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Determining Cause and Effect: Religion in the Study of United States Foreign Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2017

SANDRA SCANLON
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Type
Getting Religion: A Forum on the Study of Religion and the US
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 226 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017 

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References

1 Writing in the year 2000, Patricia Hill concluded that religion “cannot easily be abstracted as a structural component of social order. It cannot therefore be deployed as a category of analysis in the same ways that scholars have wielded gender, class, and race … Our inability to do so reflects an intuitive, linguistic awareness of the distinction between religion and those other structural categories … religion may not always be a variable that matters as we now assume race, class, and gender must always be understood as constituents of any society or state.” Hill did not deny that religion might have been important to individuals at particular moments, but she clearly questioned its function in determining policy at a collective level. Hill, Patricia, “Commentary: Religion as a Category of Diplomatic Analysis,” Diplomatic History (Fall 2000), 633–40Google Scholar, 633.

2 Rotter, Andrew J.. “Gender Relations, Foreign Relations: The United States and South Asia, 1947–1964,” Journal of American History, 81, 2 (Sept. 1994), 518–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Buzzanco, Robert, “Where's the Beef? Culture without Power in the Study of U.S. Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History, 24, 4 (Fall 2000), 623–32Google Scholar, 623. Six years later, Nick Cullather penned a review of Jacobs's, Seth book America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which responded to Buzzanco's challenge: Cullather, Nick, “Here's the Beef: Religion, Culture, and Ngo Dinh Diem,” Diplomatic History, 30, 3 (June 2006)Google Scholar.

3 Preston, Andrew, “Bridging the Gap between the Sacred and the Secular in the History of American Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History, 30, 5 (Nov. 2006) 786–87Google Scholar. There were signs that religion and religious identity were being recognized as increasingly important to understanding areas of US diplomatic history; besides Jacobs's study of Diem, Nho Dinh, Chernus's, Ira “Operation Candor: Fear, Faith, and Flexibility,” Diplomatic History, 29, 5 (Nov. 2005), 779–809 Google Scholar, hinted at the central importance of faith in defining popular responses to Cold War policies. Preston's, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2012)Google Scholar offers the most comprehensive analysis of religion and US foreign relations.

4 Turek, Lauren F., “Religious Rhetoric and the Evolution of George W. Bush's Political Philosophy,” Journal of American Studies, 48 (2014), 975–98Google Scholar, 976. For studies of Bush's religiosity see Bruni, Frank, Ambling into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush (New York: HarperCollins, 2002)Google Scholar; Smith, Rogers M., “Religious Rhetoric and the Ethics of Public Discourse: The Case of George W. Bush,” Political Theory (April 2008), 272–300 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aikman, David, A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush (Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2004)Google Scholar; Mansfield, Stephen, The Faith of George W. Bush (New York: Penguin, 2003)Google Scholar; Singer, Peter, The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush (New York: Dutton, 2004)Google Scholar; Daalder, Ivo H. and Lindsay, James M., America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003)Google Scholar; and Judis, John B., The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. See also Holmes, David L., The Faiths of the Postwar Presidents: From Truman to Obama (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

5 Berggren, D. Jason and Rae, Nicol C., “Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush: Faith, Foreign Policy, and an Evangelical Presidential Style,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36, 4 (Dec. 2006), 606–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 606. For further analysis of the role of religion in Carter's foreign policy see Auten, Brian J., Carter's Conversion: The Hardening of American Defense Policy (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008)Google Scholar. For the clearest explication of Woodrow Wilson's religiosity and its influence on foreign policy see Magee, Malcolm, What the World Should Be: Woodrow Wilson and the Crafting of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

6 Inboden, William, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 4 Google Scholar, 2. Scholars have paid more attention to Eisenhower's influence on establishing civil religion, while emphasizing the personal faith of his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. See Immerman, William H., John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1999)Google Scholar.

7 Stephanson, Anders, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995)Google Scholar; and Bell, James, A War of Religion: Dissenters, Anglicans, and the American Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)Google Scholar. The role of religion and Christian conversion in shaping American identity and expansion is further explored in Blum, Edward J., Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. See also Mead, Walter Russell, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002)Google Scholar.

8 Inboden, 1. See also Mark Edwards, “God has Chosen Us’: Re-membering Christian Realism, Rescuing Christendom, and the Contest of Responsibilities during the Cold War,” Diplomatic History, 33, 1 (Jan. 2009), 67–94; Leilah Danielson, “Christianity, Dissent, and the Cold War: A. J. Muste's Challenge to Realism and U.S. Empire,” Diplomatic History, 30, 4 (Sept. 2006), 645–69; Jason Stevens, God-Fearing and Free: A Spiritual History of America's Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Earlier studies alluded to America's collective religious identity in defining the meaning of the Cold War, but did not emphasize particular religious communities, theology, or individual piety: Tony Smith, America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Scott Lucas, Freedom's War: The American Crusade against the Soviet Union (New York: New York University Press, 1999).

9 David Settje, Faith and War: How Christians Debated the Cold and Vietnam Wars (New York: New York University Press, 2011); George Bogaski, American Protestants and the Debates over the Vietnam War: Evil Was Loose in the World (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014). Earlier studies examined the relationship between individual religious figures and opposition to the war: Mitchell K. Hall, Because of Their Faith: CALCAV and Religious Opposition to the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).

10 Zietsma, David, “‘Sin Has No History’: Religion, National Identity, and U.S. Intervention, 1937–1941,” Diplomatic History, 31, 3 (June 2007), 531–65Google Scholar. Zietsma also examines the function of religion in Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies toward Latin America: “‘Building the Kingdom of God’: Religious Discourse, National Identity, and the Good Neighbor Policy, 1930–1938,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 11, 2 (Summer 2008), 179–214. For further discussion of President Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to shape public attitudes among religious leaders for his policies see Andrew Polk, “‘Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions’: Franklin Roosevelt's Quest for Religious and National Unity Leading up to the Second World War,” “Forum: Religion in American Public Life: Presidential Expressions of Christianity,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture (Sept. 2013), 667–77. A more comprehensive study of Christian communities and World War II is provided in Gerald L. Sittser's A Cautious Patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

11 Cara Burnidge, “The Business of Church and State: Social Christianity in Woodrow Wilson's White House,” “Forum: Religion in American Public Life: Presidential Expressions of Christianity,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture (Sept. 2013), 659–66; Burnidge, “A Peaceful Conquest: Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations, and the Great War of the Protestant Establishment” (PhD dissertation, Florida State University, 2013). World War I is the most extensively examined individual conflict: Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books 2003); Andrew Preston, “To Make the World Saved: American Religion and the Great War,” Diplomatic History (Sept. 2014), 813–25.

12 Paul Vang, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats: The American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1890–1952 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958); John K. Fairbank, ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Kenneth Shewmaker, Americans and Chinese Communists, 1927–1945: A Persuading Encounter (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971); William R. Hutchinson, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987); Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984); Patricia Neils, ed., United States Attitudes and Politics toward China: The Impact of American Missionaries (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1990); Yu-Ming Shaw, An American Missionary in China: John Leighton Stuart and Chinese–American Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Bob Whyte, Unfinished Encounter: China and Christianity (London: William Collins, 1988).

13 John R. Haddad, America's First Adventure in China: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), 4–5.

14 Joseph L. Gabrill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810–1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971); John A. Andrew, Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800–1830 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976); Kenton Clymer, Protestant Missionaries in the Philippines, 1898–1916 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Paul William Harris, Nothing but Christ: Rufus Anderson and the Ideology of Protestant Foreign Missions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Christine B. Lindner, Negotiating the Field: American Protestant Missionaries in Ottoman Syria, 1823–1860 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Emily Kuntz-Conroy, “The Conversion of the World in the Early Republic: Race, Gender, and Imperialism in the Early American Foreign Mission Movement” (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2012); Kuntz-Conroy, “‘Engaged in the Same Glorious Cause’: Anglo-American Connections in the American Missionary Entrance into India, 1790–1815,” Journal of the Early Republic (Spring 2014), 21–44.

15 Major studies of American relations with the Middle East in the twentieth century have certainly considered religion, particularly in relation to American support of Israel. See, for instance, Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945, 3rd edn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Peter Hahn, Crisis and Crossfire: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005).

16 Karine V. Walther, Sacred Interests: The United States and the Islamic World, 1821–1921 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). For further study of American understandings of the Middle East in the twentieth century see David Farber, The Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

17 Philip E. Dow, “Romance in a Marriage of Convenience: The Missionary Factor in Early Cold War U.S.–Ethiopian Relations, 1941–1960,” Diplomatic History, 35, 5 (Nov. 2011), 859–95; Melani McAlister, “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: American Missionaries, the Problem of Racism, and Decolonization in the Congo,” OAH Magazine of History (Summer 2012), 33–37. For a fuller examination of Evangelicals’ worldview, see Matthew A. Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014); and Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). See also Markku Routsila, Origins of Christian Anti-internationalism: Conservative Evangelicals and the League of Nations (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008); Anne C. Loveland, American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942–1993 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1996).

18 Lauren F. Turek, “To Support a ‘Brother in Christ’: Evangelical Groups and U.S.–Guatemalan Relations during the Ríos Montt Regime,” Diplomatic History (Sept. 2015), 689–719; Melani McAlister, “What Would Jesus Do? Evangelicals, the Iraq War, and the Struggle for Position,” in David Ryan and Patrick Kiely, eds., America and Iraq: Policy-Making, Intervention and Regional Politics (New York: Routledge, 2009), 123–53. See also Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (New York: Center Street: 2007); Andrew Preston, “The Politics of Realism and Religion: Christian Responses to Bush's New World Order,” Diplomatic History, 34, 1 (Jan. 2010), 95–118. One area that has received more widespread scholarly attention in terms of the role of lobbying relates to Zionism and Israel: Yaakov Ariel, On Behalf of Israel: American Fundamentalist Attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865–1945 (New York: Carlson Publishing, 1991); Michael Berkowitz, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Lee Marsden, For God's Sake: The Christian Right and US Foreign Policy (London: Zed Books, 2008); Paul C. Merkley, The Politics of Christian Zionism, 1891–1948 (New York: Routledge, 1998); Merkley, American Presidents, Religion, and Israel (New York: Praeger, 2004); Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

19 Lauren F. Turek, “To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelicals, Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1969–1994” (PhD Dissertation, University of Virginia, 2015); Melissa R. Klapper, Ballots, Babies, and Banners for Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890–1940 (New York: New York University Press, 2013).