Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Wilder, R.G. Mission Schools in India of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, with Sketches of the Missions among the North American Indians, the Sandwich Islands, the Armenians of Turkey, and the Nestorians of Persia. New York: A.D.F. Randolph; Boston, Crocker and Brewster, 1861.

R.G. Wilder. Mission Schools in India of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, with Sketches of the Missions among the North American Indians, the Sandwich Islands, the Armenians of Turkey, and the Nestorians of Persia. New York: A.D.F. Randolph; Boston, Crocker and Brewster, 1861. Title page.

While training themselves to live in foreign countries, missionaries built schools in order to target children for both religious and cultural re-education, as their entering wedge of influence.

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Views of the Secretary, Dr. Anderson, on this Point.

Rev. Dr. Anderson, in his valuable Tract entitled, “Labors and Hindrances of the Missionary,” has ably presented some of the facts and features of heathenism, which expose the very grave error of this statement. He says: “Consider, again, in how unfavorable a condition heathen communities are to be operated upon. Generally they are thoroughly sensual, earthly, and selfish; unaccustomed to be influenced by, or to think upon, intellectual or moral subjects, unused to change, without enterprise, with no models of excellence before them, and little inclined and little able to appreciate them when presented; full of prejudice and love of sin. It is difficult to conceive how unlike they are to an active-minded, enterprising, progressive community in such a Christian land as this. Public sentiment there, instead of being a great motive power in favor of religion and morality and social improvement, has become inveterate and consolidated as an almost insurmountable barrier to any reformatory effort.

“Consider, again, how slowly religious truth can be communicated to heathen communities! In addition to their not having been trained to think on moral and religious subjects generally, and their disinclination to take into their minds truths or considerations which interfere with their cherished habits, their superstitions, and their love of sin, there is a difficulty in the very novelty and strangeness of the truths to be taught, and in presenting them so that they shall be clearly apprehended, in a language not made nor used to convey such ideas. An intelligent missionary states that a Gospel sermon might be preached in the Tamil language, explicit and pointed in every doctrine, and as correct and plain as idiom and style could make it, and yet the uninstructed Hindu would not get one Christian idea from it, but would construe it all in favor of Brahminism. Our theological terms, so brief and expressive to a well-instructed hearer, are of no use there. The same missionary says that with a well-instructed Christian congregation in the United States, more can be done by a single sermon to communicate new truths, and carry the hearer forward in Christian knowledge, than can be done in a newly-gathered Hindu congregation in three months. It is doubtless substantially so in every heathen community.”