Table Of ContentFacing West
Kyung-Chik Han and Bob Pierce, cofounders of World Vision. Pastor Han built
the humanitarian and churchly institutions that became the foundation of World
Vision before Pierce ever arrived in Korea. As Pierce’s star began to rise in the West,
however, Han’s efforts were trivialized. In America, he was typically known as Pierce’s
interpreter.
Facing West
American Evangelicals in an Age
of World Christianity
DAVID R. SWARTZ
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Swartz, David R., author.
Title: Facing West : American evangelicals in an age of world Christianity/
David R. Swartz.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University
Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019045483 (print) | LCCN 2019045484 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190250805 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190250829 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190250836 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Missions—H istory— 21st century. | Evangelicalism—U nited States.
Classification: LCC BV2120 .S93 2020 (print) | LCC BV2120 (ebook) |
DDC 277.3/ 083— dc23
LC record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2019045483
LC ebook record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2019045484
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
I. CHRISTIAN AMERICANISM
1. Chicago 1945: Youth for Christ and World War II 13
2. Seoul 1952: World Vision and the Korean War 35
II. GLOBAL ENCOUNTERS
3. Sat Tal 1958: Cold War and Caste 65
4. Lausanne 1974: A Latin American Challenge to North American
Missiology 97
5. Occidental Mindoro 1983: Transformational Development
and the De-A mericanization of World Vision 133
6. Almolonga 1999: Pentecostalism and the Enchantment
of the North 165
7. Mbarara 2007: An East African Critique of American Sexuality 199
III. DISORIENTATIONS
8. Chiang Mai 2017: A Campaign against Human Trafficking 235
9. Boston 2045: The Quiet Revival and Non-W estern Immigration 261
Conclusion 295
Index 307
Acknowledgments
My acknowledgments reflect the expansive geography of this book. I am the
grateful recipient of help and hospitality from friends, scholars, activists,
preachers, and humanitarians who span the globe.
For help with material on Chicago, I am grateful to Joel Carpenter and Tim
Gloege. On Korea, I am grateful to Jin Jeon, Jong- sam Park, Hoon Song, Inyeop
Lee, and Marilee Pierce Dunker. On India, Skip Elliott, David Hollinger, and Art
McPhee. On Lausanne, Al Tizon and David Kirkpatrick. On the Philippines,
Steve Gray, Steve Offutt, and David King. On Guatemala, Bob Brenneman and
Virginia Garrard- Burnett. On Uganda, Jason Bruner, Tim Gloege, John Maiden,
and Ruth Ann Reese. On Boston, Alice and Tim Colegrove, Michelle and Jim
Harper, and Gina Zurlo.
For inviting me to test- drive ideas in public lectures, I am grateful to Esther
Jadhav, Greg Haseloff, Dan Strait, Paul Nesselroade, and David Rightmire at
Asbury University; Gregg Okesson and the faculty and graduate students of
the E. Stanley Jones School at Asbury Theological Seminary; Mark Edwards at
Spring Arbor University; and Uta Balbier, Hans Krabbendam, Kendrick Oliver,
and Axel Schäfer at workshops in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and
Germany on global evangelicalism. For helpful critiques at conferences, I thank
commentators from the Organization of American Historians, University of
Southampton in the United Kingdom, Kangnam University in Seoul, Indiana
University- Purdue University at Indianapolis, Pepperdine University, the
Communal Studies Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion,
the Conference on Faith and History, the United Nations Development
Programme in Bangkok, Princeton Theological Seminary, Lipscomb University,
and the University of California at Berkeley.
For help during sabbatical research in Thailand, I thank Christa Crawford,
Clint Baldwin, Ayi Bechegoo, Liz Hilton, Carrie Stoltzfus, Adele Pucci, Candice
and Tom Mast, Todd Johnson, Kimberly Wheeler, Paul Buckley, Paul Utley, Pik
at our mooban café, Amy Collins, Carter Quinley, Sarah Lapa, Kara and Craig
Garrison, Tawee Donchai, Lori Rowe, Brett Steffen, Evan McCall, and the sur-
geon in Chiang Mai who fixed my tooth.
Closer to home, I am grateful to scholars who engaged substantively with
this manuscript. They include James Bielo, Darren Dochuk, David Kirkpatrick,
Melani McAlister, George Marsden, Mark Noll, and Steve Offutt. For more
viii Acknowledgments
extensive readings, I am especially grateful to Joel Carpenter, Tim Gloege, Kevin
Miller, Nathan Showalter, Steve Swartz, and Phyllis Miller Swartz.
For help in securing sources at archives and elsewhere, I thank Steve Gray
of World Vision International, Suzanne Gehring of Asbury University, Grace
Yoder of Asbury Theological Seminary, Rich Elliott of Park Street Church in
Boston, Doris Wagner of Global Spheres, Hoon Song at the Kyung- Chik Han
Foundation, Alison Barfoot of the Anglican Church of Uganda, Jeff Bass and
Judy Hall of Emmanuel Gospel Center, Alyson Thomas of Fuller Theological
Seminary, Reuben Sairs at Rosedale Bible College, Brooke Guthrie of Duke
University, and Katherine Graber and Bob Shuster at the Billy Graham Center
Archives.
For friendship and conversation related to this project, I thank Clint Baldwin,
Kevin Bellew, Sarah Bellew, Kevin Brown, Carolyn DuPont, Skip Elliott, Luke
Embree, Nathan Miller, Steve Offutt, Erin Penner, Sydney Penner, Andy
Reynolds, Kirk Sims, Josh Smith, and Henry Zonio. I am also grateful to my
colleagues at the Anxious Bench blog: Beth Allison Barr, Melissa Borja, Kristin
Kobes DuMez, Chris Gehrz, Agnes Howard, Tal Howard, Philip Jenkins, John
Turner, and Andrea Turpin. Their writing inspires me.
For wise counsel and for shepherding this book to publication, I thank Theo
Calderara, Drew Anderla, Salma Ismaiel, Shalini Balakrishnan, and anonymous
referees at Oxford University Press.
For permission to publish portions of already- printed essays and articles,
I thank Cascade Books, Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Religions,
The Review of Faith & International Affairs, and the Journal of American Studies.
For institutional support and generous funding to complete this project,
I thank Jon Kulaga, Tim Campbell, Steve Clements, and Bonnie Banker at
Asbury University as well as the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion for a
Jack Shand Research Grant.
My family deserves the most thanks of all. I am grateful to Lisa Weaver
Swartz, a wise conversation partner and a delightful companion. And though
this book would have appeared several years earlier without them, I am grateful
to my children, whose courage, enthusiasm, and unending questions made
travel in Southeast Asia and life in general much richer. I dedicate this book to
Andrew, Jonathan, Benjamin, and Anna. May you grow up to be citizens of the
whole world.
Introduction
Located just blocks from Korea’s National Assembly and nestled amid the soaring
skyscrapers of Seoul’s financial district, World Vision’s nine- story office building
occupies prime real estate. I sat in a conference room on the building’s top floor
filled with sturdy vintage furniture from the 1970s, ready to begin research on the
origins of one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world. I expected
to confirm and add Korean texture to the accepted narrative: that a larger- than-
life American evangelist named Bob Pierce, undone by sights of Marxist cruel-
ties in the early 1950s, had helped bring Korea out of its wartime devastation.
In this story Pierce, alongside the U.S. Army, had started schools, orphanages,
and churches that lifted the nation to democratic and capitalist heights. World
Vision’s founding myth has stood for well over half a century, and I anticipated
hearing it repeated yet again.
But Jong-S am Park, the just- retired president of World Vision Korea, told a
different story. The silver-h aired executive fielded my persistent questions about
Bob Pierce, but he was much more interested in talking about a Korean pastor
I had never heard of. Kyung- Chik Han, Park said, had helped him during the
Korean War when Park was a refugee child who slept on the streets of Seoul cov-
ered only by a straw mat. I listened impatiently, hoping to return to my questions
about American missionaries and World Vision’s founding. But when I tried to
guide him back, he grew exasperated. Han, he exclaimed, was the founder of
World Vision. “Of World Vision Korea?” I tried to clarify. “No, the whole thing,”
replied Park, relishing this opportunity to reorient the perspective of a young
scholar who seemed bent on telling a narrative of American triumphalism.1
This meeting opened a line of research that led to the stately Young Nak
Presbyterian Church. At this congregation of 60,000 located in the heart of
Seoul, I spoke with a Korean historian with graduate training from Boston
University. He led me through an impressive museum display about Han and
confirmed Park’s assertion that Han was, in fact, a prominent historical figure
who profoundly shaped the direction of World Vision. He also gave me files
that contained thousands of pages of sermons, memoirs, and secondary liter-
ature, all of which had just been translated into English. These Korean sources
showed that Han had built the medical, educational, and churchly institutions
that became the foundation of World Vision before Pierce ever arrived in Asia
(see Figure I.1). The American evangelist, it turns out, was plugging into an
Facing West. David R. Swartz, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190250805.001.0001
