White Evangelicalism + American Empire

Brad Onishi: Welcome to Straight White American Jesus. It's great to be with you on this Monday. I am welcoming someone who I've got to know just a little bit over the last couple of months here, and that is Dr. Helen Jin Kim, to talk about Race for Revival: How Cold War South Korea Shaped the American Evangelical Empire. So first, let me say, Helen, thanks for thanks for stopping by to the show.

Dr. Helen Jin Kim: Yeah, it's great to be here, Brad. Thanks so much for inviting me. It was great to see you at Apari, and I've loved reading your book, Preparing for War, so I think it's going to be exciting to be in conversation with you about your book and also my book.

Brad: Well, we're here to talk about your book. That's, let's be clear. We're here to talk about you. So this book is a mind-blowing book. I'm not going to lie. And I think there's a lot of people listening to this show who are extremely knowledgeable, whether by personal experience or other ways, about American evangelicalism, Christianity in the United States, so on and so forth. I mean, that's kind of what we do on this show. I think a lot of folks listening have evangelical experiences, they have mainline experiences, they have all kinds of different ones. But I am very confident that when we talk about some of the details in the narratives you trace, people are going to just have no idea what's coming. And so let's start here, just some basic history, and forgive me for doing this, but I think it'll be really helpful for everyone listening to just kind of get this get this kind of basic outline in their mind. World War II comes to an end, the atomic bomb is dropped, there is the surrender of Japan. And what folks often don't think of, I'll just be very honest, I think most folks in mainstream America don't sort of like link up with all of those set of events is what is happening on the Korean Peninsula at the end of the war. So, I know you're a historian, I know you do this in classes all the time. Would you give us the 30-second version or one-minute version of the war ends, Japan is an imperial power is basically, you know, in complete surrender. What happens with the Korean Peninsula in this moment, which will set up what we're going to talk about today, which are the deep entanglements of American empire building, evangelicalism, and Korean Christianity?

Dr. Kim: Thanks for that kind of introduction into the history for this book. It's definitely a post-World War II book, and it's set in the context of the Cold War, and it is importantly a story about American evangelicalism and politics that's intertwined with the Korean Peninsula. And the reason the Korean Peninsula becomes important to the story of American evangelicalism during this time period is precisely because, one, it's the end of the Japanese Empire, but the rise of US empire, the rise of the US as a global superpower. And post-World War II, we often think about it as the period where we see the decolonization of the quote-unquote Third World. At the same time, though, you see the rise of the US empire and US neocolonialism happening, US militarization throughout the world, importantly in Asia Pacific, also taking shape. Right, so that post-World War II period, it's a both decolonization, but also recolonization. And so, this links up very powerfully to the story of American evangelicalism and politics because, and you've read about this in your book, is that, you know, in the 1960s and that post-World War II era, you have the onset of these social revolutions. But at the same time, you have a conservative counter-revolution. And in the post-World War II period, the counter-revolution is happening in the US domestically, but it's also, as I show in my book, happening across the Pacific. And it's because we're tracing these militarized networks that are newly forming through US empire across the border in Asia Pacific. And it's so importantly taking ground in Korea, because of the first hot war of the Cold War, which is the Korean War, and which ends up, you know, importantly, you know, really securing US military presence in Asia Pacific and also dividing the country in two.

Brad: You write on page 12, "America's revival as a Christian nation occurred through the Cold War embrace of non-communist Asia, and in the fire of that war, trans-Pacific racism fueled revival." So if we think about post-World War II, we have this arms race, this onset of the Cold War, and a lot of people are going to be thinking of, okay, the United States and the Soviet Union, the United States and this race to get to the moon, this nuclear disarmament, this whole world that sort of began after World War II. But you bring us to a trans-Pacific and and especially as one thinks of evangelicalism, evangelicals, thoroughly anti-communist, conservative white Christians in the United States, thoroughly against communism. It's about capitalism, the individual, it's about God and country, God and the free market. And this is a lens people often use to understand why Russia became the sort of symbolic big bad other. But what you say here is that Korea stands out as a an incubator for American empire building and American evangelicalism because it's a site where that non-communist sentiment can be entangled with and really coalesce with a missionary enterprise. Would you mind helping us understand that a little more clearly?

Dr. Kim: So, so one piece is for this book is that it is thinking about the Cold War as a global Cold War and trying to highlight, along with other scholars, how the Cold War was impact the influence of the Cold War in Asia Pacific in particular, that, you know, we're not giving enough attention to kind of that Pacific narrative of the Cold War, and so my book is importantly in conversation with those scholars. But alongside of them, I'm also trying to highlight how religion plays a part in that story. And, you know, in Asian American studies, for instance, the trans-Pacific Cold War is a critical conversation, but I wanted to also include kind of how did religion get inflected into that trans-Pacific Cold War? And, yeah, so American evangelicals at mid-20th century are looking for all kinds of allies, you know, in the US, especially vis-a-vis anti-communism. You know, you write about the John Birch Society, about Goldwater. You know, the allies that they're forging are also happening across Asia Pacific. And the fear of communism, and this is where when I was reading the literature, you know, about, you know, mid-20th century politics and evangelicalism, there's such a fear of the bogeyman of communism and, you know, this kind of potentially like demonic influence, like the fear of Marxism, socialism. You know, and in some cases, you know, people like Billy Graham are preaching against it, and it's just hovering. But I wanted to understand, well, what about the people who are actually impacted? Their daily lives have been impacted, actually their lives have been torn asunder by the violence of a hot Cold War? Yeah. Right. And so the Korean War is the first kind of hot Cold War of the Cold War, and, you know, as somebody who lives in diaspora, my ancestors, my Korean people today are still so impacted by the legacies of this war. And, yes, in South Korea, South Korea becomes allied with kind of American democratic capitalism. And those military routes into South Korea are the ones that a lot of white evangelicals, white fundamentalists follow to find other allies in South Korea.

Brad: So if we think about East Asia at this time and the United States how it's how white evangelicals, conservative Christians, and and Americans in general are thinking of the Pacific Rim, they're thinking of, oh, China is a communist place, so that's not the place of allyship and alliance building. Japan is the enemy that we just caused to surrender, so, you know, that's a whole other case. Korea and the Korean Peninsula are in many ways caught in the middle, having been occupied by the Japanese Empire and the Japanese government for years. And then the Korean War happens and the country, the peninsula are split into North and South. So South Korea can become this receptacle for the American Christian, white Christian to think, oh, that's the place. That's the place where we can go and send missionaries and Christianize the society and that's the place where capitalism and God and country can take root and we can build an empire that is not only capitalist and democratic, but's also Christian. And that, you know, you have a statistic in your book that about 5% of Koreans were Christian in the mid-20th century, and that is now in the 20 percentiles. So there's just been a large-scale growth. If you include Catholics, you're up to around 30%, 30 something percent of Korean folks in South Korea who are Christian in some way. And this leads to a couple of mind-blowing historical crossovers that I'm sure people listening have no idea about. So, Billy Graham, World Vision, Campus Crusade, these are stalwarts of 20th century American Christianity. Most people are not going to know that Billy Graham's biggest revival was not in LA or in New York or in Atlanta or in the Midwest, but it was in South Korea.

Dr. Kim: So, it's not a narrative that I learned when I was studying or was introduced to the history of American evangelicalism or American Christianity, but is one that I started to unravel in graduate school when I was just thinking about, you know, why are so many Koreans connected to organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ? Just like my friends. Um, I read about it, and I'm just seeing, you know, I was reading John Turner's book and saw there's like a Korean man who was the, you know, early partner of Campus Crusade for Christ in the 1950s, and I just wanted to know what the connections were, and I just started to unravel it from there. And it turns out that, yes, Campus Crusade for Christ's first international partnership is with South Koreans in the late 1950s. So, I started saying why, right? It's this white organization that has such a hard time with kind of racial diversity, right? And well, why this South Korean? And then it turns out, you know, they have these like massive crusades with South Koreans into the 1970s, and it's because of these early partnerships with a man named Jun Gon Kim, who went to Fuller Theological Seminary. And then as I just started to unravel more, I learned, you know, that World Vision was started in Korea, Compassion International was started in Korea, these kind of evangelical humanitarian organizations, and again, I started to ask why. And then I learned, you know, that there's important connections to the Korean War. It's because the Korean War and kind of US militarism in the peninsula opened up these new routes that Americans and Koreans started to crisscross. And then I just followed the archive, and it turns out that Billy Graham also, because of his connections to Bob Pierce and World Vision, first went to Korea in the 1950s and was preaching there, and then all of these links, all these linkages in mid-mid-20th century do come to fruition in the 1970s. And all three organizations are there at Billy Graham's largest quote-unquote crusade 1973. And it's just this weird story. I just was like, I need to unpack this. Why are there so many connections and all the more because I just I thought it was strange that there wasn't more written about it.

Brad: There's so many ways to open a book. The way you open your book is exemplary because that vignette and the story and the context that it sets is is really groundbreaking. But one of the things you make clear is that as much as the the American evangelicals, ala Graham and others connected to World Vision and Campus Crusade, saw South Korea as the place to fulfill their empire and evangelistic dreams, the the the folks they were they were approaching, the building relationships, following these routes to were not, as you say, mere pawns of US empire. And on page 16, you say, "They brought their own nationalist vision to supersede US Christian dominance through organizing mass revivals in a race for revival against the United States." I'm wondering if you can talk about that and I'm wondering if maybe the life of the other Billy might be a way to understand what you say there.

Dr. Kim: So, that is an important part of the story, too, which is that, you know, I'm, you know, studying the history of these American evangelicals who do crisscross the Pacific, but they meet South Korean Protestants who have been informed by a longer tradition of Korean Christianity in Korea. Right. And so I need us to also understand that, you know, when Billy Graham does show up, you know, on the peninsula, it's not a blank slate in terms of Christianity. Um, Korean Protestantism in particular has this longer history, especially in the late 19th century, where, you know, though a small population, the Korean Protestants before national division become really important historical actors in Korean history. For instance, they're very, there's a core of them that are very adamant about using Korean Protestantism to thwart Japanese imperialism. Right. And so there's this longer history of Korean Protestantism that they encounter. And so, it's not just, you know, disseminating, you know, American evangelicalism into this blank, onto this blank canvas. It starts to become a conversation. Right. And so, that dynamic that complicates the kind of imperial or neocolonial relationship. And so part of it is that these Korean Protestant actors have their own ambitions. You know, ultimately, in the book I do show you how, whether it's Billy Jong Won Kim, who loves Billy Graham and wants to be like Graham, actually wants to kind of supersede him. He wants to, he's kind of like, "You know what, Billy Graham, okay, you're off there," you know, "be the secondary character on my show." Right. He's very much about, and the other Koreans commenting, this was surprising to me when I did the research, is that they were like, "Well, they were translating the sermons," Billy Graham and Billy Jong Won Kim, but "I preferred Billy Kim." And I was like, "Yeah, Billy Graham is kind of on the sidelines." Right. And so, this I'm like, "Where is this coming from?" And it's because as I show, um, the Korean Protestants, including Billy Jong Won Kim and also Jun Gon Kim, really want to see Korea as a Christian nation. And not only Korea as a Christian nation, they want to be the leaders of global Christendom. And what would that, by logic, what does that mean? That means that America isn't, isn't the leader there. Yeah. Right.

Brad: Well, and I don't want to take us far afield. I am tempted to just bring up quickly and we don't have to dwell here until later, but when I think about a figure like Che Ahn in the contemporary moment, who's wildly different than the two men you just described, and I'm not trying to say that they're the same kind of Christian leader at all, but Che Ahn is a Korean American who is one of the most popular preachers in the world. Is on any given week, any given Sunday, is somebody who leads tens of thousands of people in worship in this country, the United States, but also in in South Korea, but also just around the world. I mean, there's a way you could render Che Ahn as kind of fulfilling at least some of the aspirations of, you know, some of the folks that you examine in depth in the book. So we can leave that for later. I don't I don't want to I mean, you probably disagree hardly. I mean, I can tell the historical Go ahead.

Dr. Kim: No, actually, just to briefly comment on that is that I think that the figures that I study in this book and this history do provide kind of historical antecedents. It's not a replication of, and also Che Ahn obviously is in a different historical time period and, you know, he has this church in Southern California and he's part of kind of a different movement with the New Apostolic Reformation movement. But, but yeah, I actually I do agree with you in that I do think there's a history, there's a kind of a lineage. Right? If we were to say Che Ahn is kind of like his stories at the top of the iceberg, what's below that? And what provided a kind of a historical precedent for someone like him is, yeah, I think they I do I would love to see somebody write about that.

Brad: Well, better you than me. I'm sure you could I mean, I'm sure you could to, you know, connect those antecedent narratives to Che Ahn and what he's doing now. I will say quickly, as just as a personal vignette, I was talking to a friend who still lives in Southern California, and she goes to a new church that is in the Inland Empire. And the Inland Empire is like Riverside, San Bernardino County. These are really racially diverse places. Now, this is a white woman who is attending a church that is probably 70% Latino and 15 to 20% Asian Asian American, but the pastor is Korean American. And we had this and he, she loves this pastor. She thinks he's wonderful. He's done a great job with this young church. They're involved in like the local football team and the local this and the local that. And we had this discussion about how, you know, reading your book and reading and thinking about the ways that you've talked about wanting Korea to be a Christian nation, wanting to be the agents of revival. That for me, it was context for thinking of of this young Korean American pastor at this church that is incredibly racially diverse as somebody who in many ways is fulfilling again, some of the the the vision of of what is happening in mid-20th century South Korea and the United States and so on, because here's a a young Korean guy leading Sunday worship with hundreds of Latino folks, hundreds of white folks, Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, and so on. I tried to explain to her that it was probably more likely for a Korean American pastor to be in this position than maybe somebody from another Asian American community because of the kinds of histories you're talking about. And you might completely disagree, but are you here to educate me there? But does that make sense? Or am I just kind of a field here?

Dr. Kim: Yeah, I think that this book for me started in the Korean diaspora. You know, and for me, having lived in the US and also in South Korea, and my own upbringing actually is very much informed by crossing the Pacific. I learned the language in Korea. That's how I learned Korean. I went to Korean school. And so I am trying to make connections between this book isn't just like a Korean history. It's not just a kind of, you know, net nation-bound US history. It's very much diasporic. I'm coming at it from a diasporic lens. And so, for those kind of connections to be made between, you know, this transnational history and with Korean American or Korean diasporic communities in the US is very much, I very much welcome like that kind of analysis and and and and in specifically, this is why Japanese Americans, for instance, the history, the Christian history is different than Korean American Christianity. And I did I did as a as a college student, I wrote my thesis about three Japanese American Protestants and, you know, they were it so we can go into this further, but their their specific story was about like Japanese American internment and, you know, incarceration and it so it was just a different kind of trajectory. Um, so, yes, I want to learn more about this community that you're talking about, but yeah, to to trace those kinds of connections are I think are important for me.

Brad: Yeah, I'm going to take us far afield. There's so much in this book we need to get to. But what you just said is as somebody who's Japanese American, I was thinking, I don't know a lot of Japanese American churches historically that have thought, hey, we're here to make America a Christian nation, we're here to make we're here to make we're here to send missionaries to Japan that will make sure that Japan is a Christian. I mean, there are some of those ideas in the air, but when I think of your book, I think of an entanglement of the idea of Christian nation building that takes on similarities and differences on either side of the Pacific when it comes to South Korea and the United States. And but what one thing I want to make sure we get to is the ways that the racial dynamics of the United States play into this story because it at times renders the Korean actors who are part of World Vision, who are part of Campus Crusade, who are working with Billy Graham, as invisible. How did they, you know, how did their entering into the black-white dichotomy that is often used in American racial dynamics sort of play a big part in this story?

Dr. Kim: I mean, for me in this book, I am using a kind of trans-Pacific framework to think about the story and I'm and I'm drawing that specifically from Asian American studies. And in Asian American studies, they do such a good job of thinking about categories like race, like empire, militarism. And so I wanted the religious history that I was writing about to absolutely be kind of intertwined in those categories, right, because I appreciated the kind of trans-Pacific studies lens that Asian American studies brought. And part of it is in doing that, it allowed me to highlight Korean figures, Korean people, ideas about Asian American racialization that are happening locally, nationally, but also transnationally. And to think about how that racialization process of people of Korean descent is connected to but also is separate from thinking about race primarily through a black-and-white framework. And of course, American evangelical history is so importantly a story about race as it's thought about in terms of like anti-Blackness that is absolutely crucial for us to reflect upon, and it is part of my story, too, here in this book. Anti-Blackness is an important historical kind of stream that also South Koreans are connected to in this because of US empire building. They're learning US hierarchies of race right through militarization. And so that's a part of the story, too. And I wanted to highlight that, you know, they're also, you know, when Jun Gon Kim and Billy Jong Won Kim goes to Bob Jones in the Jim Crow South, he's facing the Jim Crow South, you know, thinking about black-white racial binary, but also the Orientalisms, the deeply, deeply anti-Asianness of a place like Bob Jones. You know, some people have read that chapter and said chapter two and said like they cried reading it because they're like, I, you know, resonate being in a white evangelical space and feeling so alienated, right, as a non-white person. And so they thought, you know, I connected with that, that deep anti-Asianness that's built into the white evangelical higher ed system.

Brad: Reading your book, it's clear that if you think about an organization like World Vision, which so many evangelicals, former evangelicals will be deeply familiar with, my guess is that 99% of the people listening right now had no idea of the deep entanglement with Korean American pastors, preachers, churches, others. How and why were they rendered invisible in the history of something like World Vision?

Dr. Kim: So, so for me that gets to kind of the racialization of the archive itself. And, and to the authoring of, you know, American evangelical history, primarily through like of white, you know, kind of like the way that whiteness is hidden in plain sight, as Anthea Butler has said, right? That kind of whiteness being hidden in plain sight is also, what does it do? It reinscribes kind of a narrative that only becomes about like white men. And then so then it's like, okay, well, if like white evangelicalism or white Christian nationalism has also like an imperial impulse, and I was wondering, well, what about the people who are on the receiving end of that imperial impulse? Like, what happened to them? I just was wondering, like, if it's as devastating as we say it is, like what did, like people on the receiving end, what do they do with that? And there's stories in my book of like trauma. People are devastated by it. And chapter three in particular, like of, um, that's like kind of one of the really difficult parts of the book is seeing how somebody who was part a Korean quote-unquote orphan who was part of the World Vision Orphan Choir, you know, saying, you know, I I felt manipulated by them, right? And I also write about his suicide. And so, this is not a story that when, you know, that's just I thought that if we if we only studied if we just centered the white men, then we wouldn't get the stories of actually how this has actually impacted a lot of people, including non-white people. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Brad: There's more I could say about that. Oh, there's well, and folks, you have to read the book because there's no way for us in a short conversation to get anywhere near the kind of detail and depth that's necessary to understand that history. But in in the latter part of the book, these narratives really do link up with what many people will know as the kind of religious right, the 1970s leading up to the Reagan presidency, the the heyday of Jerry Falwell, of Pat Robertson, of Tim LaHaye, of Paul Weyrich putting together this movement that becomes so definitive for late 20th century politics in the United States. But there are events, Expo '72, Expo '74, that do a couple of things. I think they highlight some of the exploitation that you're talking about. They also highlight, though, how both in the United States and in South Korea, the emphasis on Christianizing society and building a Christian nation often lead Christian leaders to side with authoritarians against communism, which is labeled not only as anti-democratic, but also anti-God. Would you help us understand how that happens on either side of the, you know, the Pacific?

Dr. Kim: Yeah, that's in going into chapter five, and I started that studying that story because I read that, you know, Jun Gon Kim, this Korean man who was part of the early days of Campus Crusade for Christ, was at Expo '72, which for the most part, Expo '72 is like largely thought of as like a white evangelical event, but here comes some Korean man right, saying that, actually, I read the speech in the archive, I found out, he's saying he gets up there and says, "Actually, we're going to have something similar in Korea, it's going to be called Expo '74, and we're going to have more people than you." And, and like, the leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ, including Bob Bill Bright, are like, "What?" They're like, "What? We didn't know about this." And like, "Why would you say that?" He's like, "We're going to exceed the numbers than you have here. 80,000 people, we're going to have like 200,000 or more," and they did exceed those numbers. And it just kind of baffled Campus Crusade for Christ workers. And, you know, it just, and anyway, so then it turns out they did have Expo '74 in South Korea. Campus Crusade for Christ and in the US helped with that. And it was larger, it was massive. Um, but it's important for us to also think about, like, how were these events connected not just by one man traveling and saying what he said, but also what are the politics undergirding these connections? And it turns out, you know, that Campus Crusade for Christ and in the US and Korea, you know, were comfortable with hosting these massive revivals in South Korea during a time where South Korea is despairing over the rise of a of an authoritarian, Park Chung Hee, who ruled for 18 years, changed the constitution Korean constitution so that he might have this 18-year reign. And it turns out that Jun Gon Kim curried favor with this authoritarian ruler. He helped to set up a national prayer breakfast that Park Chung Hee participated in. Right. And so they're using kind of a religious leader to kind of sanctify also his rule. And that US Campus Crusade for Christ leaders didn't bat an eye at this. In fact, they celebrated the fact that we can reach so many souls. They're letting us, this authoritarian is letting us, you know, have these massive revivals and save individual souls. This is good for us. It's just like, what about all of the humanitarian atrocities that this authoritarian ruler is committing? They looked past all of that. They look past all of that.

Brad: It's amazing to think of/ I want to, you know, I think folks listening are going to have these obvious resonances of say, oh, yeah, well, that sounds familiar. It sounds familiar like many who in the last 10 years in this country have said, oh, well, we have somebody who's a wannabe authoritarian, but if that means Christian, quote-unquote, policies, Christian revival, if it means any of that, then it's worth it. And as I read chapter five, I was thinking there's just such an eerie sense here of how conservative Christianity can work hand in hand with authoritarians because they think it benefits the kingdom of God. All right, y'all. I'm going to ask Dr. Kim a few more questions about the current moment and authoritarianism and the ways that evangelicals have used the kingdom of God as an excuse for supporting authoritarian politics. If you're a subscriber, stick around, and if you're not, uh, today's a great day to subscribe in order to get bonus content on Mondays and bonus episodes, access to our archive, invite to our Discord, and so much more. It's just 40 bucks for the year, and it is what makes this show happen. So, think about it if you can. Otherwise, thank you for listening and being part of our community. We so appreciate you. So, where can people find you? Can they follow you? Can they see where you might be doing things with this book, announcements about further work? What's the best way to follow along?

Dr. Kim: I am on just one social media right now in light of everything that's happening in social media world. Yeah. But I'm, I'm on Instagram. Yeah, so @HelenJinKim.

Brad: That's great. Well, friends, you do want to read this book if especially if you're somebody who has a deep history with evangelicals in the United States. I'm just going to say it, if you're a white evangelical, white former evangelical, you need to read this book because it will shed light on so many things that were probably a big part of your life that go deeper and wider and further than you expected. The trans-Pacific lens, the idea that the United States is as much a Pacific as it is an Atlantic nation is important and it's nowhere more important than in this book and our understanding of American empire and Christianity and what happened in South Korea and the explosion of Christianity there. We'll be back Wednesday with "It's in the Code," Friday, the weekly round-up, but we thank you for listening and we'll say thank you for being here. Have a nice day.