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Though the book is about missionaries this is not a recitation of faith in this context but rather it is about how the missionaries were driven to live in places of increasing danger like china during the japanese occupation and provide the allies with valuable information because they collectively realized that the world was under threat of racist control and the imposition of control over their collective identity and desire to spread the gospel

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But john birch never knew the founders or the members of the society or had even ever learned of its existence as he died in 1945 thirteen years before the society was formed

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Birch was a baptist missionary in japaneseoccupied china when the second world war erupted and when america entered the war he volunteered for service and became an intellignce officer in the us army

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He served through the end of the war using his contacts and familiarity with china and the chinese people to not only gather intelligence but to help rescue downed airmen

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When the war ended he wanted to return to missionary work and leave war behind but he was asked to take one final mission to gather japanese papers before they were destroyed on this mission his team crossed paths with a group of chinese people’s liberation army soldiers and birch was tortured and killed

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Some of these missionaries rose to places of authority in the wartime oss and after the war became members of the state department

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One was influential in the creation of the new peacetime intelligence that replaced the oss the central intelligence agency

Posted by a reviewer on Amazon

It’s also fascinating reading for anyone interested in world war ii intelligence missionaries or the emergence of the intelligence state in the postwar era