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Over the past seventy years, World Vision has grown from a small missionary agency to the largest Christian humanitarian organization in the world, with 40,000 employees, offices in nearly one hundred countries, and an annual budget of over $2 billion. While founder Bob Pierce was an evangelist with street smarts, the most recent World Vision U.S. presidents move with ease between megachurches, the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, and the corridors of Capitol Hill. Though the organization has remained decidedly Christian, it has earned the reputation as an elite international nongovernmental organization managed efficiently by professional experts fluent in the language of both marketing and development.
God's Internationalists is the first comprehensive study of World Vision—or any such religious humanitarian agency. In chronicling the organization's transformation from 1950 to the present, David P. King approaches World Vision as a lens through which to explore shifts within post-World War II American evangelicalism as well as the complexities of faith-based humanitarianism. Chronicling the evolution of World Vision's practices, theology, rhetoric, and organizational structure, King demonstrates how the organization rearticulated and retained its Christian identity even as it expanded beyond a narrow American evangelical subculture. King's pairing of American evangelicals' interactions abroad with their own evolving identity at home reframes the traditional narrative of modern American evangelicalism while also providing the historical context for the current explosion of evangelical interest in global social engagement. By examining these patterns of change, God's Internationalists offers a distinctive angle on the history of religious humanitarianism.
"[A] nuanced exploration of evangelical humanitarianism through the work of World Vision . . . Through vivid storytelling and layered contextual analysis, King presents a rich organizational history of World Vision that is nothing short of a page turner . . . God's Internationalists is essential reading for anyone interested in how large religious non-profit organizations that operate within a broader field negotiate religious identity."
"If history is fundamentally about story, King succeeds here. Against all odds, he manages to make the history of this bureaucratic behemoth a rollicking tale of one man's strength and weakness-and an organization's fascinating response to the chastening of decolonization, Vietnam, and famine in Ethiopia . . . [T]his book succeeds because the story of World Vision matters . . . {It] may be one of the most necessary interventions in American evangelical historiography in many years."
"David P. King constructively upends long-standing narratives of modern evangelicalism's development in the twentieth century that tend to emphasize its politicization on American soil. Offering a refreshingly nuanced reading of World Vision, he uses the organization's history to illustrate how modern evangelicalism's work abroad unfolded independently of domestic political developments dictated by the Religious Right. Along the way, he raises intriguing and important claims about the nature of church-state relations, secularization, and religion and public life in contemporary America."
Introduction
Chapter 1. Bob Pierce Becomes Evangelicals' Global Ambassador
Chapter 2. Opening Americans' Eyes to a New World
Chapter 3. A Growing Organization and the Evolving Identity of American Evangelicalism
Chapter 4. Between Missions and Humanitarianism in a Decade of Upheaval
Chapter 5. Taking Domestic Debates of God and Country Overseas
Chapter 6. World Vision Internationalizes
Chapter 7. Evangelical Relief and Development
Chapter 8. A Changing World Vision: A Changing Evangelicalism?
Chapter 9. World Vision and the New Internationalists
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments