The Global—and Globalist—Roots of Evangelical Action

Abstract

Contemporary conservative populists across the world enjoy significant support among evangelicals. However, their embrace of isolationism, mercantilism, unilateralism, and anti-immigrant sentiment sits uneasily with the evangelical call to global action. This article explores the complicated relationship between evangelicalism and populist approaches to foreign policy worldwide. While evangelicals in the US show widespread support for populism, in other countries they are more comfortable with internationalist causes. Surveying evangelicals in the English-speaking world, East Asia, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia demonstrates the complexity of evangelical attitudes toward both globalism and populist nativism.

Keywords:

• evangelical Christianity
• globalism
• internationalism
• foreign policy
• populism
• religion
• politics

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul S. Rowe

Paul S. Rowe is Professor of Political and International Studies at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Religion and Global Politics (Oxford University Press Canada, 2011), editor of The Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East (2018), and co-editor of Whose Will be Done? Essays in Sovereignty and Religion (Lexington, 2015), among other works.