America sent thousands of Protestant missionaries abroad to Christianize and Americanize the world. Many returned, however, and globalized America.
The Congregationalist leader Buell Gallagher dubbed this phenomenon the “missions boomerang,” and David A. Hollinger sets out to write its history in Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America. Flung abroad to change the world, the boomerang returned—often with a stinging indictment of the parochialism, imperialism, and paternalism of the North Atlantic West—and changed America.
Emeritus professor of history at U.C. Berkeley, Hollinger compellingly shows why the history of missionaries is worth understanding. Over his years of scholarship, he connected dot after dot that linked missionary-connected individuals with key transformations in America. Now that he’s told their story,…