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Evangelical Global Engagement and the American State after World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2017

AXEL R. SCHÄFER
AXEL R. SCHÄFER*
Affiliation:
Transnational American Studies Institute, Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Special Issue 4: Exploring the Global History of American Evangelicalism , November 2017 , pp. 1069 - 1094
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017 

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References

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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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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.

43 Herzog, Spiritual–Industrial Complex, 3.

44 I have explored this in detail in Schäfer, Axel R., Piety and Public Funding: Evangelicals and the State in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Monsma, Sacred and Secular, 56.

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.

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48 Nichols, Uneasy Alliance, 92, 168–69.

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51 Ibid., 21; [Henry], “Eisenhower, Khrushchev,” 26.

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54 Hostetter.

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62 On the background of the NAE's campaign for religious liberty, see [Carl F. H. Henry], “Human Rights in an Age of Tyranny,” Christianity Today, 4 Feb. 1957, 20–22; Clyde W. Taylor, “Religious Liberty in America,” paper given at NAE National Conference on Church–State Relations, 6–8 March 1963, 1, NAE Records; Robert P. Dugan Jr., “NAE Office of Public Affairs Semi-annual Report to the Board of Administration,” National Association of Evangelicals, 3–4 Oct. 1989, NAE Records.

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67 See, for example, “David Hollinger Explores the Returning American Missionaries,” 10 Nov. 2010, at http://nationalhistorycenter.org/david-hollinger-explores-the-returning-american-missionaries, accessed 10 Sept. 2015. See also Harries, Patrick and Maxwell, David, eds., The Spiritual in the Secular: Missionaries and Knowledge about Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012)Google Scholar.

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70 For a recent exploration of this issue see also “European Missions in Contact Zones: Transformation through Interaction in a (Post-)Colonial World,” Colloquium at the Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, Theologische Litaraturzeitung, 28 Aug. 2014, at www.thlz.de/kongressberichte.php?id=13, accessed 10 Sept. 2015.

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.

75 Inboden, Religion and Foreign Policy, 5.

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.

77 Nichols, “The Enduring Power of Isolationism.” See also Nichols, Christopher McKnight, Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Quoted in Loveland, Evangelicals and the Military, 37.

79 Inboden, 29, 58–59.

80 Henry, Uneasy Conscience, 17.

81 See Hero, Alfred O. Jr., American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank-and-File Opinion, 1937–1969 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1973), 6–7, 13, 119–26, 160–65, 172–75Google Scholar. Evangelicalism's prewar internationalist attitude was linked to its predominance in the South, a region with a strong military tradition, a vested interest in free trade, and a white population largely of Anglo-Saxon descent. In contrast, much of the postwar neo-isolationist impetus came from Mid-western evangelicals, who spearheaded the neo-evangelical revival and dominated the NAE.

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.