Young Americans: Evangelical Youth Culture and Expressions of “American Democracy” in the Late Cold War

This paper will discuss how young conservative evangelicals perceived overseas mission work during the late Cold War.  Evangelical mission work evoked the late-nineteenth century efforts of the Young Men’s Christian Association, when young missionaries responded to calls to “Christianize” and “civilize” the Far East.  In the Cold War context, mission work was described using the language of American consumerism and, in particular, a youth-oriented cultural idiom.  Evangelicals believed that, if blended with the right moral and religious lessons, youth culture—especially music—could become a persuasive agent for both Christianity and American democracy.  This belief paralleled efforts among evangelicals to reshape the suburban landscape of the nation through the “Christianization” of middle-class consumer culture. 

This paper will pursue two lines of analysis: first, it will discuss how evangelicals embraced cultural forms such as rock’n’roll as a means for solidifying their middle-class consumer identity.  Within youth-aimed evangelical publications, descriptions of foreign mission experiences comfortably embraced conservative religiosity as well as American youth cultural signifiers.  Second, the paper will argue that evangelicals believed that consumer-based proselytizing would expand their appeal abroad.  In these discussions, organizations catering to young evangelicals echoed the global political discourses of the foreign policy establishment, which had taken to defining the Cold War—especially American “democratic” goals—in cultural terms.  While Old Right figures such as David Noebel maintained that contemporary music—including folk as well as rock—was a key component in communism’s “mind warfare” against American society, younger evangelicals saw an opportunity to package culture and religion to forge a powerfully spiritual weapon that was at once “Christian” and “American.”