America’s New Global Mission: Religious Pluralism and US Intervention

This paper complicates our understandings of America’s missionary activity by moving away from the normative Christian subject and examining, instead, new and heterogeneous efforts to “reform the world” in the name of religious pluralism, freedom, and reconciliation. To begin, I describe the enormous amount of resources that U.S state and non-state actors have dedicated to such efforts since the 1980s, which have included aid and exchange programs, university initiatives and educational programming, and grassroots and international dialogues. I analyze these developments against the backdrop of an ever-increasing concern with religious “resurgence” both at home and abroad, and the perceived threats and promises this posed to Americans’ global visions. Precisely because the funders and supporters of such initiatives have been radically diverse—spanning religious, racial, nation, and political lines—I argue that they helped to create new networks for U.S. intervention, new avenues for transnational engagement, and new priorities for America’s global religious mission. 

To examine how such initiatives get “localized,” I draw on ethnographic fieldwork from my time at the Salam Institute for Peace and Justice in Washington D.C., a non-profit devoted to pluralism, conflict resolution, and interfaith dialogue in Muslim countries. I look specifically at the Institute’s efforts to extend an “American” presence abroad, while at the same time crafting an “authentic” Islamic voice; their struggles to re-fashion ideas, identities, and practices vis-à-vis changing locales and geopolitical realities; and their efforts to provide “expertise” to the larger non-profit and governmental world. Connecting this case study to my broader project, I ask how such initiatives ought to influence our narratives of the American missionary enterprise.