Reformation, colonisation, and the conversion of the “heathen”: theology, history, and nature in the writings of John Oxenbridge (1608–1674)

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the idea of the “heathen” in the writing of the English congregationalist minister John Oxenbridge (1608–1674), who travelled in Bermuda, Surinam, and Barbados, before settling in Massachusetts. Etymologically derived from the uncultivated “heath”, the term “heathen” reminded English Protestants of their duty to plant and cultivate. This resonated with Reformed doctrine, according to which Adam had been consigned to agrarian labour after the Fall. The concept of the “heathen” expressed the theological and historical components of the natural world, while also allowing proponents of evangelism to adapt their ambitious strategies of expansion to shifting religious and political circumstances in the context of division and instability amidst the Restoration and colonisation. Rather than a straightforward expression of English fears about the nebulous “Other,” the “heathen” thus articulated profound anxieties about religious politics, multifarious heterodoxies, Christian cohesion, and the possibility of salvation in an unfamiliar and changing world.