American Evangelicals And International Relations

The evangelical Christians in the US are often described as an awakened lion. Sincethe end of the Second World War, American evangelicals have returned to the centralstage of the society after nearly 30 years of self-imposed exile, playing anincreasingly important role in American politics. It is not an exaggeration to say thatwe can not understand the US foreign policy without a careful examination of thisnew force in the society. Actually with the expansion of Christian missionarymovement and the rise of international faith-based NGOs, American evangelicalsbegan to assert a significant impact on international politics by promoting their ideason world affairs as well as by nurturing and mobilizing a wide-spread transnationalnetwork of fellow believers.Time magazine once listed the Rev. Billy Graham as the most influentialevangelical leader in America. As a prominent Christian statesman, he has not onlybeen quite active in the US politics, but also associated with many political leaders ofdifferent countries. In the last 50 years, the Rev. Billy Graham has helped Americanevangelicals to emerge as a powerful force both in American society and ininternational arena. His worldwide Crusades have also become the catalyst for therapid growth and political engagement of Christian evangelicals in many othercountries. His career and organizations provide us with a telling story for the study ofevangelicals' impact on international relations.This impact of evangelical Christians, however, has been rarely studied byscholars both at home and broad. The previous studies of the Rev. Billy Graham's rolein American politics, for instance, have mainly focused on his personal relations withAmerican presidents from Harry Truman to George W. Bush. Other factors foranalyzing his leadership, such as his vision and effort in building his evangelicalnetwork, have been more or less neglected.This dissertation aims at tracing the political role of American evangelicals totheir theological thinking and organizations, and to explore the methods and functionsof evangelicals' international engagement. The conceptions of religious social capitaland social network will be used here to analyze Evangelicals' development andpolitical activism. By using the Rev. Billy Graham and American evangelicals as acase, the author is attempting to argue that as a transnational ideology as well as atransnational actor, religion and religious organization have been playing a significantrole in the formation of a global civil society.