In the early 1960s, Congo was in crisis. As the newly independent nation’s first prime minister was assassinated and violence wracked the country, a white American evangelical missionary was murdered in the streets of the capital city. The story of his death became national news, and US evangelicals, white and black, struggled to understand the politics of race, religion, and revolution that led to his death. Drawing on letters, the internal documents of missionary organizations, popular media, and evangelical publications, McAlister explores the sometimes conflicting ways that American missionaries, US Christians, Congolese Christians, and US policy makers tried to understand the ongoing transformations in Africa – changes that would dramatically impact US foreign policy as well as the global religious landscape of Christianity.