I am a historian, and one of my favorite topics to write on is the Christian missionary experience in America.
I have just reissued on Amazon a book about Baptist missionaries in America, particularly in Oklahoma: “Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years.”
This is the story of Bacone College, founded as Indian University in 1880. Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, reached out to the American Indians of Oklahoma and beyond to provide a Christian liberal arts education. The initial goal of the college was to train missionaries, but as time passed the college embrace students from dozens of tribes to provide a primary, secondary, and college education. Bacone College recently closed in its 145th year due to mismanagement and poor decision-making by administrators and trustees. But its legacy remains for those thousands the school educated over so many years. It was a school that showed that missionary work to the American Indian did not have to be brutal and heart-rending, rather a good, productive experience that many alumni looked fondly back on. The narrative is told with an emphasis on the stories of those students over the many decades: their learning, their writings, their general experiences in this small college in Creek Nation, Oklahoma. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/0977244806

Another book I’ve written, which is forthcoming in August 2026, to be published by Bloomsbury, is “American Catholics.” Beginning with North America’s contact with three imperialist powers (Spain, France, and England), this narrative account tells the story of how Catholicism became and continues to be part of the basic religious and cultural fiber of North America. The book follows a narrative chronological and thematic format, focusing on people, events, practices, social and cultural phenomena, and institutions. People discussed include the well-known, such as Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra, and the not-so-well-known, such as Juniper Berthiaume and Jean Louis Berlandier.
With 32 chapters divided into 7 parts and all drawing on primary sources, this book engages with topics such as the overwhelming violence against Indigenous people and the religion’s role in wars, politics, and modern-day culture–but also, in the basic love for the American Indians that most Roman Catholic missionaries had. See https://www.amazon.com/American-Catho…
In my extensive research on missionaries, I have discovered that they were generally good people who simply wanted to introduce people to God–nothing more. An example is Daniel Little, a Protestant clergyman in 18th century Maine. Naturalist, scientist, pastor, missionary, Daniel Little became known as the “Apostle of the East” by his contemporaries and admirers for his many missionary journeys along Maine’s eastern frontier. He spent much of his life ministering to the English settlers and Indians of the Penobscot valley. See https://www.amazon.com/Apostle-East-J…
Find out a side to American history that is often portrayed negatively but rather is positive and a joy to learn about. Happy reading!