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The Marvel of Civilization: A Missiological History of the Evangelical Missionaries to California During the Gold Rush Era (1848 - 1861)
Mendoza, Taylor Michael
Mendoza, Taylor Michael
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Abstract
Evangelical missionaries to California during the Gold Rush Era asserted a missiological synthesis of Great Commission Theology, American civilization, and California exceptionalism. The missionaries viewed their mission as exceptional, believing they played a providential role in advancing American continental expansion to California and a prophetic role in preserving American evangelical nationalism within California.
The missiological synthesis emerged both from California’s connection to the Pacific Ocean and the missiological expansion of eastern home missionary organizations into the American West in the decades prior to 1848. Before 1848, evangelical missionaries did not come to California due to the perceived influence of Roman Catholicism in both Alta and Baja California and the political control of Spain (1769–1821) and, later, Mexico (1822–1848). Yet California’s geographic position provided a strategic link to the Pacific Ocean, which increasingly attracted the attention of American political, economic, and evangelical leaders before 1848. Officially, missionaries were sent to California in response to the Great Coincidence, a seemingly coincidental chain of events that tied together the discovery of gold in California just one week prior to the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, effectively ending the Mexican-American War in 1848.The missionaries’ missiological synthesis operated on theological, national, and international levels as a form of evangelical nationalism. The missionaries sought to make California American, in fulfillment of continental expansion, by bringing both the gospel of Jesus Christ and American civilization (primarily New England culture) to California to establish it as a gateway to the Pacific World.
The Gold Rush Era also challenged the missiological synthesis due to the conditions of religious adherence from California’s emerging culture. California’s culture, marked by gold fever, fast living, moral issues, and the cosmopolitan nature of migration, demanded that missionaries reassert their missiology in ways that fit the Gold Rush experience. This proved difficult for them. Individualism, instability, rapid change, an eager pursuit of wealth, and a preoccupation with speed among the Argonauts (or Forty-Niners) challenged their mission.
By the end of the Gold Rush Era in the early 1860s, their mission left them with a complex conversation about triumph and failure. Some missionaries returned home discouraged, others adapted their methods to fit the emerging culture, and still others, outside of evangelicalism, were able to win the newly organized population of California to new religious adherence. The evangelical home mission experiment in California illustrated a significant turning point for the American mission of expansion into the Far West (often associated with the concept of Manifest Destiny), but also demonstrated the role of evangelical home missionaries in that turning point.
Description
Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2026
Date
2026-05
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The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary