"This book examines the career of Rufus Anderson, a central figure in the formation and implementation of missionary ideology in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Corresponding Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions from 1832-1866, Anderson effectively set the terms of debate on missionary policy on both sides of the Atlantic and long after his death.

For Anderson, the goal of missions was to encourage native churches that would be self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating, thus laying the foundation for the development of an indigenous Christianity. Many natives saw in missionary patronage an opportunity to better adapt to growing Western domination or to emancipate themselves from the limitations of their own societies. Anderson's policies discouraged those ambitions in an effort to ensure that converts and mission-educated natives would repay the A.B.C.F.M. with life-long service to the missionary cause.

In examining how these tensions played out in the missions field, Harris also provides a compact narrative of the core missionary projects of American evangelical Protestants in this formative period."--BOOK JACKET.