Missionary Conquest

This fascinating probe into U.S. mission history spotlights four cases: Junipero Serra, the Franciscan whose mission to California natives has made him a candidate for sainthood; John Eliot, the renowned Puritan missionary to Massachusetts Indians; Pierre-Jean De Smet, the Jesuit missioner to the Indians of the Midwest; and Henry Benjamin Whipple, who engineered the U.S. government's theft of the Black Hills from the Sioux.

Explores the global expansion of Christianity since 1500 from the perspectives of the indigenous people who were affected by it.

Almost sixty years ago, the Mennonite missionary team working in the Argentine Chaco decided to look for ways to be effective in their ministry while being faithful to Jesus’ lifestyle and teaching. They left behind paternalistic models and “conquering” methods and were liberated from the mindset of forming a denominational church. As a result, they found an alternative missionary style of walking alongside those they worked with, giving priority to the integrity of the local people. “Mission Without Conquest” is a historical narrative of how the Toba Qom people of the Argentine Chaco followed Jesus’ way from the time of their conversion until the formation of an autochthonous church. This book embodies a new way to approach the church’s missionary task – a way that makes the mission of Jesus Christ the paradigm for Christian mission until his return.

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion surveys two thousand years of the Christian missionary enterprise in the Middle East within the context of the region's political evolution. Its broad, rich narrative follows Christian missions as they interacted with imperial powers and as the momentum of religious change shifted from Christianity to Islam and back, adding new dimensions to the history of the region and the nature of the relationship between the Middle East and the West. Historians and political scientists increasingly recognize the importance of integrating religion into political analysis, and this volume, using long-neglected sources, uniquely advances this effort. It surveys Christian missions from the earliest days of Christianity to the present, paying particular attention to the role of Christian missions, both Protestant and Catholic, in shaping the political and economic imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon delineate the ongoing tensions between conversion and the focus on witness and "good works" within the missionary movement, which contributed to the development and spread of nongovernmental organizations. Through its conscientious, systematic study, this volume offers an unparalleled encounter with the social, political, and economic consequences of such trends.

The Bible and the American Myth challenges the academic study of the Bible to orient itself to cultural criticism. The essays model an approach to the study of the Bible that entails efforts to fathom not only the meanings of texts, but the role of texts in the construction of meaning. It is all the more fascinating and poignant that the essayists are students of theology of varied backgrounds. What they have in common is the pursuit of theological studies at the mouth of Harlem. This location at the turn of the century inspired them to think differently about the focus and agenda of theological studies, especially biblical studies. Each essayist is convinced that the study of the Bible should entail the study of cultural construction and deconstruction, the study of the making and unmaking of cultural myths that shape existence.