The Gospel of Freedom and Power

Let me help. Your help isn't helping. The phrase could well sum up a half-century's worth of public debates over the American missionary endeavor. These “public conversations” are the focus of Sarah E. Ruble's book, The Gospel of Freedom and Power: Protestant Missionaries in American Culture after World War II. Ruble takes us on a meandering tour of the debates by presenting excerpts from denominational newsletters, magazines, speeches, and novels. We see the debate from four differing perspectives: mainline Christianity, evangelical Christianity, anthropology, and gender. Within the missions movement, the debate centers on the appropriate balance between evangelistic efforts (Christianizing) and humanitarian efforts (civilizing). There are also debates over exactly what kind of Christians and civilizations the movement should create. Outside the movement, the debate centers on whether there should be a missions movement and to what extent the movement is a force for good or evil. At times, the debate is thoughtful and insightful but on other occasions it is simply a duel of stereotypes. Ruble's conclusion is that no matter your perspective or position in the debate, the debaters never escape from what she calls the “paradoxical logic of Wilsonianism” (p. 9). By this she means that even those questioning the movement still felt that Americans could and should play a constructive role in the world; they simply felt the missionaries were not playing a constructive role.

Aesthetics · Christianity · Constructive · Evangelism · Gospel · Political science · Power (physics) · Protestantism · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Christian Theology and Mission · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies