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Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire
Winner, 2024 Outstanding Achievement in History, Association of Asian American Studies
In 1973, Billy Graham, America's Pastor, held his largest ever crusade. But he was not, as one might expect, in the American heartland, but in South Korea. Why there?
Race for Revival seeks not only to answer that question, but to retell the story of modern American evangelicalism through its relationship with South Korea. With the outbreak of the Korean War, the first hot war of the Cold War era, a new generation of white fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals
forged networks with South Koreans that helped turn evangelical America into an empire. South Korean Protestants were used to bolster the image of the US as a non-imperial beacon of democratic hope, in spite of ongoing racial inequalities. At the same time, South Koreans used these racialized
transpacific networks for their own purposes, seeking to reimagine their own place in the world order. They envisioned Korea as the new emerging Christian kingdom, that would beat the American evangelical empire in a race for revival. Yet these nonstate networks ultimately foreshadowed the rise of
the Christian Right in the US and South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s.
Employing a bilingual and bi-national approach, Race for Revival reexamines the narrative of modern evangelicalism through an innovative transpacific framework, offering a new lens through which to understand evangelical history from the Korean War to the rise of Ronald Reagan.
In 1973, Billy Graham, America's Pastor, held his largest ever crusade. But he was not, as one might expect, in the American heartland, but in South Korea. Why there?
Race for Revival seeks not only to answer that question, but to retell the story of modern American evangelicalism through its relationship with South Korea. With the outbreak of the Korean War, the first hot war of the Cold War era, a new generation of white fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals
forged networks with South Koreans that helped turn evangelical America into an empire. South Korean Protestants were used to bolster the image of the US as a non-imperial beacon of democratic hope, in spite of ongoing racial inequalities. At the same time, South Koreans used these racialized
transpacific networks for their own purposes, seeking to reimagine their own place in the world order. They envisioned Korea as the new emerging Christian kingdom, that would beat the American evangelical empire in a race for revival. Yet these nonstate networks ultimately foreshadowed the rise of
the Christian Right in the US and South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s.
Employing a bilingual and bi-national approach, Race for Revival reexamines the narrative of modern evangelicalism through an innovative transpacific framework, offering a new lens through which to understand evangelical history from the Korean War to the rise of Ronald Reagan.
254 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 12, 2022
I came across this book on Twitter by chance and was immediately intrigued. Every page was fascinating and I learned so many things and gained so much perspective on the relationship between the US and Korea. I feel that it really filled in what was before a cultural blind spot for me. The sections about how evangelical movements in both the US and South Korea promoted individualist (non)solutions to societal ills in direct opposition to campaigns for structural change were very enlightening to my understanding of modern conservative Christianity in the US.
This is easily the best written academic book I've come across. I read the whole thing in just a few sittings, and I'm still thinking about it weeks after finishing. I highly recommend this to anyone who is at all interested in Cold War history.
This is easily the best written academic book I've come across. I read the whole thing in just a few sittings, and I'm still thinking about it weeks after finishing. I highly recommend this to anyone who is at all interested in Cold War history.
research
September 27, 2021⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I'm going to be labelling the books I'm using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.
May 31, 2025
This book does some things well; it is well-researched at times, it touches on a subject that needs to be discussed, etc., but as you read, you start to feel as though the author is not sure about what they want to do. There is a strong need to sell us on the point of "trans-Pacific" networks between Korea and the US, where most things are attributed to whiteness as the main US export to Korea, and most things are a challenge to that whiteness from Korea. I don't deny this is a part of what is happening in the relationship. Of course it is! However, that relationship is focused on too much, lacks good evidence, and takes away from other motives that should have been researched.
The author makes some real stretches to make the evidence fit their argument. For example, at one point in the text (pp. 36-38), almost any symbolism is used as an opportunity to remind us that the symbolism mentioned is whiteness in action. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Not every individual -- including a pastor for God's sake -- knows what Checkhov's gun is. But the author goes on passages like that to apparently attribute every available prop to ignorant pastors that are just as likely to be carving out space in an attempt to gain money and converts in a perceived war against good and evil, god and devil (as the author themself even mentions).
Later, the author points out a propaganda film made midway through the Korean War, at the height of palpable terror in the US, when white evangelicals took advantage of Korean martyrs to serve two purposes that the author fairly well defended: to draw attention to the existential battle between communism and capitalist democracy; and show white evangelical Americans why they should also be supporting the Koreans in this battle. Again, the author backs that up well. But the author goes back to the whiteness angle (pp. 43-44), getting granular about Chinese-Americans playing Koreans in an English-language film, that is also meant to "racially discipline" people of Chinese heritage (somehow) about their home country's (America's??) involvement in the Korean War. This leap in logic is the author collapsing the Chinese-Americans into a monolith that the author claims is happening to Koreans. Does the author not realize how many Guomindang Chinese fled China to the US in this period? Those refugees are not being disciplined, nor are the multigenerational descendants that fled China before the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 being disciplined. That diaspora is just as likely to be inspired by this typical Cold War era propaganda because communism had chased them to Taiwan (or pull factors in the 1850s pre-CEA), and created a diaspora around the world. We are always (and should be) chastened by not allowing that multigenerational Japanese-Americans were inspired to fight for America and be American, for example. The author's logic makes for great discussion section fare as undergrads, but is presented to us as a finished product.
From pages 99-101, the author talks about another propaganda film, this one a horrifying sales pitch to the American people to essentially scoop up orphans (or any Korean child) that has been put up for adoption and then raise them in the United States. Again, the author turns this into a one-way street where only the United States is the main actor by virtue of its powerful standing in the international and racial sphere. This is wrong, and the author shows no competent research in this area. This mistake leads me to believe the author has a good understanding of racial and ethnic studies (it is constantly brought up without much support other than our logical connections based on prior knowledge of the topic), but knows little about actual Korean history. Why would I say that? If the author REALLY researched Arissa Oh's book on this subject, cited in their very own book, they would have seen that adoption was a KOREAN project that fell into the lap of fundamentalist Christians because culturally, these children were symbols of Korea's lack of control, a connection to Confucian logic, where good women were chaste -- except, how to explain all these mixed-race babies if they are chaste? Further, a homogeneous society cannot allow for mixed-race babies, nor could it show the world that despite modernizing, Korea had thousands of children living in extreme poverty. These children WERE unwanted by the Korean government, and this adoption behavior INCREASED into the 1980s under Chun Doo Hwan. ISS was actually hesitant to run an adoption program as a way to solve Korea's poverty and other issues that led to international adoption. (Oh, To save the Children of Korea, 66-67, 198)
This book should be far longer to accomplish what it sets out to do. I want to buy in, but there isn't enough evidence to take that leap with the author. I find that extremely frustrating as someone who WANTS to see how whiteness DOES interlock at moments that harm Koreans, such as the adoption industry. Arissa Oh wrote fantastically (and better) about that topic and its intersection with white evangelicals, for example.
The author makes some real stretches to make the evidence fit their argument. For example, at one point in the text (pp. 36-38), almost any symbolism is used as an opportunity to remind us that the symbolism mentioned is whiteness in action. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Not every individual -- including a pastor for God's sake -- knows what Checkhov's gun is. But the author goes on passages like that to apparently attribute every available prop to ignorant pastors that are just as likely to be carving out space in an attempt to gain money and converts in a perceived war against good and evil, god and devil (as the author themself even mentions).
Later, the author points out a propaganda film made midway through the Korean War, at the height of palpable terror in the US, when white evangelicals took advantage of Korean martyrs to serve two purposes that the author fairly well defended: to draw attention to the existential battle between communism and capitalist democracy; and show white evangelical Americans why they should also be supporting the Koreans in this battle. Again, the author backs that up well. But the author goes back to the whiteness angle (pp. 43-44), getting granular about Chinese-Americans playing Koreans in an English-language film, that is also meant to "racially discipline" people of Chinese heritage (somehow) about their home country's (America's??) involvement in the Korean War. This leap in logic is the author collapsing the Chinese-Americans into a monolith that the author claims is happening to Koreans. Does the author not realize how many Guomindang Chinese fled China to the US in this period? Those refugees are not being disciplined, nor are the multigenerational descendants that fled China before the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 being disciplined. That diaspora is just as likely to be inspired by this typical Cold War era propaganda because communism had chased them to Taiwan (or pull factors in the 1850s pre-CEA), and created a diaspora around the world. We are always (and should be) chastened by not allowing that multigenerational Japanese-Americans were inspired to fight for America and be American, for example. The author's logic makes for great discussion section fare as undergrads, but is presented to us as a finished product.
From pages 99-101, the author talks about another propaganda film, this one a horrifying sales pitch to the American people to essentially scoop up orphans (or any Korean child) that has been put up for adoption and then raise them in the United States. Again, the author turns this into a one-way street where only the United States is the main actor by virtue of its powerful standing in the international and racial sphere. This is wrong, and the author shows no competent research in this area. This mistake leads me to believe the author has a good understanding of racial and ethnic studies (it is constantly brought up without much support other than our logical connections based on prior knowledge of the topic), but knows little about actual Korean history. Why would I say that? If the author REALLY researched Arissa Oh's book on this subject, cited in their very own book, they would have seen that adoption was a KOREAN project that fell into the lap of fundamentalist Christians because culturally, these children were symbols of Korea's lack of control, a connection to Confucian logic, where good women were chaste -- except, how to explain all these mixed-race babies if they are chaste? Further, a homogeneous society cannot allow for mixed-race babies, nor could it show the world that despite modernizing, Korea had thousands of children living in extreme poverty. These children WERE unwanted by the Korean government, and this adoption behavior INCREASED into the 1980s under Chun Doo Hwan. ISS was actually hesitant to run an adoption program as a way to solve Korea's poverty and other issues that led to international adoption. (Oh, To save the Children of Korea, 66-67, 198)
This book should be far longer to accomplish what it sets out to do. I want to buy in, but there isn't enough evidence to take that leap with the author. I find that extremely frustrating as someone who WANTS to see how whiteness DOES interlock at moments that harm Koreans, such as the adoption industry. Arissa Oh wrote fantastically (and better) about that topic and its intersection with white evangelicals, for example.
February 28, 2025
Took my time with this one. What an incredible work of scholarship. Heavy and difficult to read at times, but necessary. I learned a lot about Korean Evangelicals, the influence of white evangelicalism in transpacific history, and more broadly, Southern white conservatism and predominant Korean Christian religious experiences during Cold War Korea and its development. Kim sprinkles in a little bit of Korean labor history towards the final third portion, which I appreciated and traces of Korean theology as intellectual history throughout, incredibly illuminating and I learned so much. This scholarship corrects wrongs, brings to light truth, and honors personal histories that have been buried by time and the archives.
Korean and Asian Americans, especially interested in critiquing and assessing power dynamics and invested in imagining new religious, and more broadly, alternative realities for their communities, should read this book because it unveils why our social constructions are the way that they are.
Korean and Asian Americans, especially interested in critiquing and assessing power dynamics and invested in imagining new religious, and more broadly, alternative realities for their communities, should read this book because it unveils why our social constructions are the way that they are.
March 29, 2023
Strong throughout but Kim's writing in the final 3 chapters--including the Conclusion--start to draw connections between 1970s South Korea and America, and unacknowledged forms of complicity and division that remain in efforts to seek a social justice and social holiness for hurting communities.
December 20, 2023
A must-read in gaining a greater understanding of US and world history in the context of South Korea-US political and religious affiliations.
This book will challenge how you think about Christianity and race and religion.
This book will challenge how you think about Christianity and race and religion.
September 5, 2023
Fascinating history, but I feel as if Kim is somewhat repetitive in the points she makes.
October 20, 2025
argument is 10/10 but intrigue of the book is like 5/10. nothing revolutionary really. a lot of name dropping and date dropping. no ooooing and aaaahing from me
October 30, 2022
A fascinating account of the history of evangelicalism's cross-continent growth, and the conflicts that arise when a movement founded on white supremacist ideals experiences fervent growth, and subsequent desires for power, in nonwhite settings. Moreover, it details a story that is a microcosm of overall geopolitical conflict in the Cold War era, and reminds us that Christianity working in tandem with capitalist expansion provides the basis for our modern struggles against the fiber of empire that is too often seen as integral to the faith as opposed to the damaging ideology that it is. To forget this history is to accept this ideology, and Dr. Kim challenges us to create a better faith not only for ourselves and those who will come after us, but in remembrance of those who have come before us
August 20, 2023
Lots of thoughts, just not fully organized yet.
I would recommend reading "Social Justice Goes to Church" written by Jon Harris prior to reading this book. Similar time period, and it gives a good idea of what the Christian/church landscape was going thru in the US. The US churches were teaching and exporting these liberal ideas as they were converting Koreans o Christianity and make political social changes.
I would recommend reading "Social Justice Goes to Church" written by Jon Harris prior to reading this book. Similar time period, and it gives a good idea of what the Christian/church landscape was going thru in the US. The US churches were teaching and exporting these liberal ideas as they were converting Koreans o Christianity and make political social changes.
August 9, 2025
Compact and well-researched. The argument sounds very natural, but it's surprising that few have studied Christianity and Cold War in Asia from the perspective of diaspora and circulation. Would love to dig deeper in that direction for my future works.
November 19, 2025
everybody read this right now
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews