Missionization and the Cult of Domesticity, 1769–1850: Local Investigation of a Global Process

Abstract

Examination of Protestant evangelical and Catholic mission stations from North America, across the Pacific, to New Zealand and Australia suggests that missions were organized into two broadly different types: the “household” mission, mostly associated with Protestant missions in the Pacific, New Zealand, and the East Coast of North America, and the “institutional” mission, found largely in the North American Spanish Borderlands and Australia. However, both types of missions shared a focus on the “cult of domesticity” and the transformation of gender roles in indigenous societies as an essential “civilizing” tool; in this process, the private realm of the family home became public, an arena for teaching the domestic arts and modeling the ideal of the Christian family to indigenous peoples.