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In this article, I analyze constructions of and responses to vulnerability in the US government and a now-prominent evangelical aid organization, World Vision, during the 1950s and 1960s in Korea and Vietnam. World Vision was founded as the “development discourse,” Cold War rhetoric, and the neo-evangelical movement were all rising to prominence in the United States. World Vision’s early understandings of vulnerability resonated with Cold War and modernization theory rhetoric in certain ways; however, its approaches to remake vulnerable Asians were often distinct. World Vision evangelical Christians looked to private voluntary organizations and individual conversions in a free society to remake individuals and nations, notions not so different from neoliberal development approaches today. US foreign aid approaches were rooted in nation-building for centralized, planned government institutions and economies to modernize “traditional” people. This article examines the complex relationships between missionaries, evangelists, US foreign aid experts and the military in American constructions of vulnerable traditional Asians and interventions to modernize and Christianize them. In examining roots of faith-based development models through the case of World Vision and notions of vulnerability, historical threads and lineages emerge for understanding the relationship of religion and the state in modernizing projects, and faith-based and neoliberal development models.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the religious beliefs and experiences of a white Evangelical English teacher, Amy, shaped her enactment of critical inquiry pedagogy in her English classroom.

This study drew on three in-depth interviews focused on a white Evangelical English teacher’s negotiation of her faith and understanding of critical inquiry issues in her teaching.

The teacher embraced anti-racist pedagogy by aligning definitions of structural racism with her understanding of the inherent sinfulness of humankind. She did so at the risk of her standing within her Evangelical community that largely rejected anti-racism. On the other hand, the teacher struggled with embracing LGBTQ+ advocacy, believing that affirmation of LGBTQ+ identities ran counter to her beliefs in “the gospel.” Her theological beliefs created complications for her when students brought the issue up in her class.

This study illustrates the way an English teacher incorporated anti-racism into both her teaching and religious identity, demonstrating that for some, the main concepts promoted in teacher education programs are held against a theological standard. It suggests that more work must be made by English teacher educators to provide space for religious pre-service teachers to find religious justification for engaging in LGBTQ+ advocacy.

One of the goals of English education is to encourage students to read texts and the world critically. However, the critical inquiry may be seen by Evangelical teachers and students as value-laden, too political and hostile to religious faith. This study examines the tensions that arise for an English teacher who is a white Evangelical. It contributes to possible strategies for the field to address these tensions.

This paper aims to examine how evangelical teachers’ religious identities influence their interpretation and teaching of texts in high school English Language Arts classrooms. Further, this paper examines how evangelical teachers make choices about how to balance the demands of their religious and teacher identities as they interact with texts in their own classrooms.

Using Derridean deconstruction of the concept of ethical decision-making, the author uses critical discourse analysis to examine a conversation between two evangelical teachers as they talk about the tensions they feel as they teach The Crucible with their high school–aged students.

The findings show evangelical teachers’ religious and teaching identities were in tension across three themes: literary analytic frameworks, authorial intent and eternal truths and evangelism and fellowship.

By highlighting how evangelical teachers’ religious and teaching identities influence their classroom decisions, teaching practices and textual interpretations, this study offers another pathway through which teacher educators and researchers might examine the connection between teachers’ religious and teaching identities with the intent to invite more complexity into literary analysis.

This paper aims to interpret the multidimensional Asian American identity of immigrant Indians in terms of pan-ethnicity, gender and religion.

The social construction and experience of race in the US and the intersection of multiethnic Asian American identity with race, gender and religion will be used in critically commenting on the interview of primary ethnic identity of Indian Americans including the pan-ethnic identity of Indians in the US as Asian Americans, the Mar Thoma Church community, the second-generation Patel family's union formation in terms of gender identity.

The future directives include Asian American Movement (AAM) which is trying to incorporate Indians as pan-ethnic identity assimilation and the process of holding American identity as primary identification of Indians.

Policy recommendations are that the US Census Bureau should include Indian Americans as separate ethnic identity for Indian immigrants like the Chinese Americans. USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services) should reform policies to include the wives of H-4 visa holders. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should provide secure living environment for Indian immigrants. The US Department of Labor should provide equal opportunities for women in their immigration policies.

This paper will critically analyze the interview results of primary ethnic identity and justify the hypotheses of Asian American identity of Indians, whether (1) they merge with the American identity as part of cultural assimilation or (2) retain their Asian identity beyond Americanized identity or (3) go beyond both American and Asian identity to restate their Indian ethnicity.

The paper focuses on two main issues. First, 19 Southern Baptists were asked, how they believe living in the Southeastern USA influences their religious faith. Second, the interviewees were asked about their experiences traveling to Israel.

Through depth interviews, 13 corollaries were derived that help explain the Southern fundamentalist perspective on religion. The paper borrows principles from grounded theory, an inductive method that allows one to observe first and then begin building a general theory.

Southern Baptists do not believe that living in the South changes their beliefs. However, they do believe that the South is a supportive environment for the Christian fundamentalist. The Baptists experienced Israel in highly idiosyncratic ways. Some said that the experience dramatically changed their lives; others felt that the trip had only a minimal impact.

The paper is among the first to ask Southern fundamentalists how they believe the South influences their beliefs. It helps shine a light on the nature of Southern religion and how Southern fundamentalism fits in the larger Christian world.

Purpose – In this chapter, we introduce the Internet-based field experiment (IBFE) that offers numerous advantages for bringing stratification processes “back into” the study of religion. We present preliminary results from a study of class and race discrimination using this approach.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Using names of fictitious characters, we sent e-mails to a nationally representative sample of 4,680 U.S. Christian churches asking about possible membership. The e-mails varied only in the perceived race and class of the senders. We utilize a mixed methods approach to analyze variation in the content of the church responses.

Findings – Our early findings suggest significant variation by race/class manipulation, religious denomination, and region of the country in churches’ responses as well as the length of time they took to reply, the length of the response, the warmth, religious tone, and several other dimensions.

Research limitations/Implications – This study raises new opportunities for Internet-based research on religion in a variety of social settings, but there is not yet a well-established set of “do's” and “don’ts” for how to proceed. We advocate the development of a protocol of best practices as this research method develops.

Originality/Value – This study demonstrates the opportunities and pitfalls of the IBFE and the advantages it provides for studies of stratification and religion. Ours is the first study to apply this emerging method to the study of religion and stratification.

Intellectual humility and religious conviction are often posed as antagonistic binaries; the former associated with science, reason, inclusive universality, and liberal secularism, the latter with superstition, dogma, exclusive particularity, and rigid traditionalism. Despite popular images of white American evangelicals as the embodied antithesis of intellectual humility, responsiveness to facts, and openness to the other, this article demonstrates how evangelicals can and do practice intellectual humility in public life while simultaneously holding fast to particularistic religious convictions. Drawing on textual analysis and multi-site ethnographic data, it demonstrates how observed evangelical practices of transposable and segmented reflexivity map onto pluralist, domain-specific conceptualizations of intellectual humility in the philosophical and psychological literature. It further argues that the effective practice of intellectual humility in the interests of ethical democracy does not require religious actors to abandon particularistic religious reasons for universal secular ones. Rather, particularistic religious convictions can motivate effective practices of intellectual humility and thereby support democratic pluralism, inclusivity, and solidarity across difference. More broadly, it aims to challenge, or at least complicate, the widespread notion that increasing strength of religious conviction always moves in lockstep with increasing dogmatism, tribalism, and intellectual unreasonableness.

Explores the possibility and probability of a Catholic‐Evangelical alliance within the US social arena. Notes the numerical strength and systemic importance of each tradition. Examines the histories, tenets, politics, economic teachings and lifestyles of the two respective orientations. Cites their legacy of mutual hostility as well as the more recent ecumenical ventures. Focuses on the relevancy of the Vatican II Council to their dialogue and enumerates their contemporary differences and similarities. Concludes optimistically that theology and politics have forged stranger coalitions.

When Trump entered the presidential race in 2015, many white evangelicals turned up their noses at his candidacy. By 2020, Trump had garnered such commitment from white evangelicals that not only did 80% vote for him, but 60% also refused to accept the election results after his loss. How did this transformation occur, and with what lasting results for the evangelical vote and US politics more broadly? This chapter shows that in the “new culture wars” of the Trump era, race has played an even more central and explicit role in religion and politics than it did in the past. Christian nationalism and the intersection of religion and race help explain the strong bond between Trump and many white evangelicals. COVID-19 vaccine refusal and critical race theory bans provide examples of the continuing significance of that bond. These cases demonstrate the likelihood that Trumpian politics will maintain influence over white evangelicals in the near future.

Based on 178 in-depth interviews with evangelical Protestants in 23 states and data from the Evangelical Identity and Influence Survey (n=2,087), this chapter assesses the articulation of evangelical subcultural ideals with gendered family life, democratic individualism, and a two-earner, middle class lifestyle. Compared to other Protestants, evangelicals put more emphasis on husbands’ spiritual leadership, authority, and engaged fatherhood, and interpret wives’ employment as a pragmatic necessity and the outcome of expressive individualism. These ideals, in tension, produce a sense of “invested individualism” that embodies evangelical subcultural identity and facilitates the management and negotiation of gender, work, and family life.