How Christians in Korea helped build American evangelicalism

“I’ve never been so cold in all my life,” Billy Graham proclaimed to a crowd of 1.1 million in Seoul in 1973. During those dark days of South Korean military dictatorship, Graham began his sermon by telling the story of his 1952 Christmas visit to Korea during the Korean War—the forgotten “hot war” of the Cold War that consumed some 4 million lives, including those of 40,000 Americans. He invoked the sacrifice of an American soldier who wrapped his body around a North Korean grenade to save the lives of his comrades. Almost simultaneously, thanks to his interpreter Billy Kim, Graham’s words, gestures, and signature cadence became incarnate in Korean.

Helen Jin Kim’s meticulous and ambitious study begins with this vignette. Race for Revival probes the roles played by American soldiers and evangelists and Korean martyrs, orphans, and students in the mid-20th-century emergence of Korean evangelicals amid a resurgence of American evangelicalism. With theoretical sophistication and narrative flair, Kim exhumes the Korean roots of the three major evangelical organizations present at the 1973 rally in Seoul: the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, World Vision, and Campus Crusade for Christ.

The Korean lives that she illuminates are poignant and compelling. Sidelining Graham, Bob Pierce, and Bill Bright, who were historically credited with founding the aforementioned organizations, Kim foregrounds prominent Korean ministers. Her protagonists are Princeton Theological Seminary alumnus Kyung-Chik Han, who founded Korea’s first megachurch; Bob Jones University alumnus Billy Kim, who led the Baptist World Alliance and served as Graham’s translator in Seoul; and Fuller Seminary alumnus Joon Gon Kim, who was known for forgiving the North Koreans who killed his father and his wife during the Korean War.