Children of glory: Orphan care and the cultural limits of evangelical activism /

Children of glory: Orphan care and the cultural limits of evangelical activism /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Perry, Samuel, author.
Imprint:	2015. Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2015
Description:	1 electronic resource (257 pages)
Language:	English
Format:	E-Resource Dissertations
Local Note:	School code: 0330
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10773075

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:	University of Chicago. degree granting institution.
ISBN:	9781321882193
Notes:	Advisors: Omar M. McRoberts Committee members: Gina M. Samuels; Kristen Schilt; Robert Wuthnow. This item is not available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. This item must not be sold to any third party vendors. This item must not be added to any third party search indexes. Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 76-11(E), Section: A. English
Summary:	This research extends our understanding of the ways culture not only facilitates social movement participation, but also constrains it. In particular, it provides empirical evidence of what I call the "dilemma of evangelical activism." In short, I show how the American evangelical subculture both compels evangelicals to engage their society, while simultaneously ensuring that those efforts at social engagement fail. As an empirical case, I focus on the contemporary American evangelical orphan care movement, and draw on theoretical insights from the sociology of culture and morality, religion, organizations, and social movements. I demonstrate how certain aspects of the American evangelical subculture, while precipitating collective flurries of social engagement among evangelicals, ensure that these attempts at social engagement will ultimately be self-limiting. That is to say, while evangelicals are compelled by their activistic orientation to address social issues in tangible ways, I argue that these attempts at social engagement will ultimately fall short of accomplishing long-term social change because of certain constraints inherent within evangelicalism itself. Data for this study are taken primarily from 157 in-depth interviews with movement elites and grassroots participants involved at some capacity in adoption, foster care, and global orphan care. I supplement this interview data with content analyses of movement literature; ethnographic material collected from over two and a half years of participant observation at movement events; and various quantitative data sources including national surveys, government data on adoption and fostering, and a database of orphan care movement organizations. My analyses demonstrate how the evangelical "cultural schemas" of idealism and Christian pietism, individualism/anti-structuralism, and relationalism, as well as the populist tendencies of evangelicalism, constrains evangelical attempts at mobilization in three important ways. First, because evangelicals tend to view individual "heart-transformation" as the only legitimate means through which social change is accomplished, evangelical leaders are limited in their mobilization repertoires to certain strategies that seek to shape individual beliefs and values (preaching, teaching, one-on-one conversations, writing) as opposed to changing social structures. I demonstrate this by drawing on a content analysis of evangelical orphan care "mobilization literature" and interviews with key movement leaders. Second, because evangelicals believe that "right actions" must be preceded by "right motives" and done in the "right way," they are limited in their mobilization targets. That is, the only morally-appropriate persons to mobilize to social engagement are those who are motivated by the "right reasons" (e.g., the gospel, God's glory, obedience to calling) and in the exact way God has prescribed in the Bible. Consequently, evangelicals exclude an enormous number of potential allies and forfeit potential resources that could be mobilized to address their particular social cause. Lastly, I show how the cultural schemas of individualism/anti-structuralism and idealism/Christian pietism intersect with evangelical tendencies toward populism in ways that simultaneously compel grassroots families toward (rash) activism through shallow theological teaching and exhortation, while also limiting evangelical congregations' willingness to accommodate for such families in their day-to-day struggles. I argue that these evangelical subcultural tendencies conspire to ensure that evangelical attempts at social engagement are difficult to sustain, and, in the case of many adoptive of fostering families, ended with tragic consequences for the activists' families and the children themselves. I conclude the study by highlighting the implications of this research and hypothesizing extensions of the argument to other venues of evangelical social engagement including their recent efforts at addressing sex-trafficking, racial reconciliation, and poverty.