Protestants Abroad
How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America
- 408 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
They sought to transform the world, and ended up transforming twentieth-century America
Between the 1890s and the Vietnam era, many thousands of American Protestant missionaries were sent to live throughout the non-European world. They expected to change the people they encountered, but those foreign people ended up transforming the missionaries. Their experience abroad made many of these missionaries and their children critical of racism, imperialism, and religious orthodoxy. When they returned home, they brought new liberal values back to their own society. Protestants Abroad reveals the untold story of how these missionary-connected individuals left an enduring mark on American public life as writers, diplomats, academics, church officials, publishers, foundation executives, and social activists.
David A. Hollinger provides riveting portraits of such figures as Pearl Buck, John Hersey, and Life and Time publisher Henry Luce, former "mish kids" who strove through literature and journalism to convince white Americans of the humanity of other peoples. Hollinger describes how the U.S. government's need for citizens with language skills and direct experience in Asian societies catapulted dozens of missionary-connected individuals into prominent roles in intelligence and diplomacy. Meanwhile, Edwin Reischauer and other scholars with missionary backgrounds led the growth of Foreign Area Studies in universities during the Cold War. The missionary contingent advocated multiculturalism and anticolonialism, pushed their churches in ecumenical and social-activist directions, and joined with Jewish intellectuals to challenge traditional Protestant cultural hegemony and promote a pluralist vision of American life. Missionary cosmopolitans were the Anglo-Protestant counterparts of the New York Jewish intelligentsia of the same era.
Protestants Abroad reveals the crucial role that missionary-connected American Protestants played in the development of modern American liberalism, and how they helped other Americans reimagine their nation's place in the world.
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Half Title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- Preface
- CHAPTER 1: Introduction: The Protestant Boomerang
- CHAPTER 2: To Make the Crooked Straight: Henry Luce, Pearl Buck, and John Hersey
- CHAPTER 3: To Save the Plan: Can Missions Be Revised?
- CHAPTER 4: The Protestant International and the Political Mobilization of Churches
- CHAPTER 5: Anticolonialism vs. Zionism
- CHAPTER 6: Who Is My Brother? The White Peril and the Japanese
- CHAPTER 7: Telling the Truth about the Two Chinas
- CHAPTER 8: Creating America’s Thailand in Diplomacy and Fiction
- CHAPTER 9: Against Orientalism: Universities and Modern Asia
- CHAPTER 10: Toward the Peace Corps: Post-Missionary Service Abroad
- CHAPTER 11: Of One Blood: Joining the Civil Rights Struggle at Home
- CHAPTER 12: Conclusion: Cain’s Answer
- Notes
- Index