| The fall of Saigon in 1975 ended America's quest to shape Vietnam's destiny. There are many books and articles detailing the military, diplomatic and social upheavals left by the war. Less known, and often overlooked, is that Vietnam was also the concern of private organizations who went to Vietnam for religious or humanitarian reasons. Protestant and Catholic, missionary and technical specialist, they brought idealism, a moral purpose, and a human touch to the American presence. Organizations such as Catholic Relief Services, Mennonite Central Committee, Church World Service, and International Voluntary Services sent hundreds of volunteers and spent over a billion dollars trying to “save” South Vietnam from communism, sin, and poverty. They also spoke to millions of co-religionists about their role in Vietnam. It is no wonder that every presidential administration concerned with Vietnam, from Truman to Johnson, envisioned some role for religious private voluntary organizations (PVOs) within the greater scheme of U.S. policy—whether in “nation-building” or “winning hearts and minds.”; The moral purposes that bound religious PVOs to the U.S. government were strained by the American military intervention of 1965. Deep divisions emerged between the religious agencies themselves, between the agencies and U.S. officials, and between the agency volunteers and their homebase. Critics emerged that questioned the morality of humanitarianism during warfare. Eventually, every agency working in Vietnam was forced to choose whether or not to support the war effort. Some left or were asked to leave, some became critics of the war from within Vietnam, and other contracted their programs to serve the Vietnamese most likely to suffer in the event of a communist take-over.; This dissertation will examine the motivations, successes, failures, and controversies of several religiously-based humanitarian agencies operating in Vietnam from 1954–1975. Religiously-based PVOs were an important, but largely ignored, part of the U.S. intervention in South Vietnam. By focusing on Vietnam, the project will also shed new light on how religious PVOs operated within Cold War foreign policy in Asia, how they shaped American policy priorities and the opinions of their co-religionists regarding the morality of humanitarian assistance, war, national security policy, human rights, and America's global responsibilities. |
