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<br> Linford Fisher's reexamination of New England Native Americans' encounters with Christianity during the eighteenth century shifts us away from sterile old debates. Abandoning either-or categories of 'conversion' and 'resistance, ' he discovers people who negotiated the treacherous waters of colonialism by selectively borrowing, adapting, and making their own what missionaries and their government sponsors attempted to force upon them. --Daniel K. Richter, author of Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts<br><p><br> Linford Fisher's masterful narrative demonstrates Christianity's importance for Native Americans in eighteenth- century New England. Showing how Native Americans maintained their identity and ongoing presence through religion, this lucid and thorough study makes a real contribution to historical studies of early New England. --Amanda Porterfield, author of Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation<br><p><br> By putting Indians at the center of the Great Awakening, provincial America's quintessential cultural event, Linford Fisher shatters the divisions that have separated American Indian, colonial, and religious history. His deep research and vivid authorial voice capture the depth of New England Indians' engagement with Christian revivalism as they confronted a hostile colonial world. Our understanding of the Awakening and the Indian experience reaches new heights in Fisher's able hands. --David J. Silverman, George Washington University <br><p><br> Linford Fisher offers a compelling account of how Indian people in south-central New England and eastern Long Island embraced Christianity during the eighteenth century, not in hopes of becoming integrated into Anglo-American society and culture but rather of ensuring their survival and strengthening their distinct identities as Indians. Fisher's most important revelation is the extent of Indian Christians' separation from-and their criticism and even defiance of-Angl

In this meticulously researched and lucidly fashioned study of colonial Indians' encounters with European Christians, Fisher presses historians to move beyond idealized narratives of Indians undergoing blue-sky irreversible conversions. With great persuasive power, he details the ambiguities and paradoxes, affiliations and disaffiliations that marked the lives of real people caught in the maw of colliding worldviews, land grabs and racial barriers. --The Christian Century Accessible, well written, and founded on thorough research. Recommended. --CHOICE This fine book reconstructs Native encounters with Christianity in southeastern New England from 1700 to 1820. Rather like the Indian Great Awakening itself, decades of important, pathfinding, and innovative work have preceded it, shaped it, and made it possible. A worthy and admirable contribution to that. --Joel W. Martin, American Historical Review A nuanced reading of the Native American experience of Christianity during the eighteenth century . The Indian Great Awakening does an impressive job of capturing the complexity of Native American 'religious engagement.' Gracefully written, the book should attract a broad range of readers interested in Native America, early America, and religious history. --R. Todd Romero, Journal of American History Linford D. Fisher's... study of Indigenous Christianity makes a significant contribution to our understanding of both colonial approaches to Indigenous peoples and their own repurposing of them. Fisher challenges historians to deconstruct colonial religion by questioning whether conversion is the most important indicator for understanding Indigenous engagement with Christian cultures. Rather than focusing on conversion, he suggests seeing religion as a lived and elastic experience, placing greater attention on religious affiliation and engagement with colonial institutions. --Thomas Peace, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

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Linford D. Fisher is Assistant Professor of History, Brown University.

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