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Issue 66 : How the West was Really Won

Originally published in 2000

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Table of Contents

How the West Was Really Won: Did You Know?

What a famous painting reveals about America's move west.
How the West Was Really Won: From the Editor - Unexpected Heroes

Unexpected Heroes

Mark Galli
Preparing a Way in the Wilderness

Though history has all but forgotten them, it was Christian preachers and teachers who really tamed the West.

Ferenc Morton Szasz
A Church of Their Own

Ethnic congregations were essential for building community in the nation's most diverse region.

Carl V. Hallberg
No Rest for the Weary

Few pioneers possessed strong enough resolve to keep the Sabbath on the Overland Trail.
Tested On All Sides

Excerpts from a wagon train diary reveal that traveling overland was much more than a physical challenge.

Mary Richardson Walker
Yesterday's Christian Woman

Pioneer wives held their households together with a blend of grit and grace.

Diana Lynn Severance
Growth of the West
Forty-Niner Faith

Traditional Christianity didn't stand much of a chance in the California gold fields.

Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp
Out Yonder, on the Edge of Things

The most controversial, and most effective, missionary to the West and Alaska, Sheldon Jackson was always pushing the boundaries.
Alternative Religions

Many non- and semi-Christian groups also laid claim to the West, but none more successfully than the Mormons.

Elesha Coffman
The West That Wasn't Won

Protestant missions to Native Americans had few shining moments.

Bonnie C. Harvey
Dying To Save

The Whitman Massacre reveals much of what was noble and flawed regarding missions to Native Americans.

Mark Galli
How the West Was Really Won: A Gallery of Local Heroes

The wide-open West was served, state by state, by brave and sometimes beleaguered ministers and missionaries like these.

Mark Ammerman
How the West Was Really Won: Christian History Interview - Land of Crumbling Myths

Why the twentieth-century West—urban and explosive—ain't what it used to be.

Richard Etulain
How the West Was Really Won: Recommended Resources

How the West Was Really Won

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September 23, 1595: Led by Fray Juan de Silva, the Spanish begin an intensive missionary campaign in the American southeast. In the following two years, 1,500 Native Americans in the area of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina convert to the Catholic faith.

September 23, 1857: Layman-turned-evangelist Jeremiah C. Lanphier holds a lunchtime prayer meeting for businessmen on Fulton Street in New York City. At first, no one shows up, but by the program's third week, the 40 participants requested daily ...

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Issue 66 : How the West was Really Won

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