{"id":792,"date":"2014-04-04T23:47:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T23:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/world-vision-and-evangelicalism-an-interview-with-david-king.html"},"modified":"2014-04-04T23:47:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T23:47:00","slug":"world-vision-and-evangelicalism-an-interview-with-david-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/world-vision-and-evangelicalism-an-interview-with-david-king.html","title":{"rendered":"World Vision and Evangelicalism: An Interview with David King"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Last week the U.S. chapter of the international Christian humanitarian organization\u00a0World Vision<\/a>\u00a0made headlines: first\u00a0when president Rich Stearns\u00a0confirmed to\u00a0<\/a><\/i>Christianity Today<\/a>\u00a0last Monday\u00a0<\/em>that the organization would employ Christians in same-sex marriages, only to\u00a0reverse the decision<\/a>\u00a0two days later, in the wake of torrents of criticism from conservatives, some of whom threatened to withdraw their financial support from World Vision and its well-known child sponsorship program. Yesterday a Google executive\u00a0resigned from the board<\/a>\u00a0of World Vision U.S. in protest, and Rachel Held Evans likely\u00a0spoke for many progressive evangelicals\u00a0when she wrote<\/a>,\u00a0\u201dThe response to World Vision revealed some major fault lines in the Church, and many of us who grew up evangelical interpreted all the gleeful \u2018farewelling\u2019 from evangelical leaders as our final kick out the door.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
As much coverage as the controversy received, I quickly realized just how little\u00a0<\/em>I actually knew about World Vision\u2019s history, mission, programs, and religious\u00a0<\/em>identity. In case that\u2019s true of our readers, I\u2019m happy to have had the chance to\u00a0<\/em>interview\u00a0David King<\/a>, assistant professor of church history at Memphis Theological\u00a0<\/a><\/em>Seminary <\/a>and an expert on religious humanitarianism and the rise of evangelical\u00a0<\/em>relief and development NGOs. This summer, David will join the faculty at the\u00a0<\/em>Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy<\/a>\u00a0as assistant professor of\u00a0<\/em>Philanthropic and Religious Studies as well as serve as the Karen Lake Buttrey\u00a0<\/em>Director of the\u00a0Lake Institute on Faith and Giving<\/a>. His current book project, stemming\u00a0<\/em>from his doctoral dissertation at Emory University, is entitled\u00a0<\/em>Seeking to Save\u00a0the World: The Evolution of World Vision, American Evangelicalism, and Global\u00a0Humanitarianism; you can sample his work by reading\u00a0his 2012\u00a0<\/a><\/em>article<\/a>\u00a0in the journal Religions, \u201cThe New Internationalists: World Vision and the\u00a0<\/em>Revival of American Evangelical Humanitarianism, 1950\u20132010.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
In part one of this interview, David summarizes World Vision\u2019s origins, the history of the child sponsorship program that was for many the emotional center of last week\u2019s controversy, and\u00a0how the organization has changed over time. Tomorrow he\u2019ll consider World Vision\u00a0in relationship to evangelicalism, and explain why much of the coverage last week missed one key dimension of\u00a0the story of World Vision<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
Read the interview here<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week the U.S. chapter of the international Christian humanitarian organization\u00a0World Vision\u00a0made headlines: first\u00a0when president Rich Stearns\u00a0confirmed to\u00a0Christianity Today\u00a0last Monday\u00a0that the organization would employ Christians in same-sex marriages, only to\u00a0reverse the decision\u00a0two days later, in the wake of torrents of criticism from conservatives, some of whom threatened to withdraw their financial support from World Vision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWorld Vision and Evangelicalism: An Interview with David King<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last week the U.S. chapter of the international Christian humanitarian organization World Vision made headlines: first when president Rich\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/world-vision-and-evangelicalism-an-interview-with-david-king.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"World Vision and Evangelicalism: An Interview with David King\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week the U.S. chapter of the international Christian humanitarian organization World Vision made headlines: first when president Rich\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/04\/world-vision-and-evangelicalism-an-interview-with-david-king.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-04-04T23:47:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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