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Facing West: American Evangelicals in an Age of World Christianity
In 1974 nearly 3,000 evangelicals from 150 nations met at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Amidst this cosmopolitan setting ― and in front of the most important white evangelical leaders of the United States ― members of the Latin American Theological Fraternity spoke out against the American Church. Fiery speeches by Ecuadorian René Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar revealed a global weariness with what they described as an American style of coldly efficient mission wedded to a myopic, right-leaning politics. Their bold critiques electrified Christians from around the world.
The dramatic growth of Christianity around the world in the last century has shifted the balance of power within the faith away from traditional strongholds in Europe and the United States. To be sure, evangelical populists who voted for Donald Trump have resisted certain global pressures, and Western missionaries have carried Christian Americanism abroad. But the line of influence has also run the other way. David R. Swartz demonstrates that evangelicals in the Global South spoke back to American evangelicals on matters of race, imperialism, theology, sexuality, and social justice. From the left, they pushed for racial egalitarianism, ecumenism, and more substantial development efforts. From the right, they advocated for a conservative sexual ethic grounded in postcolonial logic. As Christian immigration to the United States burgeoned in the wake of the Immigration Act of 1965, global evangelicals forced many American Christians to think more critically about their own assumptions.
The United States is just one node of a sprawling global network that includes Korea, India, Switzerland, the Philippines, Guatemala, Uganda, and Thailand. Telling stories of resistance, accommodation, and cooperation, Swartz shows that evangelical networks not only go out to, but also come from, the ends of the earth.
The dramatic growth of Christianity around the world in the last century has shifted the balance of power within the faith away from traditional strongholds in Europe and the United States. To be sure, evangelical populists who voted for Donald Trump have resisted certain global pressures, and Western missionaries have carried Christian Americanism abroad. But the line of influence has also run the other way. David R. Swartz demonstrates that evangelicals in the Global South spoke back to American evangelicals on matters of race, imperialism, theology, sexuality, and social justice. From the left, they pushed for racial egalitarianism, ecumenism, and more substantial development efforts. From the right, they advocated for a conservative sexual ethic grounded in postcolonial logic. As Christian immigration to the United States burgeoned in the wake of the Immigration Act of 1965, global evangelicals forced many American Christians to think more critically about their own assumptions.
The United States is just one node of a sprawling global network that includes Korea, India, Switzerland, the Philippines, Guatemala, Uganda, and Thailand. Telling stories of resistance, accommodation, and cooperation, Swartz shows that evangelical networks not only go out to, but also come from, the ends of the earth.
332 pages, Hardcover
Published May 7, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 24, 2020
I will come back and review this later. It is very helpful at looking at how we tell the story impacts the way that we respond to the story. And it shows that there is both an impact from the west on World Christianity and an impact on the west from World Christianity.
It also as a bit of an aside shows the shift in missiology and mythology of missions over the past 100-150 years. Which I think is also part of the story that needs to be told. I again had a conversation on twitter over the past couple days with someone that is a 'just preach the gospel' person. And this book would respond well to their assertions if they were willing to read the book in good faith.
It also as a bit of an aside shows the shift in missiology and mythology of missions over the past 100-150 years. Which I think is also part of the story that needs to be told. I again had a conversation on twitter over the past couple days with someone that is a 'just preach the gospel' person. And this book would respond well to their assertions if they were willing to read the book in good faith.
July 15, 2020
One of the best books on the history of American evangelicalism since WWII that anyone could read. Swartz's attention to how globalization has at least challenged and sometimes changed American Christianity is essential reading for our times!!
May 27, 2025
After being published five years ago, I don't understand how there are only three reviews of this book in Goodreads. Swartz's historical and analytical work yields a very important book, even while white America's politically-conservative evangelicalism hopes to remain the defining structure for the nation's and global Christianity.
Having his eyes opened in his study of the origin story of World Vision in the context of American Bob Pierce and Korean Kyung Chik Han, Swartz moves around the globe to see how Christians in the Global South have emerged to exert their influence, including in the U.S. Even while focusing most of his attention on Christianity outside of the U.S., the book is an especially important entry point for American readers to engage with issues flowing out of the growing impact of global Christianity, including being both more conservative on social issues like abortion and homosexuality, and more progressive on the role of government and care for the least among us.
Whether expressed in immigration patterns, or sociological issues/crises and cultural trends in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, or the evangelistic and missionary zeal of Global South immigrants to the West, or the contributions that non-western theologians and scholars can make to our understanding of Christian faith, mission, and the church across the world and in our neighborhoods, Facing West makes an important contribution to our perceiving and grasping the realities and implications that American Christianity and Christian Nationalism no longer get to set the priorities or norms or social and cultural implications of Christian faith.
Having his eyes opened in his study of the origin story of World Vision in the context of American Bob Pierce and Korean Kyung Chik Han, Swartz moves around the globe to see how Christians in the Global South have emerged to exert their influence, including in the U.S. Even while focusing most of his attention on Christianity outside of the U.S., the book is an especially important entry point for American readers to engage with issues flowing out of the growing impact of global Christianity, including being both more conservative on social issues like abortion and homosexuality, and more progressive on the role of government and care for the least among us.
Whether expressed in immigration patterns, or sociological issues/crises and cultural trends in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, or the evangelistic and missionary zeal of Global South immigrants to the West, or the contributions that non-western theologians and scholars can make to our understanding of Christian faith, mission, and the church across the world and in our neighborhoods, Facing West makes an important contribution to our perceiving and grasping the realities and implications that American Christianity and Christian Nationalism no longer get to set the priorities or norms or social and cultural implications of Christian faith.
September 26, 2022
Swartz (re)narrates the ways in which North American evangelicals have been – and continue to be – shaped by believers from the Global South, often in unpredictable ways. He also reveals that the historical narratives we’ve inherited sometimes tell only half the story.
Early in the book, we’re presented with two drastically different versions of the founding and growth of the humanitarian giant World Vision. When I worked for Big Orange (as I affectionately call it) between 2009 and 2012, I learned all about Bob Pierce. I learned about his relief work in Korea at the time of the war, how he started mobilizing support for orphans there, and how his tenacity and compassion eventually led to the founding of the organization. I memorized Pierce’s words: “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”
But that’s just one half of the story. The other side – the story told in South Korea to this day – emphasizes the role of someone else: a Korean pastor named Kyung-Chik Han. Far from merely serving as Pierce’s translator, Han was, for all intents and purposes, a co-founder of the organization. (See Swartz’s April 2020 cover story for Christianity Today for more of this story.)
Those dual narratives set us up for everything that follows in the book. In later chapters, we read about the competing agendas at the global Lausanne gathering in 1974, Pentecostalism in Guatemala, and fault lines within the Anglican Communion over biblical authority and sexual ethics. In each case, we’re challenged to ask ourselves whether we understand the whole story – and the degree to which our view is hampered by culturally conditioned blind spots.
Early in the book, we’re presented with two drastically different versions of the founding and growth of the humanitarian giant World Vision. When I worked for Big Orange (as I affectionately call it) between 2009 and 2012, I learned all about Bob Pierce. I learned about his relief work in Korea at the time of the war, how he started mobilizing support for orphans there, and how his tenacity and compassion eventually led to the founding of the organization. I memorized Pierce’s words: “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”
But that’s just one half of the story. The other side – the story told in South Korea to this day – emphasizes the role of someone else: a Korean pastor named Kyung-Chik Han. Far from merely serving as Pierce’s translator, Han was, for all intents and purposes, a co-founder of the organization. (See Swartz’s April 2020 cover story for Christianity Today for more of this story.)
Those dual narratives set us up for everything that follows in the book. In later chapters, we read about the competing agendas at the global Lausanne gathering in 1974, Pentecostalism in Guatemala, and fault lines within the Anglican Communion over biblical authority and sexual ethics. In each case, we’re challenged to ask ourselves whether we understand the whole story – and the degree to which our view is hampered by culturally conditioned blind spots.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews