Europeans failed to acknowledge the longstanding, well-developed religious beliefs and practices of the people they met. Instead, they viewed indigenous men and women as blank slates on which Christian missionaries could write the gospel. This paternalistic view of evangelism permeates American church history. For the next century and a half, European colonists struggled to establish settlements in North America. They faced new climates, diseases, starvation, and a short supply of people. For a while,