Missionary-Citizenship: Neighbor, Nation, and Globe in American Protestant Childhood from the Great War to the Cold War

This dissertation examines a widespread project in mid-twentieth-century American Protestantism known as missionary education, which included networks of mission-themed clubs, activities, and magazines for children. Overseas missionary work comprised the content of these programs, yet I argue that they reveal more about the function of the mission field in forming an American Protestant identity in the children in the pews. Missionary education programs sought to instill a holistic, “missionary-citizen” identity in which engagement with foreign missionary work was foundational to proper development of global, national, and community citizenship. Missionary education programs across the Protestant spectrum embraced a shared vision of the Christian nation and its mission to the world, which represents a persistent grassroots consensus in a period marked by theological rancor. Immediately following the Great War, children learned to view themselves as both world friends and world leaders, in an attempt to retain and reform the missionary project for an anti-imperial age. Amid a missionary funding crisis and the Great Depression, Protestant children were taught to give generously as both debtors to the world and investors in the missionary enterprise. A spiritualized view of the World War II conflict helped convert missionary-citizens from peacemaking ambassadors to Christian soldiers. And in the Cold War years, Protestants shaped their children into global crusaders for Christianity and democracy. By the 1950s, the missionary-citizenship consensus had eroded through denominational consolidation and political polarization, and America’s mission to the world divided rather than united Protestant children. A study of children’s missionary education sheds light on the ways midcentury Protestants resolved the tension between nationalism and internationalism in the American child’s obligations to the world, and the potential and limitations of a missionary-citizen framing of racial diversity at home. It also speaks to the relative impact of doctrinal distinctives, lived religion, and denominational politics on religious identity formation; the role of not only gender discrimination, but also generational shifts and fundraising capacity in the trajectory of autonomous women’s missionary groups; and the ways conflicting theological foundations can converge in a shared mission.