Online Book Presentation – “In the Shadow of the Vatican. Texan Evangelical Missionaries in Cold War Italy”

The Cold War Research Network is pleased to host an upcoming online presentation, provided by Prof. Mario del Pero, about his latest book, In the Shadow of the Vatican. Texan Evangelical Missionaries in Cold War Italy. In his book, Del Pero tells the story of the Church of Christ, an evangelical mission that went to Italy to promote religious freedom and American values amidst the Cold War.

In 1948, joining the wave of post-World War II evangelical missionary activism, the small, nondenominational Church of Christ from Lubbock, Texas, decided to establish its own mission in Italy. The missionaries believed that by promoting religious freedom, they would help spread democracy and American values. But they were also motivated by fervent anti-Catholicism and a conviction that they could challenge the Vatican’s near monopoly on religion in Italy. Their zeal and naivety were met with a harsh response from the Catholic Church and its allies within the Italian government. At the same time, the omnipresent Cold War soon forced all the actors involved to adapt their strategies and rhetoric to leverage the situation to their advantage.

The event will be hold in cooperation with the RIAS Roosevelt institute for American Studies.

About the speaker: Mario Del Pero holds a PhD in International History at the University of Milan (1999) and being previously an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, he has also taught at Columbia University, New York University, Dickinson Collge, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University. He teaches undergraduate courses on international History, U.S. History, History of Transatlantic Relations, and Modern World History, and graduate courses and seminars on U.S. Diplomatic Histoy, Historiography of the United States in the World, and post-1989 U.S. Foreign Relations. Furthermore, Prof. Del Pero is a “Research Fellow” at the Istituto per gli Studi politica Internazionale (ISPI) of Milan and member of the scientific council of the Foundation “Giangiacomo Feltrinelli” of Milan, of the board of the doctoral program of the Scuola Normale of Pisa and of the Standing Committee of the School of International Studies of the University of Trento.

From our Cold War Research Network, Dr. Bastiaan Bouwman (Utrecht University) will participate as a discussant in order to spark an engaging discussion upon this highly interesting research.

Register for this online event here, or by means of the QR-Code on the poster below!