AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS

first American foreign missionary society, established in 1810 by New England Congregationalists. Missionaries were sent to numerous countries and to American possessions, but the work in Hawaii was especially notable. From 1820 to 1848 more than 80 missionaries worked in Hawaii and introduced Christianity, Western education, and the press there. When the United Church of Christ was formed in 1961 by merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches, the American Board of Commissioners was absorbed into the new church's mission organization, the United Board for World Ministries.