This biography recalls the fascinating life of the second Reformed minister of New Amsterdam (present-day New York), Everardus Bogardus, a poor but gifted youth who worked himself upward into the ministry. The first part of the book provides an in-depth analysis of his mystical experience as a 15-year old orphan in his hometown Woerden (Holland) and its significance in the Dutch context. The second part explores Bogardus’s agency in the colonial context and his appropriation of his new fatherland - as a minister among the Europeans, the Native Americans, and the blacks, as a spokesman of the opposition during Kieft’s War, and as a colonist married to the famous Anneke Jans. This biography is conceived as a mentality history of an early modern male individual.

Fulfilling God’s Mission: The Two Worlds of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607-1647 has been granted the 2008 Hendrick's Award.