The Congregationalists’ American Ho

The Congregationalists’ American Home Missionary Society immediately dispatched missionaries by steamship, seeing an opportunity not just to save California but to create a Protestant beachhead for taking on the”strong holds of Paganism” in Asia”If we can plant [in California] a people with our civilization, our Bible, our Puritanism, our zeal for spreading what we know and believe to others, it will be a direct means of pouring light upon the Isles of the Sea and the land of Sinim [Sin] that lies beyond.” the society’s journal proclaimed on the eve of the great enterprise.“ It is the will of God to make some great use of the new movement towards Oregon and California.”