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Miller, Book Review  115 

Book Review 

 

Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change 

the World but Changed America 
By David A. Hollinger 

 
Reviewed by Daniel Miller 

 
 

 
 

Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 

2017. $22.95 

 

 

From James Michener’s Hawaii to Barbara 

Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, we have become 

accustomed to images of foreign missionaries as 

cultural imperialists. David Hollinger offers a very 

different portrait, in part because he focuses on the 

impact of missionaries from mainline Protestant 

denominations rather than those from more 

conservative evangelical or fundamentalist churches. 

What he finds is that these missionaries and their 

children and the mission agencies that supported them 

became more respectful of non-Western and non-

Christian people and cultures as a result of their 

experiences in the Global South and less tied to 

denominational distinctives or even Christian 

orthodoxy. Having begun with the aim of proselytizing, 

most of these missionaries shifted their efforts to 

promoting economic development and providing social 

services such as health care and education. And instead 

of touting the superiority of Protestant Christianity and 

Western culture, they ended up challenging their 

sending churches to abandon denominational 

provincialism and encouraging all Americans to show 

greater respect for non-Western people. 

Using a wealth of biographical detail, Hollinger 

follows the careers of scores of missionaries and 

missions-influenced Protestants to show how 

widespread their influence was. Because many were 

well versed in foreign languages and cultures, they were 

sought after as O.S.S. officers, State Department 

diplomats, and university professors. Several acted as 

interrogators of Japanese prisoners during World War 

II where they urged humane treatment and effectively 

used non-coercive techniques to obtain valuable 

intelligence. A number of prestigious Asian studies 

departments were established with staff consisting 

mostly of former missionaries and their children. As 

official and unofficial advisors to the U.S. government, 

many showed remarkable prescience in warning against 

looming problems such as the antagonism of 

Palestinian Arabs to Jewish immigration in the 1920s. 

And it was a missionary organization—the International 

Voluntary Services—that provided the model for 

President Kennedy’s Peace Corps. Unfortunately, their 

eagerness to provide services to the U.S. government 

sometimes got them into trouble. Some of the “China 

Hands” who warned of corruption in Chiang Kai 

Shek’s government (the author uses the older spellings 

of Chinese leaders) were branded as communist 

sympathizers during the Red Scare of the 1950s. And a 

number of IVS workers in Vietnam were killed by the 

Viet Cong. But mostly they were just ignored by 

administrations that mouthed moral pieties while 

engaging in realpolitik. 

Hollinger also highlights the contributions of 

women to the story. Pearl Buck not only encouraged 

public support for China during the Japanese invasion, 

she advocated for numerous progressive causes such as 

reproductive rights for women, civil rights for African 

Americans, and mixed-race adoptions. Perhaps 

because of the obstacles they themselves had overcome 

to be heard, missions-associated women and 

organizations played key roles in the black civil rights 

movement, including the writing of the landmark 

Truman era white paper “To Secure These Rights.”  

At the heart of Hollinger’s narrative is “contact 

theory,” the idea that exposure to previously unfamiliar 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(1),  Summer 2019 

Miller, Book Review  116 

people and cultures encourages empathy toward them. 

It was close contact with non-Western individuals that 

gave these “missionary cosmopolitans” their deep 

convictions that Americans should be more respectful 

of foreigners and more critical of their own nation and 

religion. Unfortunately, they found it difficult to transfer 

their new-found convictions to those who had not 

shared their experiences. Their push for ecumenism 

was rejected by most American churchgoers who clung 

to their familiar denominational patterns. Their 

promotion of progressive causes led conservative 

believers to abandon mainline denominations for 

evangelical mega churches. The missionaries 

themselves and their children often followed their new 

perspectives to their logical ends: religious universalism 

or progressive secularism. For anyone who believes 

Christian faith can and should be wedded to progressive 

causes, Hollinger’s account is sobering. 

While Hollinger covers an immense terrain with 

admirable detail, he does leave important topics 

unexplored. He focuses on American missions that 

were supported by mainline denominations. He 

deliberately ignores the role and impact of evangelical 

and fundamentalist missions and passes over African 

American missionaries as well. In fact, nearly all his 

subjects were associated with the Far East, with lesser 

attention given to India and the Middle East, and 

virtually none to African or Latin American missions. 

On a minor note, the author omits some important 

names from the index such as Chiang Kai Shek and 

Mao Zedong. Caveats aside, this is an essential book for 

anyone interested in the paradoxical role Christian 

missions have had on America. 

 

 References 

 

Kingsolver, Barbara M. 1998. The Poisonwood Bible. 

New York: HarperCollins.  

 

Michener, James A. 1959. Hawaii : A Novel. New 

York: Random House.  

 

 
 

 

 

 

Daniel Miller is an emeritus professor of History at 

Calvin University. His research and writing focus on 

Protestantism in Latin America and he also taught 

in Calvin's International Development Studies 

program. 

 

Author email:  drmilleringr@gmail.com    
 

 

 

mailto:drmilleringr@gmail.com

