On the Borders of Evangelical Identity: Radicalized Evangelical Missionaries and Their Sending Communities in the 1970s and 1980s

This paper will analyze radicalized evangelical missionaries in Central America during the 1970s and 1980s and their complicated relationships with their sending communities.  In the 1970s and 1980s, much of Central America was in upheaval.  Many evangelical missionaries in the region were transformed by their experiences with poverty and violence, having seen the negative effects of U.S. foreign policy in the region.  Liberation theology gave some of these missionaries a new way of viewing theology in Latin America. 

In the U.S., the evangelical community also went through important transformations growing increasingly connected to conservative, anticommunist foreign policy, best exemplified by Ronald Reagan’s administration.  These two simultaneous transformations put evangelical missionaries and their sending communities—families, friends, churches, the larger evangelical community in the U.S.—at odds.  The resulting conflict between these missionaries and their sending communities highlight many important aspects of the intersection of religion, identity, and foreign policy.

In this paper I will examine correspondence between missionaries and their sending communities, oral histories of radicalized missionaries, magazine articles in evangelical literature, and many other sources to flesh out the critical moments of conflict between missionaries and their sending communities.  I will investigate missionaries’ transformative moments in Central America and how they attempted to communicate these experiences back to friends and family in the U.S.  By examining missionaries who transgressed the boundaries of evangelical identity by embracing liberation theology or supporting socialist guerilla movements, this paper will analyze how the U.S. evangelical community policed the borders of their group identity.