Evangelicals and American Foreign Policy, by Mark R. Amstutz

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kit Kirkland, University of St. AndrewsMark Amstutz's and American Foreign Policy a timely work elucidating international motivators of American evangelical concern. Over past 50 years waning power of America's mainline Christians has been offset by dramatic growth of evangelicals, who now represent 30-35 percent of [American] population or around 100 million (1). Amstutz argues that America's foreign policies should better reflect priorities and concerns of this politically significant constituency. To underline his point, he capitalizes (8) throughout his study, emphasizing that their denominational concerns should equal those of mainline Protestants and Catholics. Although many Americans are aware of selective moralities of evangelicals--namely, abortion and same-sex marriage--that dominate domestic priorities, less known about evangelical foreign doctrine.[1] Evangelical strategy [has] given precedence to spiritual life over temporal concerns, Amstutz notes, has no social doctrine to guide political (4). Domestically, politics and concerns of American evangelicals are evident, but soft-power actions of evangelicals overseas, including their missionary work, education, action on poverty, micro-financing, and US-Israeli lobbying are less well known.[2]For brevity, this review will focus on Amstutz's fifth chapter, Evangelicals and global poverty. The author asserts that Evangelicals' major contribution to global challenge of poverty has been humanitarianism--that is, provision of services and resources to alleviate human (115), before disputing arguments supporting structural income inequality, and redistributive solutions that typify Christian action--especially Catholic efforts with God's preferential option for (109).[3] He criticizes the allure of socialist thought [which] for many Christian idealists undoubtedly rooted in socialism's mythic claim to justice and its alleged capacity to care for needs of (108-109), arguing that structuralism is a flawed paradigm that was unable to adequately explain how wealth created in economy or how [it] help[s] alleviate human suffering in poor countries (112). Amstutz clearly pins his colours to mast of free enterprise, asserting supremacy of capitalist model and controversially claiming that modern economic growth not necessarily exploitative (97).Certainly this chapter influenced by optics. For mainstream Christian groups, Great Recession casts its long shadow over economic austerity measures, with some churches supporting Occupy movement and actively challenging capitalist model because of its effect on global poor. For Amstutz, Cold War-era institutionalization of faith and capitalism appears to provide lens. Jonathan Herzog explores this theme in The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America's Religious Battle against Communism in Early Cold War : belief was promoted in widest terms possible ... by binding religious faith to ebb and flow of Communist peril ... [and although] most visible signs of national piety so evident in 1950s have disappeared ... social and cultural residue of spiritual-industrial complex ... live on as bulwarks against secularism.[4]Amstutz should have avoided ideological binary he seems to set up between socialist and capitalist modes of evangelical compassion. Although he underlines benefits of non-profit evangelical organizations such as Opportunity International and World Vision International (114-117), Amstutz's discussion punctuated with background noise of Gary Laderman's Republicanity. He seems to promote Republican ideological values in wrapper of evangelical theology despite considerable diversity within evangelical canon and ongoing popularity of welfare-distributive approaches among Christian groups. …