"This book provides a transnational history of Billy Graham's revival work in the 1950s, zooming in on his revival meetings in London (1954), Berlin (1954/1960), and New York (1957). It shows how Graham's international ministry took shape in the context of trans-Atlantic debates about the place and future of religion in public life after the experiences of war and at the onset of the Cold War, and through a constant exchange of people, ideas, and practices. It explores the transnational nature of debates about the religious underpinnings of the "Free World" and sheds new light on the contested relationship between business, consumerism, and religion. In the context of Graham's revival meetings, ordinary Christians, theologians, ministers and Church leaders in the United States, Germany, and the UK discussed, experienced, and came to terms with religious modernization and secular anxieties, Cold War culture and the rise of consumerism. The transnational connectedness of their political, economic, and spiritual hopes and fears brings a narrative to life that complicates our understanding of the different secularization paths the United States, the UK, and Germany embarked on in the 1950s. During Graham's altar call in Europe, the contours of a trans-Atlantic revival become visible, even if in the long run it was unable to develop a dynamism that could have sustained this moment in these different national and religious contexts"--

Europe is a continent of ironies. There are beautiful, historic church buildings, but they are empty on Sunday mornings. Europeans have been surrounded by Christianity for centuries, but Christ is not in them. Is this the future of Christianity in Europe? May it never be! The author combines cultural analysis with a prophetic insight to propose a new direction for the European churches. The decline of Christianity in Europe has been necessary to shed excess baggage. The beautiful heritage of Christianity in Europe is truly wonderful, but that is not the essence of Christianity. Churches must return to the original priorities of the faith. Be a fisher of men. Do not assume that people already know about Christianity but are not interested. People may not be interested in religion, but Jesus has an irresistible appeal. Christianity cannot be reinvented, but churches can. If churches stop presuming that Europeans are already Christians and instead compete in the marketplace of ideas, they will be able to win back the hearts of the post-Christian Europeans. Europe is the most important mission field of the twenty-first century and the fiercest spiritual contest will take place in Europe. If you desire to be a servant of the Lord, ask him to send you into the harvest field of Europe. Exciting days are ahead of us.

Assessing the grand American evangelical missionary venture to convert the world, this international group of leading scholars reveals how theological imperatives have intersected with worldly imaginaries from the nineteenth century to the present. Countering the stubborn notion that conservative Protestant groups have steadfastly maintained their distance from governmental and economic affairs, these experts show how believers' ambitious investments in missionizing and humanitarianism have connected with worldly matters of empire, the Cold War, foreign policy, and neoliberalism. They show, too, how evangelicals' international activism redefined the content and the boundaries of the movement itself. As evangelical voices from Africa, Asia, and Latin America became more vocal and assertive, U.S. evangelicals took on more pluralistic, multidirectional identities not only abroad but also back home. Applying this international perspective to the history of American evangelicalism radically changes how we understand the development and influence of evangelicalism, and of globalizing religion more broadly. In addition to a critical introduction and essays by editors John Corrigan, Melani McAlister, and Axel R. Schafer are essays by Lydia Boyd, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christina Cecelia Davidson, Helen Jin Kim, David C. Kirkpatrick, Candace Lukasik, Sarah Miller-Davenport, Dana L. Robert, Tom Smith, Lauren F. Turek, and Gene Zubovich.

In Mission Manifest, Matthew Shannon argues that American evangelicals were central to American-Iranian relations during the decades leading up to the 1979 revolution. These Presbyterian missionaries and other Americans with ideals worked with US government officials, nongovernmental organizations, and their Iranian counterparts as cultural and political brokers—the living sinews of a binational relationship during the Second World War and early Cold War. As US global hegemony peaked between the 1940s and the 1960s, the religious authority of the Presbyterian Mission merged with the material power of the American state to infuse US foreign relations with the messianic ideals of Christian evangelicalism. In Tehran, the missions of American evangelicals became manifest in the realms of religion, development programs, international education, and cultural associations. Americans who lived in Iran also returned to the United States to inform the growth of the national security state, higher education, and evangelical culture. The literal and figurative missions of American evangelicals in late Pahlavi Iran had consequences for the binational relationship, the global evangelical movement, and individual Americans and Iranians. Mission Manifest offers a history of living, breathing people who shared personal, professional, and political aims in Iran at the height of American global power.