The Forgotten Front: The Palermo Brothers and American Evangelical Expansion in Post-War Italy

Abstract

This paper focuses on the post-war ministry of two relatively well known evangelists in Italy, Phil and Louie Palermo.  Their ministry track took them out of the Italian ghettos of Chicago, into the American evangelical mainstream, and then around the world with the ‘new evangelicalism’ of Youth for Christ and Billy Graham. Their negotiation of an Italo-American identity on both sides of the Atlantic is instructive as to the cultural assumptions of the post War evangelical coalition, and how the world was viewed from middle American revivalism.