Discoveries in the New World

Abstract

The European discovery of new lands and new peoples in the Americas challenged the visions of world history and of the salvation of the infidel accepted by both Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. The results were a revival of apocalyptic history with the New World at its center, a wide debate about the possibility of the salvation of non-Christian peoples, and the creation of new missionary strategies to effect their conversion, often under the impact of the evangelical success of the Catholic Reformation both in Europe and in America. Catholic and Protestant reformers reached similar conclusions about the New World's place in providential history but diverged sharply in their assessment of the possibility of the natives' salvation, and hence the effort which should be put into their evangelization.