A General Survey of Their Recent Progress and Present State Throughout the World.

A History of Christian Missions traces the expansion of Christianity from its origins in the Middle East to Rome, the rest of Europe and the colonial world, and assesses its position as a major religious force worldwide. Many of the world’s religions have not actively sought converts, largely because they have been too regional in character. Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, however, are the three chief exceptions to this, and Christianity in particular has found a home in almost every country in the world. Professor Stephen Neill’s comprehensive and authoritative survey examines centuries of missionary activity, beginning with Christ and working through the Crusades and the colonization of Asia and Africa up to the present day, concluding with a shrewd look ahead to what the future may hold for the Christian Church.

In Perishing Heathens Julius H. Rubin tells the stories of missionary men and women who between 1800 and 1830 responded to the call to save Native peoples through missions, especially the Osages in the Arkansas Territory, Cherokees in Tennessee and Georgia, and Ojibwe peoples in the Michigan Territory. Rubin also recounts the lives of Native converts, many of whom were from mixed-blood métis families and were attracted to the benefits of education, literacy, and conversion. During the Second Great Awakening, Protestant denominations embraced a complex set of values, ideas, and institutions known as “the missionary spirit.” These missionaries fervently believed they would build the kingdom of God in America by converting Native Americans in the Trans-Appalachian and Trans-Mississippi West. Perishing Heathens explores the theology and institutions that characterized the missionary spirit and the early missions such as the Union Mission to the Osages, and the Brainerd Mission to the Cherokees, and the Moravian Springplace Mission to the Cherokees. Through a magnificent array of primary sources, Perishing Heathens reconstructs the millennial ideals of fervent true believers as they confronted a host of impediments to success: endemic malaria and infectious illness, Native resistance to the gospel message, and intertribal warfare in the context of the removal of eastern tribes to the Indian frontier.