“In the Face of Evil’s Prevailing Threat to Our Cherished Way of Life”: Evangelical Youth Identity in a Cold War Context

Evangelicals in the United States understood that threats to democracy were also threats to Christianity. In the postwar era, evangelicals asserted their identity as both Christian and fiercely American. As a result of this dual identity, postwar evangelicals believed they were threatened from outside of the United States and from within. Inside of America, postwar evangelical youth cited the threats of moral decay, materialism, greed, loss of Christian principles, and the corruption of American youth and society. From outside of the United States, postwar evangelical youth pointed to the threats of atheistic communist expansion. According to postwar evangelical youth, the best way to combat these threats from the inside and the outside was political engagement.

The voices of postwar evangelical youth provide evidence of a desire for political activism. While most scholars focus on the political activism of youth in the 1960s and 1970s, the Speakers’ Tournament speeches by postwar evangelical youth in the 1940s and 1950s articulate their perceptions about the ways evangelicals had always been politically active in America and needed to redouble their commitments to peace activism, missions, and building more Christian institutions of education. In particular, the language of the evangelical youth fully engages with this Cold War battle between the godless communists and their direct threat to both Christianity as a religion, and Christian America as a religious democracy.