This study examines the development of ministry at the St. Francis and Holy Rosary missions in South Dakota. Using primary sources, this study seeks to understand the points of views of the Lakota Sioux Catholics during the 1920s and 1930s, and the Jesuit missionaries who reached them. It takes into particular account the patterns which develop in missiology.

German missionaries played an important role in the early years of the St Francis mission on the Rosebud Reservation, and the Holy Rosary mission on the Pine Ridge Reservation, both in South Dakota. This work presents a collection of eyewitness accounts by German Catholic missionaries among the Lakotas in the late nineteenth century.

„Christian Missions and Indian Assimilation“ was originally written as a Master thesis paper in Geography and was completed in 2001 at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria. It is one of the most accurate and comprehensive books there are on Lakota history & culture as well as intercultural contact and its implications. Driven by the idea of culture clash and its consequences Andrea Schmidt was curious to find out how two seemingly so very different or even contradictory cultural and religious systems, the Oglala Lakota cultural system and the (European) system of Christian belief and mission, can exist, side by side, within the Lakota individuals, tribes and within the reservation. The contents of this book are based upon comprehensive field study and data collection at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for several months starting in 1999, accompanied by literary and historical research at the archives of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and several other academic institutions including the Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, South Dakota. Things changed dramatically after 2001, when the paper first came out as a thesis paper; a lot of clergy left the reservation, missionaries seemed to be less active and less interested in Lakota culture than their predecessors. No such paper could have been written at any other point of time.

The ten essays in this volume explore the vast diversity of religions in the United States, from Judaic, Catholic, and African American to Asian, Muslim, and Native American traditions. Chapters on religion and the South, religion and gender, indigenous sectarian religious movements, and the metaphysical tradition round out the collection. The contributors examine the past, present, and future of American religion, first orienting readers to historiographic trends and traditions of interpretation in each area, then providing case studies to show their vision of how these areas should be developed. Full of provocative insights into the complexity of American religion, this volume helps us better understand America's religious history and its future challenges and directions.