Christianity Comes to the Americas

The dramatic influence of Christianity on the Western Hemisphere was never more profound than in the era of colonization and expansion that began with Columbus and continued through the American Revolution. Christianity Comes to the Americas examines the many powerful religious forces that shaped American culture and society in Canada and the Mississippi Valley (French Catholicism), in British America (Protestantism), and in Mexico and Central and South America (Portuguese and Spanish Catholicism). The separate narratives chronicle the forces of schism, reformation, and politics that motivated Europeans to make their westward voyages. It reconstructs the sailing routes; the missions and convents; the guiding personalities; the disputes over doctrine, politics, and slavery; and the evolution of the various forms of American Christianity. Three distinguished historians retell, from the vantage point of the latest historical scholarship, the stories that began in late medieval Europe and came to a conclusive turning point near the end of the eighteenth century: The growth of Protestantism in British America The expansion of French Catholicism in Canada and the Mississippi Valley The spread of Spanish and Portuguese Catholicism in Ibero-America This comprehensive historical survey is sensitive to the twentieth-century issues that were spawned in the 'New World' by colonial practices: slavery, ecological imbalance, isolationism, xenophobia, regional independence movements as in Quebec, and the abuse of Native American rights.