“A Mission Field, Backwards”: World Relief and American Evangelicals in U.S. Refugee Resettlement

Abstract

Beginning with the organisation’s origins in 1944, the chapter traces how World Relief grew into the largest evangelical Christian refugee resettlement agency in the United States. Following the evolution of the organisation’s international origins and domestic operations, this chapter highlights the complex intersections between evangelical faith-based humanitarian efforts via refugee resettlement and the increasingly nativist, anti-immigrant sentiments within American evangelicalism, particularly among white evangelicals. The analysis offers insight into how World Relief’s work embodies both the philanthropic and missional impulses of evangelical Christianity and reveals the origins of contemporary tensions between faith-based compassion and cultural conservatism in a rapidly changing political landscape. This chapter examines the shifting involvement and focus of American evangelicals in providing aid to displaced populations abroad and, eventually, within the United States, shedding light on the different ways this group perceives and interacts with the world.

Department(s)

School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability

Document Type

Article

DOI

10.4324/9781003467663_4

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Journal Title

Rediscovering Humanitarianism Using Secular and Religious Histories to Provide New Understandings of Refugee Resettlement

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