Child sponsorship emerged from nineteenth-century Protestant missions to become one of today’s most profitable private fund-raising tools in organizations including World Vision, Compassion International, and ChildFund. Investigating two centuries of sponsorship and its related practices in American living rooms, churches, and shopping malls, Christian Globalism at Home reveals the myriad ways that Christians who don’t travel outside of the United States cultivate global sensibilities.
Kaell traces the movement of money, letters, and images, along with a wide array of sponsorship’s lesser-known embodied and aesthetic techniques, such as playacting, hymn singing, eating, and fasting. She shows how, through this process, U.S. Christians attempt to hone globalism of a particular sort by oscillating between the sensory experiences of a God’s eye view and the intimacy of human relatedness. These global aspirations are buoyed by grand hopes and subject to intractable limitations, since they so often rely on the inequities they claim to redress.
Based on extensive interviews, archival research, and fieldwork, Christian Globalism at Home explores how U.S. Christians imagine and experience the world without ever leaving home.
Awards and Recognition
- Winner of the Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church History
Hillary Kaell is associate professor of anthropology and religion at McGill University. She is the author of Walking Where Jesus Walked and the editor of Everyday Sacred.
"[Christian Globalism] reads like a smooth conversation between friends that simultaneously unearths complex relational, identity, and power dynamics. . . . With creative complexity, Kaell constructs her study of child sponsorship as it relates to relevant history, identifiable themes, and contemporary trends, and offers insightful cues for a variety of academic disciplines and everyday readers.—Allison Kach, American Religion"
"In Christian Globalism at Home, Kaell offers much more than a study of child sponsorship programs across three centuries. This deeply researched and beautifully written book is also an examination of how ‘immobile’ Americans, those who do not travel abroad, constitute various forms of Christian globalism. Kaell explores participatory techniques—from skipping meals to studying maps—as practices that both expand horizons and recenter Americanness. Innovative and insightful, this is a major contribution to the history of American religion."—Melani McAlister, author of The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals
"Christian Globalism at Home offers a compelling cultural history of U.S. Christian child sponsorship programs during the past two centuries. Kaell is a masterful storyteller and scholar, whose ideas and theoretical contributions are presented with exceptional clarity and persuasiveness."—Omri Elisha, author of Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches
"This significant book makes an important claim: American Christian donors who sponsor a child abroad are reaffirming, rather than challenging, the inequalities they seek to remedy. The scope of Kaell’s research is impressive and the ethical implications of her arguments are urgent."—Heather D. Curtis, author of Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid
