Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America

by David A. Hollinger

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691158433
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/24/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David A. Hollinger is the Preston Hotchkis Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History and Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History (both Princeton).

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 Introduction: The Protestant Boomerang 1

2 To Make the Crooked Straight: Henry Luce, Pearl Buck, and John Hersey 24

3 To Save the Plan: Can Missions Be Revised? 59

4 The Protestant International and the Political Mobilization of Churches 94

5 Anticolonialism vs. Zionism 117

6 Who Is My Brother? The White Peril and the Japanese 139

7 Telling the Truth about the Two Chinas 163

8 Creating America’s Thailand in Diplomacy and Fiction 187

9 Against Orientalism: Universities and Modern Asia 214

10 Toward the Peace Corps: Post-Missionary Service Abroad 252

11 Of One Blood: Joining the Civil Rights Struggle at Home 266

12 Conclusion: Cain’s Answer 288

Notes 301

Index 383

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Protestants Abroad is one of those rare books that slices American society in a way that hardly anyone—certainly no one of Hollinger’s intellectual breadth—has thought to cut the cake before.”—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost

“Elegant and original. . . . Hollinger’s book is a comprehensive history of American Protestant missionaries abroad, but it is also the more important story of how a religious and cultural movement overcame its own provincialism.”—John Kaag, Wall Street Journal

“The eminent intellectual historian David Hollinger restores liberal Protestants to their rightful place at the center of the history of struggles for rights, self-determination, and dignity at home and abroad.”—Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty

“No one has done more than Hollinger to put mainline American Protestantism on the map of 20th-century American cultural and intellectual history, and this book adds an important chapter to that impressive legacy.”—Robert Westbrook, Christian Century

“One of the most important books about religion in twentieth-century America to appear in the last decade—a book that will reshape the way we think about the historical arc of American Protestantism.”—Joe Creech, The Cresset

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/11/2017
Religious historian Hollinger (After Cloven Tongues of Fire) argues persuasively that “missionary-connected,” ecumenically-minded white Protestants shaped public life in America more profoundly than has previously been recognized. Between the late 19th century and World War II, Hollinger states, ecumenical Protestant denominations were particularly active in the Middle East and Asia. Having spent years in the field, these faithful returned to the United States with personal stories and political perspectives that shaped both cultural attitudes and public policy regarding regions of the world that most Americans would never visit. Hollinger posits that ecumenical missionaries worked to shift their approach from conversion to humanitarian efforts and focused on providing educational, medical, and other services to indigenous populations. This generation of Protestant missionaries, Hollinger suggests, were eclipsed by younger generations with more missionary zeal and turned to secular postmissionary service work in government, education, and nongovernmental organizations, where they continued to be involved in humanitarian causes. Thoroughly researched and well crafted, this is a reminder of the influence that liberal, cosmopolitan Protestant intellectuals have had on American life. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Elegant and original. . . . Hollinger's book is a comprehensive history of American Protestant missionaries abroad, but it is also the more important story of how a religious and cultural movement overcame its own provincialism."—John Kaag, Wall Street Journal

"Thoroughly researched and well crafted, this is a reminder of the influence that liberal, cosmopolitan Protestant intellectuals have had on American life."—Publishers Weekly (Starred review)

"Too often collected essays lack coherence—not so here. As a reader, each essay opened up new horizons of thought, but Hollinger's own intellectual drive to narrate the twists and turns between the vernacular and the ecumenical traditions of Protestantism give the volume a propinquity that is powerful. This is a superb work of scholarship, a passionate intellectual argument without spite, and an invitation to think, which is the highest compliment one can pay to a scholar."—James K. Wellman, Sociology of Religion

"Hollinger’s latest book, Protestants Abroad, traces the lives and activities of thousands of mainline American Protestant missionaries and, importantly, their children, from the early twentieth century into the 1960s. In its deft interweaving of personal stories and historical argument, it is the most accomplished piece of prose yet written by an exceptionally accomplished scholar."—John T. McGreevy, Commonweal

"Hollinger tells a fascinating and illuminating history, and I commend it highly."—Ryan Hoselton, The Gospel Coalition

From the Publisher