| Among the nearly 625,000 international students enrolled in American colleges and universities each year are future heads of state, multinational CEOs, Nobel Prize winners, university professors and presidents, and cultural gatekeepers. During their sojourn, some international students come into contact with religious groups in America, such as evangelical Christians, who befriend them, offer social and material support, invite students to church, and earnestly pursue their conversion. In due course, some internationals convert to Christianity, and others refashion their Christianity in a more evangelical style. These students are shaped by a religious system that emphasizes a lifestyle of personal piety and the propagation of their faith in everyday life. Theirs is a process of transformation wherein identities---of past and present, of home and host cultures, and of an imagined and aspired future self---are renegotiated, maintained, and acted upon in social spaces that extend beyond taken-for-granted social boundaries.;This research explores the dynamics of religion, culture, and globalization in the everyday lives of evangelical international students on the path to becoming global professionals. The study is based on fieldwork in the USA and China and draws from life history and photo elicitation interviews with 46 international students from India, China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, the countries from which approximately half (51 percent) of all international students studying in the United States during the 2007-2008 academic year came.;The idea of a religiously-infused vocational calling is central to identity construction among interviewees. It offers a way to organize the self around a coherent past, to anticipate a meaningful future, and to navigate the present. As they emplot their identities in a repertoire of narratives derived from evangelicalism, they accumulate social resources and patterns of action. These resources and patterns have important consequences across the domains of their everyday transnational lives. Through these resources, calling empowers action, infuses academic and professional pursuits with other-worldly meaning, and superintends feelings, uncertainty, and risk. And as international students complete their programs of study, they constitute an important conduit through which Christianity is practiced and propagated globally. |
