Christianity came to North America with European explorers, colonizers, and settlers, expressing in a New World version enduring continuity but also substantial change. In what became Canada and the United States (the limits of North America for this article), national and political considerations proved important, but smaller, regional forms of Christianity also flourished. North American Christianity struggled with its plurality, perhaps, ironically, achieving its greatest unity in its large-scale dedication to mission.

Christians Made and Born

Intrinsic to the Christian vision was a commitment to mission—to the task of bringing all peoples to God through the saving power of his son Jesus Christ. So far did the ideology of mission extend in North America that, even in the case of those reared ostensibly as Christians, the mission to convert became in many instances a major concern.

Conversion of Native North Americans