitudes spawned by the widespread missionary activities of the ABCFM and the fierce economic pulls and pushes of American mercantilism by the end of the nineteenth century. The different uses of India become a way of refining an American national identity.

A new biography of Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson (1788 - 1850), written to honor the 200th anniversary of his first mission trip from the U.S. to the Far East that would in turn mark the start of Americans joining the modern missions movement.