Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas

"Although missionaries rejected the growing movement toward restriction and exclusion, they often found themselves caught in a process that required the delineation of social and religious hierarchies. Conversion was predicated on the 'inevitably pejorative nature of missionary constructions of heathenism' at the core of evangelical calls for social and religious uplift and transformation. This emphiasis on difference threatened ultimately to undermine missionaries' more egalitarian aims."

Derek Chang, "'Marked in Body, Mind, and Spirit': Home Missionaries and the Remaking of Race and Nation." p.135.