Abstract

This study explores the rise of organizations during the 1930s and 1940s in American Protestantism known as parachurch organizations. It observes past renewal movements within Protestantism, and the relationship of three prominent parachurch organizations to this stream of Protestant tradition. Its relevance increases as more historians begin to apply revisionist methodologies to arrive at historical reconstructions of the past. This study searches personal journals, early messages and primary data available to ascertain the goals of the original founders of the Navigators, Young Life, and Youth For Christ International. More critically, it gives these men a voice as to their own motives, desires and dreams and views the structures which developed out of these visions within the context of historic Protestantism. ;American Protestantism plunged into a spiritual depression nearly a decade before American culture ventured into the Great Depression; the fundamentalist-modernist controversies only added to this plunge. Few doubt that these doctrinal debates eventually left conservative factions of mainline denominations fractured and disenfranchised from their liberal counterparts. Yet, there is much debate over the nature of the conservative element's re-emergence into the mainstream of Protestant religion. Part of the debate centers around the motives of a generation of spiritual entrepreneurs and their perceptions of the place of religion in American culture. This study shows that the idea of "winning a culture for Christ" is not the center of reality for the Parachurch Movement; this type of mentality is greatly overshadowed by a unifying commitment to recapture biblical Christianity, not American culture. This study reveals that the most unifying aspect of the Parachurch Movement, its unwavering commitment to the biblical mandate of the Great Commission , gave it a world vision from the beginning. ;The 1930s and 1940s in American Protestantism tell the story of both liberal and conservative elements looking to regather and retool from the doctrinal wars of the early twentieth century, both hoping to find the essence of the gospel message and to preserve the biblical and historical Christian heritage they perceived as their inheritance. The Parachurch Movement is a part of that story