Foreign Missions and Strategy, Foreign Missions as Strategy

Abstract

Abstract This chapter describes how thinking about American foreign missions provides an essential reminder of the sometimes hidden or overlooked role of religion in the history of foreign relations and policy. Accordingly, attention to foreign missions reveals the multiple ways that religious belief and priorities could shape political strategies. In foreign missionaries, one can see a group of early nineteenth-century Americans who had a grand plan for the role of the United States in the world. The United States was, in their view, one of the two seats of “true religion” in the world and accordingly it had a duty to lead the rest of the world toward a particular type of Christianity and “civilization.” This can be seen in the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ (ABCFM) general process of location selection as well as their early efforts in China, which they saw as a key strategic location in the overall project of the conversion of the world. Similar dynamics were at work in all of the board’s mission stations, but the particular interest that missionaries, merchants, and diplomats had in relations with China make it a particularly apt location for considering missionary and grand strategy.