Faith And Foreign Affairs In The American Century

197 Pages·2019·0.928 MB·English

by  Mark Thomas Edwards

Faith and Foreign Affairs
in the American Century
Religion in American History
Series Editors: Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda
No mere artifact of the past, religion remains a defining feature of U.S. culture, inspiring
both reform and reaction, unwavering devotion and righteous indignation. Its distinctive
American contours have evolved over centuries of interaction between an expanding multi-
tude of faiths. This series will publish rigorous and engaging work on U.S. religious experi-
ence with particular emphasis on its historical roots. It will consider episodes of conflict,
patterns of cooperation, and the evolving relationship between religion, politics, and other
social institutions. The ebb and flow of tolerance and intolerance, the twentieth-century
surge in religiosity, the more recent rise of the “nones” (the religiously unaffiliated), and
the intersections of secular and sacred will be important themes. Monographs and edited
volumes will be welcome and tailored for appeal to a broad scholarly audience.
Editorial Board
Sarah Barringer-Gordon, University of Pennsylvania
Kate Carte Engel, Southern Methodist University
Maura Jane Farrelly, Brandeis University
Steven K. Green, Willamette University
Mark David Hall, George Fox University
Paul Harvey, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs
Monica Najar, Lehigh University
Randall Stephens, Northumbria University
Titles in the Series
Faith and Foreign Affairs in the American Century, by Mark Thomas Edwards
Archibald Simpson’s Unpeaceable Kingdom: The Ordeal of Evangelicalism in the
Colonial South, by Peter N. Moore
Faith and Foreign Affairs
in the American Century
Mark Thomas Edwards
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Contents
List of Abbreviations vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Writing the American Century 1
1 Expanding Civilization: Missionary Diplomacy
in an Age of Imperialism 17
2 Nonpartisan: Protestant Secularism in American
Public Diplomacy 39
3 Town Hall Titans: Participatory Democracy in
American Public Diplomacy 69
4 The Aggressive Champion of a Particular Way of Life:
The Nature, Uses, and Limits of Christian Nationalism 97
5 A Glass House: Race and Democracy in Cold War Virginia 131
Epilogue: The End of the American Century? 155
Selected Bibliography 163
Index 177
About the Author 183
v

List of Abbreviations
AAA Agricultural Adjustment Administration
AAAE American Association for Adult Education
CFR Council on Foreign Relations
C&C Christianity and Crisis
CCPE Charlottesville Committee for Public Education
CIC Committee on Interracial Cooperation
CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations
CPI Committee on Public Information
DAR Daughters of the American Revolution
ERA Equal Rights Amendment
FA Foreign Affairs
FCC Federal Council of Churches
FEA Foreign Economic Administration
FFF Fight For Freedom
FPA Federal Policy Association
FRC Foreign Relations Committee
FSA Farm Security Administration
IIA Institute of International Affairs
IMC International Missionary Council
LONA League of Nations Association
NCC National Council of Churches
NPC National Policy Committee
NWTUL National Women’s Trade Union League
REA Rural Electrification Administration
RIIA Royal Institute of International Affairs
vii
viii List of Abbreviations
SCHW Southern Conference on Human Welfare
SCM Student Christian Movement
SPC Southern Policy Committee
SRC Southern Regional Council
SVM Student Volunteer Movement
TVA Tennessee Valley Authority
USDA United States Department of Agriculture
USIA United States Information Agency
UTS Union Theological Seminary
VCC Virginia Council of Churches
VCPS Virginia Committee for Public Schools
WCC World Council of Churches
WSCF World’s Student Christian Federation
YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association
YWCA Young Women’s Christian Association
Preface
This is a book about the presences and absences of religions in American
diplomacy. I was first drawn to this topic while reading Andrew Preston’s
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith (2012). His work has been a great advance
for tracking Christian and Jewish imprints upon the history of US foreign
relations. Yet, while reading, I found myself asking a new question: If Pres-
ton is right, then why is there so much apparent secularism (indifference or
hostility to religious subjects) in the study of American world affairs? Have
scholars willfully been ignoring the evidence now amassed in Preston’s
book, or was and is there something else going on? Thinking through these
issues, I believe historians have been lured into a series of false choices
about the influence of Christianity in geopolitics. This study will emphasize
the interpenetration and even co-constitution of American Protestantism and
secularism, specifically in the several texts, conversations, and debates that
determined pre–World War II public diplomacy.
Public diplomacy is the part of statecraft that deals with how to shape
popular opinion in favor of certain foreign policies or ideals. Most scholars
today follow the US government in defining public diplomacy as propaganda
directed at foreign audiences. The focus of early public diplomacy, however,
was on attempts to sell Americans themselves on the need for the United
States to enlarge its empire—this was sometimes called “open” or “popu-
lar” diplomacy. Bringing the general public into policy debates was always
dangerous for elites, since plain folk, too, might covet a seat at the decision-
making table. Faith and Foreign Affairs in the American Century focuses
on the role of non-state actors in flexing American might as a concurrently
Christian and secular event.
To understand why it has been so easy to overlook the ubiquity of Chris-
tianity in American foreign affairs, this book opens near the end of the story
ix