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Dissertation Examines the Complicated Relationship Between Radicalized Evangelical Missionaries in Central America and Their Sending Communities in the United

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Dissertation Examines the Complicated Relationship Between Radicalized Evangelical Missionaries in Central America and Their Sending Communities in the United © COPYRIGHT by Rodney A. Coeller 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ! To Nathalie, for all her support BEYOND THE BORDERS: RADICALIZED EVANGELICAL MISSIONARIES IN CENTRAL AMERICA FROM THE 1950S THROUGH THE 1980S BY Rodney A. Coeller ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the complicated relationship between radicalized evangelical missionaries in Central America and their sending communities in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. This was a volatile period in Central America, with the success of socialist revolutionaries in Nicaragua, severe repression in Guatemala and El Salvador, and the increasingly powerful presence of liberation theology in religious institutions and the communities they served. These potent forces deeply affected some evangelical missionaries and they grew more sympathetic to leftist movements in Central America. Missionaries sent out as representatives of these evangelical groups, with the goal of converting others into the fold, were thus converted theologically or politically themselves and no longer “fit” within their home communities. It was also a period of rapid change for American evangelicals. During the 1970s and 1980s, evangelicals grew more deeply committed to U.S. foreign policy, supporting Ronald Reagan’s rise to the presidency, his vehement anti-communism, and his foreign policy goals throughout Latin America and the rest of the world. American missionaries in Central America were caught between these changing realities. When missionaries adapted their political and theological perspectives to adapt to transformative experiences ! ii in Central America, sending groups became uncomfortable sponsoring these radicalized missionaries who seemed to have forgotten what they were sent to Central America to do. This dissertation analyzes the ensuing conflicts between evangelical sending groups and these radicalized missionaries, which reveal several important things about the nature of missionary life as well as the nature of the evangelical community. First, there were specific, if often unspoken, beliefs about what it meant to be a missionary— this was part of the power of the missionary narrative within the evangelical community. And second, the boundaries of evangelical identity, while often unspoken, were clarified by radicalized missionaries’ violations of those boundaries. Evangelical identity turned out to be more all-encompassing than one might perceive at first glance. Theological boundaries were important, of course, but transformed missionaries soon discovered that there were political and cultural boundaries as well. ! iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have accrued a great number of debts in the course of researching and writing this dissertation. More thanks are necessary than I can repay in the course of this short note. Thank you, first, to each of the missionaries that allowed me to interview them for this dissertation. Their stories inspired this project and none of it would have been possible without them and their willingness to open their lives to me. Many, many thanks to each of them. I am indebted to several important institutions for travel grants and funding that made this project possible as well. American University, the College of Arts and Sciences, the History Department, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Cosmos Club all provided generous financial support at key moments. I owe my gratitude to helpful archivists at each of the archives I visited. Special thanks to Álvaro Pérez Guzman, librarian at the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in Costa Rica for his enthusiasm about my project and helpful guidance through the seminary’s archives. I am indebted to Anthony Chamberlain and the Latin American Studies Program in Costa Rica as well. Not only did they introduce me to Central American history and the missionaries who inspired this study, they also provided lodging, direction, and helpful advice when I returned years later to research. Thank you to the many family members and friends who have provided support that sustained me through this lengthy project as well. I could not have made it through the process without you. My parents have been wonderfully encouraging throughout this iv endeavor. I owe them thanks for so many things. Special thanks to Nate Howard, Pete Harkema, and Phil Mast for being great travel companions through Central America and to Mark Hamilton for my first introduction to the history of the 1954 coup in Guatemala while standing in line for a Rubén Blades concert in San José nearly fifteen years ago. To each of the people who read portions or all of my dissertation in various states of disarray: Eleanor Gease, Adam Zarakov, Allen Mikaelian, Aaron Bell, Adam Fenner, Leanne Rinne, and James Findlay. Your thoughtful comments vastly improved this dissertation. The history faculty at American University has been wonderfully supportive over the past several years. Special thanks to Bob Griffith who welcomed me to the history department with his cheerful smile and provided thoughtful guidance during my first years in the department. You will always be remembered. Max Friedman has been a great support over the past few years. His helpful advice at many key points has helped me navigate my entry into the historical profession. He provided insightful feedback and encouraging words at important points in the dissertation-writing process. Thank you for your astute reading and thoughtful comments. I met Doug Frank up in the mountains of southern Oregon a little over ten years ago. Along with many other students, I owe him an immense debt of gratitude for investing so many years of his life into the wonderful program known as the Oregon Extension. My semester there still inspires my vision of what education can be. Getting to have Doug join my committee has been a pleasure. His careful reading, compelling v questions, and concern for the “felicity of language” have profoundly enriched this work. Thanks for your invaluable help. Eileen Findlay is simply a wonderful human being. Her enthusiastic practice of doing history has inspired me from the first moment I met her. Eileen has made this dissertation possible. From pushing me to refine my research questions to clarifying my arguments while writing to encouraging me when I considered quitting, she has been there for me throughout the process. I could not have asked for a better advisor, mentor, and friend. Thank you for everything Eileen. Finally, thanks to my son Kai for sharing his dad with a writing project this past year and for reminding me what is most meaningful in life. And most importantly, thanks to my wife Nathalie. Her support at every point and in so many ways has sustained me and made it all worth it. Thank you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..iv Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: THE PLACE OF MISSIONARIES IN HISTORY………1 2. THE EVANGELICAL MISSIONARY NARRATIVE………………………26 3. COMING TO CENTRAL AMERICA……………………………………….52 4. ENCOUNTERS IN CENTRAL AMERICA: THE PROCESS OF RADICALIZATION………………………………………………………….83 5. RECLAIMING CHRISTIAN AMERICA: THE TRANSFORMATION OF EVANGELICALS IN THE UNITED STATES…………………………….130 6. NEGOTIATING TRANSFORMATION: RADICALIZED MISSIONARIES’ CONFLICTS WITH THEIR SENDING COMMUNITIES………………...184 7. CONCLUSION: MEMORY, IDENTITY, AND NARRATIVE AMONG RADICALIZED MISSIONARIES………………………………………….258 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………283 ! vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE PLACE OF MISSIONARIES IN HISTORY John Stam is a magnificent storyteller. Sitting in a small open-air building, built by visiting church members from the U.S., next to his house on the outskirts of San José, Costa Rica, John spills out a cascade of stories accented by bellowing laughter and a few mischevious grins. Just one more quick story, he adds, before heading out to pick coffee beans that will join others drying in the sun around his house. “Have I told you about my theology class with Fidel Castro?”1 Who could turn down such a story? And the stories keep rolling—he tells of arguing with Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, losing his pastoral credentials when a boy wrapping soap in the supermarket found his editorial against President Reagan printed in the communist newspaper, and on and on. Before long it becomes clear though that he really has to get back to writing and other tasks and it is time for me to move along. He is working on his third volume of commentary on the book of Revelation, preaching in several different churches in the next few months, and speaking at rallies protesting the latest free trade agreement with the United States. He just got back from Cuba and Nicaragua and will be traveling through North, Central, and South America in the coming months—quite a schedule for a man who is about to turn 79. But before I go, he shares a glimpse of the historian’s gold mine that he has tucked away in his office closet. He has 1 John Stam, interview by author, San José, Costa Rica, 30 July 2007. 1 2 boxes of thousands of letters, notes, and pictures that he has written and collected over the last seventy years, starting from the time he was as young as six.2 He sends me off with a cheerful goodbye and tells me to call him the next time I am in town. John and his wife Doris went to Costa Rica in 1954 describing themselves as typical evangelical Christian missionaries of a Republican bent, true to the spirit of their alma mater Wheaton College. But in the late 1950s they began working in northern Costa Rica with refugees fleeing the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an experience that would transform their lives.3 By the 1970s, the Costa Rican evangelical seminary where John taught was under investigation for teaching liberation theology—anathema to North American evangelicals who claimed that liberation theology was simply Marxist socialism taking over Christianity. In the 1980s John and Doris fully supported the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua and again ended up on the opposite side of what seemed to be a clear-cut issue for most North American evangelicals.
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