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American Missionary Motivation Before the Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

R. Pierce Beaver
R. Pierce Beaver
Affiliation:
University of Chicago Divinity School
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Extract

Sources for discovery of the missionary motivation of the Indian evangelists and their supporters in seventeenth century New England are scanty. Nevertheless, the most compelling factors come clearly to view. The avowed missionary intent of colonization, as voiced in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Charters, was not one of these. The directors of the colonial companies might have had the notion of serving God and checking Roman Catholic political expansion through Protestant missions, but such an aim was of little force in the thinking of the colonist and his children. They were, indeed, creating a Christian commonwealth. They were completing the Reformation also in a place at the end of the earth. It had to be wrested from the heathen who possessed it. But this extension of Christendom was by the displacement of the heathen, not by their conversion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 1962 , pp. 216 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1962

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References

1 Mather, , Cotton, , Magnolia Christi Americana (Hartford: Andrus, Roberts, and Burr, 1820; 1st American edition, from the London ed. of 1702), vol. 1, p. 7.Google Scholar

2 See Solomon Stoddard, Question Whether God Is Not Angry with the Country for Doing So Little towards the Conversion of the Indians? (Boston: B. Green, 1723), and An Answer to Some Questions of Conscience Respecting the Country (Boston: B. Green, 1722).

3 Incorporated in the “Life of John Eliot ” in Magnolia, Vol. I, pp. 524–525.

4 Letter from the Commissioners to Robert Boyle, September 10, 1668, in Some Correspondence between the Governors and Treasurers of the New England Company in London and the Commissioners of the United Colonies in America …, edited by John W. Ford (London: Spottiswoode, 1896), p. 18.

5 Ibid., p. 35.

6 Ibid., p. 48.

7 Mather, Magnalia, vol. I, p. 502 (Life of Eliot, III, 3).

8 See A Comparison between What the New Englanders Have Done for the Conversion of the Indians, and What Has Been Done Elsewhere by the Roman Catholicks, in Magnolia, vol. I, pp. 521–524.

9 Diary of Cotton Mather 1681–1708 (Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 7th series, vols. VII and VIII), p. 554.

10 Mather, Magnolia, vol. I, pp. 503–504.

11 Ibid.

12 Pemberton, Ebenezer, A Sermon Preached in Newark, June 12, 1744, at the Ordination of Mr. David Brainerd, a Missionary to the Indians, was separately published, but may be found in Memoirs of the Rev. David Brainerd, etc., by Jonathan Edwards, ed. by Sereno Edwards Dwight (New Haven: S. Converse, 1822), pp. 11–28.

13 See Beaver, Pierce, R., “The Concert of Prayer for Missions,” in Ecumenical Review, vol. 10 (1957), pp. 421–427.Google Scholar

14 Brown, Francis, A Sermon Preached before the Maine Missionary Society, 1814, p. 12.

15 See Beaver, Pierce, R.. “Eschatology in American Missions,” in Basilcia, Walter Freytag zum 60. Geburtstag (Stuttgart: Evang. Missionsverlag, 1959), pp. 60–75.Google Scholar

16 New England First Fruits (London: R. O. and G. B. for Henry Overton, 1643), p. 19.; see the previous reference for full development.

17 Mather, Indiana Christiana (Boston:B. Green. 1721), pp. 19, 22.

18 Buell, Samuel, A Sermon Preached in East Hampton, August 29, 1759, at the Ordination of Mr. Samson Occum (New York: James Parker, 1761).

19 See note 12.

20 “Life of John Sergeant,” in Panoplist, January, 1807, p. 353.

21 Memoirs of the Rev. David Brainerd, by Jonathan Edwards (many editions).

22 Pemberton, Sermon, p. 24; see note 12.

23 Memoirs of the Rev. David Brainerd, by Jonathan Edwards.

24 Dictionary of American Biography, vol. VIII, p. 418.

25 Buell, Samuel, Sermon; see note 18.

26 Stoddard, Solomon, Question Whether God Is Not Angry with the Country … see note 2.

27 Wheelock, Eleazer, A Plain and Faithful Narrative of the Original Design, Rise, and Present State of the Indian Charity School at Lebanon, in Connecticut; also A Continuation of the Narrative of the State … (Boston: Draper,1763, 1765); and MeCallum, The Letters of Eleazer Wheelock's Indians, p. 12.