This essay discusses the work of the American Baptist Home Mission Society with African-Americans and Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth century. It explores the tensions between hierarchy and inclusion in the efforts of White evangelists to incorporate racialized minorities into the Baptist Church and the body politic, as well as the tensions that ultimately arose between White missionary discourses and the proselytes’ own alternative visions of race, nation, and religion. It thus demonstrates the complex role of religion in the U.S. process of nation building.
Keywords: American Baptist Home Mission Society, African-Americans, Chinese immigrants, hierarchy, inclusion, evangelism, United States, nation building,