Finding “Angels” for the Boat People

Abstract

This chapter covers evangelical resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees from 1975 to the early 1980s. During this time, a number of evangelical organizations ran resettlement ministries and refugee service programs. This chapter describes the professionalization of evangelical refugee resettlement, including the founding of the first evangelical resettlement agency, World Relief Refugee Services. Evangelical volunteers and former missionaries to Vietnam played a significant role in running recreational and educational activities in the refugee resettlement camps in the mid-1970s. These “missionaries without a country” became an important resource for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which relied on their interpreting and translating services. By differentiating between mainstream evangelical and progressive evangelical responses to the government’s appeal for evangelical sponsors, this chapter shows that evangelicals’ political stances on the US involvement in Vietnam fundamentally shaped their response to the refugees.