Portable politics and durable religion: the moral worldviews of American evangelical missionaries

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2007 by James K. Wellman, Jr., Matthew Keyes

  It seems so depressing that the United States gets involved in other
  countries for our own good. It's not for democracy. For instance, with
  Iraq, it's not for democracy. It's for oil. There've been other
  dictators that we never messed with--we never touched. And why is
  that? Because they weren't a threat to the United States and we could
  always get what we wanted from them.... I think we exploit and it's
  just too easy to do. We exploit for our own good.

Another missionary who worked with Muslims in East Asia recounted a similar experience of being challenged and changing his opinions:

  There were people from Europe that were believers doing mission work,
  people from Scandinavia, from Germany, from England, Australia, so all
  over the place. So one thing that I did do is I started saying, wow,
  people come to the Bible from their own political view, from things
  that are getting fed from their culture. So that really caused me to
  say, what cultural baggage do I take in when I interpret the
  scripture, when I look at the Bible. And I saw a number of things.

Having been confronted by international Christians, he reevaluated his views on the death penalty, spanking children, and the war in Iraq. Although he did not come down directly against any of these issues, he expressed much more ambivalence than was characteristic of our stateside respondents and particularly other members of his home church. This same missionary also expressed discomfort listening to conservative talk radio and even some of the sermons at his sponsoring church. Even in instances such as this where contact with diversity seemed to change the views of missionaries, it never changed their core theological or moral worldviews. Rather, it honed or deepened them toward what they felt was the "true" meaning of the faith.

Another missionary in this group served in Jamaica, the United Kingdom, and Africa. He said:

  Because we're evangelical Christians we're kind of expected to be
  Republicans and to just say whatever the Republican agenda is, that's
  the Christian agenda. But because we lived in Jamaica when it was
  coming out of a strong socialist, it's still socialist, but in the 70s
  had a very strong communist influence, and because we've lived in the
  UK, which is a strongly socially oriented economy and government, I
  guess I'm just not as Republican as I ought to be. I tend to see both
  sides of it.

This missionary was representative of this group in his ambivalence. He seemed skeptical of the conservative agenda in the United States; but on the other hand, he said that seeing "a very high percentage of third generation welfare-dependents" in the UK did not enamor him with liberal fiscal positions either. He expressed some ambivalence about the war in Iraq, but did not criticize or oppose it.

Although some of these missionaries were critical of the Bush administration, none went so far as to oppose it. None mentioned voting against Bush or any political defections to the Democratic Party. (5) The few missionaries who did come out against the war in Iraq did not waver on the issues identified above as moral and non-negotiable such as abortion or gay marriage. Again, political issues were somewhat more negotiable, but most often reflected the civic gospel that binds white evangelical Christianity with the contemporary Republican Party.