Enthusiastic religion and the lives of Titus and Fidelia Coan, missionaries to Hilo

Abstract

The great awakenings, or times of religious revivals in America, produced sweeping changes not only in theology, but in social and intellectual perceptions. The Second Great Awakening, from 1795 to 1835, led to the remarkable missionary movement which sent Christian men and women around the world to convert the "heathen." These dedicated young people experienced the · suffering that came from following the dictates of Jesus Christ; they willingly placed their lives in jeopardy for their religious faith. The Protestant missionaries to Hawaii have been called Calvinists, but what exactly does that mean? The label seems to denote people of one theological persuasion, yet the American missionaries to Hawaii arrived in the Islands between 1820 and 1848, a span of almost thirty years. We shall discover that they were not cast in the same theological mold, and that their thinking reflected the changes taking place in the political, intellectual and religious environment in America.