Abstract: When Gandhi's nationalist movement began, American Protestants had been in India for more than a century and were spending twice as much on India's evangelization as the British. Their success largely confined to 'mass conversions' amongst the poorest and most socially isolated Indians, and faced with rising resistance from Hindu nationalizing elites, missionaries confronted a crisis. Most missionaries came to believe that their success and survival depended upon retreating from aggressive evangelical campaigns, detaching themselves from the British Empire's 'civilizing' objectives and instead adopting an increasingly service-oriented, culturally inclusive, woman-centered, and theologically ecumenical approach to their evangelical task. The tendency of missionary culture to become more 'female' in its style contrasts vividly with the more 'male' ethos of the standard imperialist narrative, and gives to the India missionary experience a proto-feminist character that has rarely been acknowledged. This transformation of mainline missionaries' practice and interpretation of their mission has broad implications for American religion and international relations. The encounter with Gandhi and Indian nationalism polarized American Protestantism, contributing to the decline of evangelical commitments in the mainline churches and the I rise, outside the major denominations, of the more conservative evangelical organizations that lead the foreign mission movement today. As the most important interpreters of India and the 'developing world' in the United States before World War 11, missionaries played a pivotal role in shaping American exceptionalism. They also contributed---in ways entirely unrecognized by historians---to efforts to define America's 'mission' after World War II in terms of human rights, racial equality, cross-cultural exchange, and foreign aid. Returning missionaries such as E. Stanley Jones, Welthy Honsinger Fisher, William and Charlotte Wiser, Daniel J. Fleming, G. Sherwood Eddy, Duane Spencer Hatch, Frederick B. Fisher, Jay Holmes Smith, and Ralph Templin could be found at the forefront of efforts to promote Gandhi's legacy for peace and civil rights, establish aid and development programs in India, and endorse the Human Rights Charter of the United Nations.