Saving Germany
North American Protestants and Christian Mission to West Germany, 1945 -1974
With Nazism defeated and Communism encroaching, Christian missionaries left for Germany to fight for the soul of a nation.
Description
Historians have mainly concentrated on the significance of the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, and exports of pop culture to describe the role of North Americans in the development of West Germany after the devastation of the Second World War. In Saving Germany, James Enns brings an entirely new focus to West Germany’s recovery by demonstrating how North American missionaries played a formative role in cultivating the humanitarian and spiritual conscience of postwar Germany. Enns begins by categorizing the kinds of Protestant missionary agencies active in West Germany, which ranged from mainline churches overseeing ecumenical humanitarian and church reconstruction projects to independent evangelical mission agencies working alongside local church groups. He then identifies notable themes that contextualize the spectrum of missionary responses, including the degree to which missionaries intentionally functioned as agents of Western democracy. In addition to discussions of well-known figures such as US evangelist Billy Graham, Enns highlights the important contributions of the Janz Quartet from the Canadian prairies and Robert Kreider of the Mennonite Central Committee. Tracking thirty years of transnational Christian missionary work, Saving Germany demonstrates the significant role of North American missionary agencies in the reconstruction of Germany.
Reviews
“By shedding light on an aspect of history that has been sorely neglected, James Enns makes a wonderful contribution to the new literature on Christian missions. By examining Western missions to Westerners – that is, American missions to the Germans, a people with a manifestly Western and Christian heritage – he complicates our understanding of cultural imperialism and Western/Christian exceptionalism. This is a very good book that will appeal to historians of religion, the United States, and Europe during the Cold War.” Andrew Preston, History, University of Cambridge and author of Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy
“Mining sources on both sides of the Atlantic, Enns examines the impact of North American Protestant missionaries on West Germany from 1945 to 1974. Especially enlightening is how German evangelicals adopted the mass evangelistic methods of YFC [Youth for Christ], JMT [Janz Team Ministries], and the [Billy] Graham team, and continue to employ modified versions today. An important work on Christian missions and post-1945 Germany. Highly recommended." CHOICE