Religious Transformations in the Early Modern Americas ed. by Stephanie Kirk, and Sarah Rivett (review)

The ten contributors to this book edited by Stephanie Kirk and Sarah Rivett achieve their goal of producing a cross-disciplinary volume that “grasp[s] the complexity and variety of the [Atlantic] colonial world as it augmented, transformed, and challenged a range of Christian beliefs ” (p. 20). The editors’ introduction is followed by chapters in “Part I: Comparisons” by John H. Elliott, Ralph Bauer, and David A. Boruchoff; “Part II: Crossings” by David D. Hall and Asunción Lavrin; “Part III: Missions” by Matt Cohen, Júnia Ferreira Furtado, and Carmen Fernández-Salvador; and “Part IV: Legacies” by Teresa A. Toulouse and Sandra M. Gustafson.

Elliott’s chapter appropriately begins the work by differentiating between the Indian societies encountered by the Spanish and English. He emphasizes the imperial projects of these mother countries and concludes that the conquerors “found it necessary to adapt their ideas and rituals to their new environment . . . [and that] accommodation and selective adaptation were the order of the day not on one side of the religious encounter only, but on both sides” (p. 38). Bauer examines Spanish and especially English attitudes about the religions of the people whom they encountered. If, at the beginning of their conquests and colonies, Spaniards were more predisposed than the English to view native religions in satanic terms, by the late-sixteenth century writers from both countries “associate[d] Native American religions not only with paganism but with Satanism” (p. 77). Boruchoff focuses on South America to demonstrate early efforts by a few priests, mostly Franciscans, to espouse the best practices of Christian living in an effort to convince natives to emulate their conduct. He contrasts the early example of these good friars by including five wonderful drawings by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and emphasizing the general disrepute and disdain afforded the Dominicans, Augustinians, and especially the Mercedarians; the last became known for their “greed, impiety, wantonness, and cruelty” (p. 92).

Hall’s engaging historiographical essay concentrates on New England transatlantic politics and analyzes the political circumstances and the theological and cultural ideas that shaped “the Reformed international” (sic, p. 111). Lavrin studies the unique experience of martyrdom in New Spain. Indigenous peoples in the northern frontier proved to be difficult adversaries to crusading priests who viewed “conversion of the indigenous peoples as part of a larger plan of salvation for all humanity” (p. 133). Although most missionaries neither expected nor desired martyrdom, some sought glory and “a shot at dying for its cause” (p. 136).

Cohen’s historiographical essay examines the changing religious forms of Europeans in North America during their first century of residence and calls attention to the “stumbling blocks to thinking interculturally about religion in early colonial New England” (p. 162). Furtado’s chapter studies the Portuguese-Brazilian mission to convert the king and subjects of Dahomey to Catholicism. Combining missionary work with commercial enterprise, two Brazilian priests, one certainly mulatto and the other of probable African ancestry, traveled to present-day Benin between 1796 and 1798 to promote conversion as a tool to gain greater political and economic clout in the region. They willingly endured physical suffering in Africa much like Lavrin’s mendicants did in northern New Spain. Like Furtado, the next chapter by Fernández-Salvador emphasizes how “scientific geography was closely linked to the spiritual and material conquest of indigenous peoples” (p. 205), although the setting here is the Amazon basin in the 1630s. She explains the Habsburg preoccupation with efficient administration and the need to define boundaries, especially given Portuguese expansionism in the region. Jesuit missionary activities and martyrdom served “to justify Quito’s, and the Jesuits’, jurisdictional rights over the Amazon (p. 209). Toulouse’s highly theoretical chapter examines the influences of Sir William Phips and Cotton Mather in colonial New England and “the ways a rhetoric of moral projecting can become...