Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 164:654 (Apr 2007)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Robert D. Ibach, Jr.

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BSac 164:654 (April-June 2007) p. 237

Periodical Reviews

By The Faculty and Library Staff of
Dallas Theological Seminary

Robert D. Ibach, Editor

“God’s Country?” Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs 85 (September–October 2006): 24–43.

In this insightful article Mead, who is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for United States Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, attempts to summarize the role of evangelicals in the formulation and execution of U.S. foreign policy. He acknowledges that religion has played and will continue to play a significant role in United States foreign policy in spite of the seeming indifference toward it that has characterized foreign policy pundits and decision makers in the past. “Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, policy, identity, and culture. Religion shapes the nation’s character, helps form Americans’ ideas about the world, and influences the ways Americans respond to events beyond their borders. Religion explains both Americans’ sense of themselves as a chosen people and their belief that they have a duty to spread their values throughout the world” (p. 24).

Mead contends that the role of religion in U.S. foreign policy has changed significantly as a result of changes in Protestantism in the last fifty years, particularly the diminished role of liberal Protestantism and the growth of evangelicalism. In analyzing fundamentalism, liberal Protestantism, and evangelicalism, he concludes that the three differ with respect to “the degree to which each promotes optimism about the possibilities for a stable, peaceful, and enlightened international order and the importance each places on the difference between believers and nonbelievers” (p. 27).

Mead asserts that evangelicals are more optimistic than fundamentalists “about the prospects for moral progress” (p. 35) and therefore are more likely to engage in collaborative efforts with secular and liberal agencies to address issues like poverty and human rights abuses. On the other hand evangelicals are far less optimistic than traditional liberal Protestants about the prospects for improvement in the global ethical and moral climate. Although Mead’s understanding of evangelicalism is surprisingly robust, he does not note the influence of the missional character of evangelicalism. The missional commitment of evangelicalism moves it away from the pessimistic and separatist tendencies of fundamentalism and adds spiritual impetus to go beyond the ethical values and commitments of liberal Protestantism in engaging the peoples of the world.

BSac 164:654 (April-June 2007) p. 238

Evangelicals have affected U.S. foreign policy, Mead asserts,...

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