"The Indian Great Awakening is a helpful foray into the realm of Colonial social history. Readers will gain new insight and perspective that will challenge Whiggish predispositions." -- Joseph T. Cochran , Themelios
"The history of religious engagement and the spectrum of religious responses presented in The Indian Great Awakening suggest a way to explore Native American perseverance and actions during a period of American history where Indian actors have largely been omitted. Fisher offers evidence of Native presence and elucidates public contestations over Native rights and religions, highlighting the exclusion of Native Americans from earlier national histories. It is my hope that his re-engagement with the history of the Great Awakening from the perspective of Native Americans will serve as an inspiring model and challenge other contemporary scholars to address similar oversights in the historical record."--Michael Guéno, Marginalia Review of Books
"Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and convincingly argued....[T]his book helps us to see more clearly a host of vital dimensions of Native religious engagement with Christianity including the Indian impulses to decide for themselves if how, when, where, and why the claims of Christ would bear on their lives, to control if possible the churches and schools they frequented, and to maintain substantial elements of their cultural heritage when they chose to make Christianity their own. Together those points underscore Native agency, hopes for cultural sovereignty, and quests for community survival, all themes well worth further consideration as other scholars continue to explore the history of Indian Christianization in early America."--Richard W. Pointer, Fides et Historia
"[A] fine exemplar of the maturation of the 'new Indian history,' which places Native peoples at the center of the American past."--Nick Griffiths, William and Mary Quarterly
"The Indian Great Awakening reminds us that religious engagement is both complex and personal. By examining the varied lived experiences of many Native Americans throughout southeastern New England, Fisher has reshaped our understanding of the ways in which these complex people navigated the intersections of race and religion in early America, showing clearly that their varied awakenings are no interpretive ficitions."--Common-Place
"Fisher presents significantly more sophisticated interpretations of religious change that emphasize process, contingency, and lived experience over simple notions of conversion."--Tracy Neal Leavelle, Early American Literature
"Questions about the extent to which the indigenous peoples of the Americas accepted and adopted the religious life and world views of European colonizers have plagued scholars since the earliest moments of contact....Scholars of the various cultures of Europeans and Native Americans have continuously wrestled with such questions. In his The Indian Great Awakening, Linford Fisher assumes a place alongside some of the best of these scholars." --Richard A. Bailey, Common-Place
"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
"Largely convincing and highly intriguing."--Gregory Evans Dowd, New England Quarterly
"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
"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
"A superb book. The revival known as the Indian Great Awakening may not have been as dramatic as historians have assumed, but The Indian Great Awakening is as insightful as historians could have hoped."--Erik R. Seeman, Church History
"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
"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-Anglo-American Christians. No longer will we be able to write off Native American Christians as brainwashed traitors to their people and cultures."--Neal Salisbury, Smith College
"Brilliant....Fisher argues that we would better describe most Native American 'conversions' as 'engagement' or 'affiliation' with Christianity , emphasizing pragmatism and contingency rather than total spiritual (or cultural) transformation."--Thomas S. Kidd, Books and Culture
"Fisher's broad scope and nuanced readings of his materials draw historians away from unproductive arguments over 'conversion' or 'belief' and make a stand for a new conversation about issues of religious attachment."--Christopher J. Bilodeau, Massachusetts Historical Review