Jesus and Pocahontas: Gospel, Mission, and National Myth

By Howard A. Snyder and Randy S. Woodley

Most Americans know the story of Pocahontas, but not the fact that she was a Christian, and the reasons for her dramatic conversion. Pocahontas had a history-altering encounter with Jesus Christ. A key figure was Alexander Whitaker, pioneer Anglican missionary in Virginia, who taught Pocahontas the Christian faith--but is almost totally unknown today.
This story of Pocahontas has never fully been told. Or it has been ridiculed. Yet it is true, as this book now documents.
In these pages the real Pocahontas comes alive as a flesh-and-blood person with her own thoughts and decisions. This book shows the beauty, the romance, and the tragedy of Pocahontas's short life. It also traces the way the Pocahontas story has been used and misused over the past four hundred years, opening the door to the larger issue of the suppression of native peoples in U.S. history.
The real story of Pocahontas presents a timely case study both in the history of missions and the history of America--an investigation of the interplay between gospel, culture, and national mythology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: May 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781498202893

Howard A. Snyder

Howard A. Snyder served as distinguished professor and chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Ontario from 2007 to 2012. Prior to that he was professor of history and theology of mission in the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky from 1996 to 2006. He has also taught at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio, and pastored in Chicago and Detroit. He has written numerous books, including The Problem with Wineskins (IVP), The Radical Wesley (IVP) and, most recently (with Joel Scandrett), Salvation Means Creation Healed: The Ecology of Sin and Grace (Cascade).

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Reviews for Jesus and Pocahontas

[texasstorm_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is not terrible, and it's certainly better than its unfortunate title would suggest. The first half is actually a quite good summary of the Pocahontas story, if you don't mind that it's basically a 'Pocahontas aggregator' in that it takes the best bits from more in-depth books, like the ones by Price, Rountree and Townsend.As the title informs us, the book has a Christian agenda, and it's really marketed to them, presumably at Christian bookstores and the like. I read the book because I'm trying to keep up with pretty much everything printed on Pocahontas and the Jamestown story. If you're Christian and you desperately want to know more about what catechism she may have used, this book is for you.