Ministering to the Cherokees and to Confederate Soldiers

Dennis Peterson’s Look Unto the Hills: Stories of Growing Up in Rural East Tennessee is such an engaging memoir. He’s also written several scholarly books, including these two that I found especially fascinating. (The notes are from the books’ descriptions on Amazon.)

Evangelism and Expulsion: Missionary Work Among the Cherokees Until Removal

Christian missionaries prepared the Cherokees for civilization, education, government, and eternity.

Even before it really was safe for white men to travel in Cherokee territory, Christian missionaries were trying to reach those people for Christ. Evangelism and Expulsion traces the early unsuccessful missionary attempts to reach the Cherokees with the gospel and the later, more successful, efforts of the various major denominations—Moravians, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists—to evangelize the Cherokee Indians. Peterson describes the work of some of the more prominent, though today little known, missionaries involved and the struggles they faced because of the Cherokees’ native culture, resistance from traditionalists within the tribe, and the U.S. government’s determination to drive the Indians from their lands. Although some results of the missionaries’ efforts—both political and spiritual—are obvious, others are subtler. Only God knows for sure whether the missionaries’ efforts were successful and to what degree. Evangelism and Expulsion also recounts how Sequoyah’s development of the Cherokee syllabary contributed to the spread of the gospel message, increased literacy among the Cherokees (making them one of the most civilized of the Five Civilized Tribes), and enabled the Nation to write its own constitution.

The missionaries’ faithful commitment to obeying the Great Commission among the Cherokees despite numerous hardships continues to bear fruit in the Cherokee Nation today.

Christ in Camp and Combat: Religious Work in the Confederate ArmiesHow chaplains, missionaries, and colporteurs prepared Confederate soldier for life here and hereafter.

Religion has too often been relegated to the far periphery of the history of the War Between the States, eclipsed by the emphases on the battles, tactics, and personalities of the conflict. In reality, religion was the very marrow of who Americans were. Religion, specifically traditional and evangelical Christianity, was the very foundation of Southern society during the antebellum period, and that spiritual emphasis permeated society during the war.

When the war came, ministers and Christian laymen alike were burdened for the spiritual welfare of the generation of warriors who answered their country’s call to defend their homelands and who were fated to give their lives for its honor and preservation. A plethora of volunteers from every denomination of Protestant Christianity, as well as from among Roman Catholicism and Judaism, became chaplains, missionaries, and colporteurs. Their mission was to help the soldiers avoid the negative temptations of a life away from the positive influences of home, church, and community and to prepare them for the real possibilities of death and gruesome wounds. They not only encouraged them to prepare for eternity but also to accept the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy as God’s will.

 Christ in Camp and Combat is the story of those Christian heroes, spiritual soldiers in a spiritual conflict amidst the raging winds of earthly warfare.

Dennis L. Peterson

Dennis L. Peterson is an independent author, historian, and editor with numerous published credits in regional and national journals and magazines. A former history teacher and history curriculum writer, his areas of special interest include Southern history, the War Between the States, the Great Depression, and World War II as well as biblical studies.

He is a member of several historical organizations, including the Society of Independent Southern Historians, the East Tennessee Historical Society, and the Travelers Rest (SC) Historical Society. He is also a docent for the History Museum of Travelers Rest. A native of East Tennessee, he now lives in Taylors, South Carolina.  Here is his website. 

—–If you like listening to stories, Dennis has recorded several delightful ones which have been produced by Our American Stories with Lee Habeeb.