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1 INTRODUCTION  The Gulicks are among the light artillery or cavalry squad it seems to me, in the church militant. Theodore Gulick, 1906 Of all the reform-minded families in American history, few were more active than the Gulicks. A large clan of Dutch origin, the Gulicks (pronounced Gyew-licks) are probably best known in the United States today as the founders of the Camp Fire Girls. But the family used to be known mainly for their Protestant missionary work, which they did for a remarkably long time. Other American families did missionary work for generations, but only the Riggses of Turkey and the Scudders of India evangelized overseas for roughly as long as the Gulicks, who proselytized in foreign countries from the 1820s to the 1960s. The Gulick family began their missionary work in Hawai‘i, where Peter and Fanny Gulick, the founders of the clan, worked as Presbyterians for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). The first American creator of overseas Christian missions, the ABCFM was formed in 1810, and during its century and a half of existence it employed a total of thirty-two Gulicks. Most of these missionaries were Congregationalists, and several members of the group attracted biographers, who have written about Peter and Fanny’s son Luther Halsey Gulick (a missionary to Micronesia and elsewhere), his brother John Gulick (a distinguished scientist and a missionary to China and Japan), John’s sister-in-law Alice Gordon Gulick (a champion of women’s education in Spain), and her nephew Sidney Gulick I (a missionary to Japan and an early advocate of cross-culturalism). Another noteworthy Gulick is Sidney’s brother Luther Gulick II, who, unlike most of his famous relatives, was not a missionary; he was a pioneer in the field of physical education. He also gained renown as a social reformer, and his passion for reform inspired his nephew, Luther Gulick III, who played an important role in the New Deal. Luther III added luster to the Gulick name, but it was his great-grandparents, Peter and Fanny, who launched the family’s journey into prominence. Born 2 Introduction into modest farming families in the United States, Peter and Fanny moved far beyond their humble origins, creating one of America’s most important evangelical dynasties and influencing the history of Hawai‘i. As a result, the couple are well worth chronicling, and this book, the first to focus on the pair, explores their activities, paying special attention to their involvement in America’s foreign missionary movement. Started roughly two hundred years ago, the foreign missionary movement is one of the longest-lasting reformatory campaigns in American history. Other reform movements, such as Populism and Progressivism, have come and gone, yet the missionary movement remains very strong, as is evidenced by the extensive work of modern-day evangelical groups, the Mormons among them. Formally known as Latter-day Saints, the Mormons lead the American Missionary movement today, but the movement’s founders were not Mormons; rather they were Calvinists such as the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Dutch Reformists. These groups are older than the Mormons, and they were drawn to foreign missions by the Second Great Awakening, a religious movement that spread throughout America in the early nineteenth century. The Second Great Awakening was led by dynamic revivalists such as Charles Grandison Finney, and it created thousands of Christian converts, not the least of whom were Peter and Fanny Gulick. Like most of their fellow converts, the Gulicks lived in the northern part of the United States, where the Second Great Awakening coincided with the Industrial Revolution . Whether this latter phenomenon affected the Gulicks is difficult to determine , but historians argue that the unsettling effects of industrialism discom fited people throughout the North, leading many of them to take solace in religious certainties. Participants in the Second Great Awakening were convinced that religious reform would solve social problems, and they aimed to thoroughly christianize America. They also contemplated christianizing other parts of the world, especially places where Christianity was unknown. Such places were depicted in the United States as benighted, not only because they lacked Christianity but also because they often lacked America’s economic and political systems, most notably capitalism and democracy. These bedrocks of Americanism received plaudits in America from religious reformers, many of whom argued that while christianizing the world was of paramount importance, spreading capitalism and democracy around the globe was important, too. In response to...

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