ABSTRACT
Anti-Jesuitism had deep roots in British America. The violent anti-popery that existed in the colonies nourished all sorts of fears about the Jesuits’ designs to convert Native Americans and further the expansion of Catholicism in America. Yet, as this chapter argues, during the eighteenth century, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel considered imitating the Jesuits and appropriating their methods to the church of England's advantage. By focusing on the Anglican reverend William Smith (1727–1803), the first provost of the College of Philadelphia known for his long dispute with Benjamin Franklin, the chapter shows that the Jesuit reducciones of Paraguay—whose effects on Indigenous society were widely debated at the time also by Voltaire and the philosophes—shaped Anglican missionary projects in North America.
