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

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

DATA AND METHODS

We interviewed a total of 27 missionaries (including seven husband and wife teams) between December of 2003 and August of 2005. Most of the interviews were face-to-face, though six were conducted by phone and two were completed solely over e-mail. The telephone and face-to-face interviews were semi-structured and respondents were given some liberty to talk about what they found most relevant. The missionaries who participated by email responded to a general questionnaire followed by further clarifying questions. They were asked about their professional and religious background; their reasons for missionary activity; a summary of these experiences; their perspectives on American evangelicalism; their views on American politics and the war in Iraq; and their thoughts on the interaction of church, American culture and politics. We identified ourselves as researchers from the University of Washington interested in PNW evangelical culture in what is traditionally known as an "unchurched" region. We said we were "interested outsiders" and "sympathetic observers" seeking to learn more about the growing national and international effects of this subculture in the PNW (Wellman 2004).

Our sample of international missionaries came from the 24 churches in our larger study. These churches are denominationally representative of PNW evangelical churches--a quarter each from nondenominational churches, traditional evangelical denominations (mostly Baptist), charismatic churches, and from mainline Protestants denominations (Killen and Silk 2004). We chose "fast growing" churches (growth rates of 25 percent or more over five years) primarily because we argue that they represent the most influential congregations in Northwest evangelical culture in terms of adherents and financial strength. We are aware that our missionary sample is small and not able to be generalized per se, so we put the results in the widest possible context. We analyzed each missionary's background carefully for their demographic origins, social class, denominational affiliations, education, length of stay internationally, contact with saved or unsaved peoples, as well as contact with missionaries abroad. Descriptive statistics for our study participants can be found in Table 1.

Further analyses (available on the Sociology of Religion website) contain more information on the demographics of the sample. Taken together, these show that regional origins, class, education, and contact with saved/unsaved have relatively little impact on the durability and persistence of beliefs.

All respondents self-identified as evangelicals according to our definition of the term. The missionaries were supported by organizations and churches that identify themselves as evangelical. Although our respondents came from a broad variety of denominations, few of them are sponsored by a denomination (5 of 27). Many are involved in interdenominational organizations (10 of 27), such as Food for the Hungry International, or the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and many operate independently of any organization whatsoever (12 of 27).