In July 1872, Sir Bartle Frere – Vice President of the RGS and elder statesman – provided, under the auspices of the Christian Evidence Society, a rebuttal of the argument that Christianity was ‘little suited to men of other races and climates’. Taking Frere’s apologia for Christianity as a civilizing agent and ‘bond of political union’ as a starting point, this paper examines how this essentially geographical postulate was expressed in the rhetoric propagated by British missionary societies and their supporters. The paper analyses material from missionary handbooks, biographies, periodicals, atlases and other geographical literature, to better understand how Frere’s position was maintained and modified across a wide spectrum of missionary opinion. More generally, the paper investigates the relationship between specific religious imaginaries and particular imaginative geographies evident in the pervasive but varied efforts by Victorian Britain’s missionary enthusiasts to argue for, and enact, Christianity’s presumed universal reach.