Catholic vs. Protestant Evangelism in the Americas

[Scott]

Listening to a lecture series on the Conquest of the Americas. The professor makes an interesting comparison between the way that Spanish Catholics treated natives and the way English Protestants treated natives. He suggests that the Spanish as least formally attempt to evangelize while the protestants are largely unconcrned with evangelizing them.

He notes countless abuses by Spanish Catholics and the various Catholic voices who protested (including one Spanish priest who wrote a work on Spanish atrocitities that was published and widely distributed by protestants in an anti-Catholic effort).

Still, he maintains a fundamental distinction - the Spanish extensively tried to evangelize the natives. The English mostly ignored them (from an evangelism perspective).

Thoughts?

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

There was an extensive effort by Jesuits to proselytize Indians, I believe. However, the Spanish in general were known for their barbaric treatment and enslavement of Indians.

Cross-cultural interaction between Protestants and Indians, from what I have learned in my historical studies, was in general much more civilized and evangelical than what the Indians experienced from Roman Catholics. The Pilgrims got along well with the Indians and established a peace which lasted from 1620 to 1675.

The works (preaching and translating the Scriptures for the Indians) and compassion of John Eliot, David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards come to mind.

These excerpts from a Christian missions history timeline help to tell the story of Protestant evangelical efforts towards the Indians.

1643 - John Campanius, Lutheran missionary to the Indians, arrives in America on the Delaware River; Reformed pastor Johannes Megapolensis begins outreach to American Indians while pastoring at Albany
1644 - John Eliot begins ministry to Algonquin Indians in North America
1649 - Society for the Propagation of the Gospel In New England formed to reach the Indians of New England -- John Eliot was named its first missionary
1701 - John Jackson, the first missionary to Newfoundland to be supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, arrives at St. John's.
1702 - George Keith, Scotch Quaker, arrives in America as a missionary of the newly-organized Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
1703 - The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts expands its work to the West Indies
1709 - Experience Mayhew, missionary to the Martha's Vineyard Indians, translates the Psalms and the Gospel of John into the Massachusett language. It will be a work considered second only to John Eliot's Indian Bible in terms of significant Indian-language translations in colonial New England.
1723 - Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan's Edwards' grandfather, chastises New Englanders for their neglect of Indian souls in a sermon titled: "Whether God Is Not Angry with the Country for Doing So Little toward the Conversion of the Indians?" Stoddard felt that colonial wars and other trials were God's punishment for neglecting the colony's commitment as spelled out in the 1629 Massachusetts Bay charter to bring the gospel to the Indians.
1735 - John Wesley goes to Indians in Georgia as missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
1739 - The first missionary to the Mahican (Mohegan) Indians, John Sergeant, builds a home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that is today a museum.
1740 - Moravian David Zeisberger starts work among Creek Indians of Georgia
1745 - One day in late December, David Brainerd, missionary to Native American Indians, writes in his journal: "After public worship was over, I went to my house, proposing to preach again after a short season of intermission. But they soon came in one after another; with tears in their eyes, to know, what they should do to be saved. . . . It was an amazing season of power among them, and seemed as if God had bowed the heavens and come down ... and that God was about to convert the whole world."
1746 - From Boston, a call is issued to the Christians of the New World to enter into a seven-year "Concert of Prayer" for missionary work
1747 - Jonathan Edwards appeals for prayer for world missions
1750 - Jonathan Edwards, preacher of the First Great Awakening, having been banished from his church in Massachusetts, goes as a missionary to the nearby Housatonic Indians; Christian Frederic Schwartz goes to India with Danish-Halle Mission
1751 - Samuel Cooke arrives in New Jersey as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
1754 - Moravian John Ettwein arrives in America from Germany in as a missionary. Preaching to Native American tribes and establishing missions, he will travel as far south as Georgia. Eventually Ettwein will become bishop and head of the Moravian church in the United States.
1755 - The Mahican Indian settlement at Gnadenhutten, Pa. is attacked and destroyed. Moravian missionary Johann Jacob Schmick who pastors a group of Indian converts will remain with the Mahicans through exile and captivity, though facing almost constant threats from white neighbors. Schmick will join his Indian congregation as they seek refuge in Bethlehem, follow them as captives to Philadelphia, and remain with them after they settle in Wyalusing (also called Friedenshutten), Pennsylvania.
1759 - Native American Samson Occom, direct descendant of the great Mohegan chief Uncas, is ordained by the Presbyterians. Despite poor eyesight, Occom became the first American Indian to publish works in English. These included sermons, hymns and a short autobiography.
1763 - The Presbyterian Synod of New York orders that a collection for missions be taken. In 1767 the Synod will ask that this collection be done annually.
1780 - August Gottlieb Spangenberg writes An Account of the Manner in Which the Protestant Church of the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren, Preach the Gospel, and Carry On Their Missions Among the Heathen. Originally written in German, the book will be translated into English in 1788.
1781 - In the midst of the American Revolutionary War, the British so feared Moravian missionary David Zeisberger and his influence among the Delaware and other Native American Indians that they arrested him and his assistant, John Heckewelder, charging them with treason,
1784 - Methodist Thomas Coke submits his Plan for the Society for the Establishment of Missions Among the Heathen. Methodist missions among the 'heathen' will begin in 1786 when Coke, destined for Nova Scotia, is driven off course by a storm and lands at Antigua in the British West Indies.
1798 - The Missionary Society of Connecticut is organized by the Presbyterians. Its missionaries worked within the U.S., evangelizing both European settlers and Native Americans.

To give other specific examples, I would suggest reading Jean de Lery's History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil about the efforts of French Huguenots to evangelize Indians near Rio de Janeiro. It is the first anthropological work dealing with New World Indians.

The 1562-1565 French Huguenot colonial efforts in Florida had a huge impact for good wrt Indian relations. Laudonniere's dipolomatic efforts at dealing with two Indian tribes that were at war with one another did backfire and caused some temporary troubles for the Huguenot colony. But overall relations were good and the Indians treated the French Protestants with a respect that was mutual. However, when Pedro Menendez massacred the Huguenot colony and established St. Augustine, he took Indian slaves and his Spanish forces virtually exterminated the Timucua Indians within a few generations. Yet, while the Indians of Florida in general came to despise the Spanish...

Even though the colony had been destroyed, the memory of the French, especially their songs, lingered for a long time. "Europeans, cruising along the coast or landing upon the shore, would be saluted (by the Indians) with some snatch of French Psalm uncouthly rendered by Indian voices."

Nicholas Le Challeux (1579) writes that the Indians "yet retain such happy memories that when someone lands on their shore the most endearing greeting that they know how to offer is 'Du fond de ma pensée' (Ps. 130), or 'Bienheureux est qui conqués' (Ps. 138), which they say as if to ask the watchword, 'Are you French or not?' "

 

[Scott]

Thanks for the thoughts

 

[Plimoth Thom]

The New England Puritans did not view Indians as racially inferior, but rather just like Englishmen, and expected to conform to the same standards. If an Indian committed a crime he was brought into court, usually with some Indian jurors and expected to face prosecution the same as an Englishman. The puritan missionaries stressed true conversion with the Indians, as well as conforming to the English way of life. So they did not get as many converts as the Jesuits in New France claim to have. But then the Catholic and Puritan definitions of conversion were completely different. Often a Jesuit would baptize a group of Indians, call them Christians, and the Indians themselves didn't know what happened. That didn't happen with the Puritans.

 

[Scott]

Thom: A point the professor made is that there was very little concern among the English about the evangelization of the Indians. I think we see the scattered and sort of hodge-podge nature of protestant evangelism from Andrew's timeline. The main goal of the English was simple dispossession of the Indians' land. The English were largely content to leave the Indians to themselves, in terms of evangelism. The Jesuits had a very active and systemic program for evangelizing. They were very concerned about evangelizing the Indians.