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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 October 2017
The resurgence of American evangelicalism since the 1940s unfolded in conjunction with efforts by policymakers to instrumentalize religion for the assertion of empire. Missions and foreign aid are two key areas where these dynamics intersected. They show that evangelicals were both at home in the “American century” and deeply critical of global power. Rather than being a weakness, however, these tensions enabled the movement to become a crucial arbiter at a time when the country's new role was not yet firmly legitimized at home. In particular, evangelicalism helped reconcile isolationist, antistatist, and antimilitarist sentiments with hegemonic aspirations, the national security state, and the military–industrial complex.
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13 Gary R. Hess, “Waging the Cold War in the Third World: The Foundations and the Challenges of Development,” in Friedman and McGarvie, 319–39.
14 Religious private voluntary organisations (PVOs) made up 17% of all agencies in 1940 and 52% by 1962. Real revenue for religious PVOs increased from 18% of the total in 1940 to 78% in 1952. McCleary and Barro, 11–12. Among recent books on the global activism of religious groups and its intersection with foreign policy are Wuthnow, Robert, Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tyrrell; and Preston, Andrew, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2012)Google Scholar.
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16 McCleary and Barro, 13–14.
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29 Dow, “Romance in a Marriage of Convenience,” 859–95.
30 Dow, “Influence of American Evangelicalism,” 148–50.
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38 Dow, “Romance in a Marriage of Convenience”; Dow, “Influence of American Evangelicalism.” Dow suggests (ibid., 102) that US policymakers regarded “pro-missionary, and therefore pro-American, feeling” in the Congo as the foundation for close relationship between the two countries. Likewise, in Kenya, medical and education work contributed to making the country the US's “most consistent, trustworthy, and capable partner in sub-Saharan Africa” during the Cold War (154).
39 See also the article by Tim Stoneman in this issue.
40 Miller-Davenport, 1124; see also Shibusawa, Naoko, America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. See also Dow, “Influence of American Evangelicalism,” 10, 20, 133.
41 See, for example, the support extended to evangelicals by General Douglas MacArthur in Japan. According to Miller-Davenport, 1111, 1113–14, 1123–24, MacArthur embodied for evangelicals the combination of military power and evangelical purpose.
42 Loveland, Anne C., American Evangelicals and the U. S. Military, 1942–1993 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 10–13, 56–64 Google Scholar. On Broger's involvement with the NAE see, for example, Clyde W. Taylor, “Report of the Office of Public Affairs to the Executive Committee,” National Association of Evangelicals, Wheaton, IL, 12 June 1962, NAE Records; and Clyde W. Taylor, “Report of the Office of Public Affairs to the NAE Board of Administration,” Chicago, 7 Oct. 1963, NAE Records.
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46 McGirr, Lisa, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. David C. Hammack has pointed out that postwar philanthropic foundations reshaped their programmes to take advantage of federal funding and worked effectively “to increase federal funding in these fields, while minimizing federal controls.” David C. Hammack, “Failure and Resilience: Pushing the Limits in Depression and Wartime,” in Friedman and McGarvie, Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility, 263–80, 280.
47 Walter H. Judd, “World Issues and the Christian,” Christianity Today, 23 June 1958, 8, original emphasis.
48 Nichols, Uneasy Alliance, 92, 168–69.
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51 Ibid., 21; [Henry], “Eisenhower, Khrushchev,” 26.
52 C. N. Hostetter Jr., “Government Overseas Programs and the Churches,” paper given at the NAE National Conference on Church–State Relations, 6–8 March 1963, 5, NAE Records.
53 Nichols, Uneasy Alliance, 92.
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55 “Agenda – Miscellaneous,” Executive Committee of the World Relief Commission, 13–14 Nov. 1973, 9, NAE Records.
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63 Miller-Davenport, “Evangelical Missionaries,” 1117, 1127.
64 “Where Do We Go From Here?”, 17.
65 Harold Lindsell, “An Evangelical Evaluation of the Relationship between Churches and the State in the United States,” Consultation on the Church in a Secular World, 11–13 Oct. 1967, 14–15, NAE Records.
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71 Dow, “Marriage of Convenience,” 859–95; Dow, “Influence of Evangelicalism,” 97, 76, 65, 166–67.
72 McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 245–46, 247–48.
73 Smith, Christian, American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 153 Google Scholar, original emphasis. See also Himmelstein, Jerome L., To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 78 Google Scholar. I have explored this ambivalent positioning of resurgent evangelicalism in Schäfer, Countercultural Conservatives.
74 See, for example, Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism; Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream; Heclo, Hugh, Christianity and American Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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76 Gunn, Spiritual Weapons, 23. See also Sparrow, Warfare State; Young, Why We Fight; Blower, Brooke, “From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919–1941” Diplomatic History, 38, 2 (April 2014), 345–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunt, Ideology and U. S. Foreign Policy; and Hixson, The Myth of American Diplomacy.
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82 Joel A. Carpenter, “Youth for Christ and the New Evangelicals,” in Hart, Reckoning with the Past, 371. See also Gunn, 73–74.
83 Miller-Davenport, “Evangelical Missionaries,” 1131.
84 On this issue see also the essays by Heather Curtis and Melani McAlister in this issue. See also Paulmann, Johannes, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” Humanity, 4, 2 (Summer 2013), 215–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
