Date of Award
Summer 2024
Degree Type
Restricted to Claremont Colleges Dissertation
Degree Name
Religion, PhD
Program
School of Arts and Humanities
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Daniel Ramírez
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Matthew Bowman
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Patrick Q. Mason
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 James Berry
Subject Categories
Religion
Abstract
“Let my heart be broken for the things which break the heart of God.” This simple prayer came to represent the core mission of World Vision founder Bob Pierce’s life. It also serves as a concise summation of the outlook of the multitude of evangelical humanitarian organizations that sprang up after the end of the Second World War. Taken alone, sentiments like these align with a general expression of Christian charity and goodwill, but when placed in context, Pierce’s prayer represents a revolution in conservative evangelical views of the poor and needy. However, the revolution wrought by Pierce and his contemporaries was not confined to theology alone. It was intimately connected to the global great power struggle commonly referred to as the Cold War.In the 21st century, American evangelicals are juggernauts in the field of international humanitarianism. Massive international charities like World Vision, Compassion International, and Samaritan’s Purse all generate revenues of over one billion dollars a year. However, this important part of American evangelical identity is a relatively recent innovation. These organizations were the product of a relatively small number of people and a specific time and place. Evangelical humanitarianism as we know it today emerged in the wake of the Second World War as the United States found itself facing a new rival: the Soviet Union. At first blush, this may seem like a coincidence of history. However, this project will show that they are intimately connected. This dissertation argues that charity comprised a major part of American evangelical’s spiritual Cold War against communism. While the United States and its NATO allies used the threat of military might to repel the atheistic foe, evangelicals engaged in spiritual warfare for the soul of the world. Philanthropic organizations were an ideal way of marshalling resources for this fight. The origin of this movement in American evangelicalism represents an important development in the ways theologically conservative Christians engaged with the wider world. In the span of a few years, evangelicals shifted from an insular, missiologically focused fundamentalism to a polished, global empire of compassionate ministries. This shift, though welcomed by progressives, has largely been uninterrogated. It has largely lumped in with the general transformation wrought by neo-evangelicals like Billy Graham. However, organizations like World Vision did not arise in a vacuum. Global and domestic politics, missionary zeal, and a world shrunk by technology all contributed to their rapid rise. This dissertation will focus primarily on the role of the Cold War on evangelical humanitarianism from 1950 to 1975. These 25 years were ones of incredible growth and transformation. Started as one-man missionary outfits in the fires of the Korean War, World Vision and Compassion International grew into professional and prolific distributors of aid across the globe. Despite their wide reach, their focus was mainly centered on hotspots in the global Cold War: Korea, Formosa, and Vietnam. Following this progression, we can see the obvious impact of Cold War realpolitik on humanitarianism. Evangelical humanitarians like Bob Pierce and the organizations they founded shaped the ways in which American evangelicals interpreted the Cold War world they inhabited. Scholarly discussions of Evangelical Cold War engagement often focus on the religious motivations of elites and governmental policy in regard to religion. Evangelicals are largely portrayed as being either dupes of a “spiritual industrial complex” or Machiavellian opportunists in the vein of Jerry Falwell. The reality is more complex, especially in the early days of the Cold War. This dissertation shows that an organic Cold War mobilization occurred within evangelicalism, with its own press, radio, and film pipeline. Rather than blind subservience to governmental mandates of religious patriotism, evangelicals recast the Cold War in terms they understood and were willing to fight for. Through missions and charitable giving, evangelicals unapologetically fought the Cold War as Christians. The individual agency offered by these approaches provided opportunities for the lowliest members of society to contribute to the defeat of communist aggression. This compassionate containment helped to form a more engaged and forceful conception of what it meant to be an evangelical in America and the world.
ISBN
9798384027577
Recommended Citation
Berry, James. (2024). Compassionate Containment: The Cold War Origins of American Evangelical Humanitarianism. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 836. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/836.
