ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how certain ideas of Christianity, service and the secular are translated into the Comite d’Entraide Internationale (CEI) own mission and identity. It provides an overview on the wider historical debates around evangelism and social action through considering various international conferences and statements issued by church federations. The tension between evangelism and social action in missionary activity is probably the biggest debate in 20th century Protestant theology of mission discussions. The chapter shows how sanctification and secularisation occurred as both strategy and process in specific conditions, practices and relationships which attempted to navigate a fundamental identity ambiguity within the organisation as it straddled the space between humanitarianism and evangelism. It demonstrates that within the CEI an enchanted humanitarianism prevailed through a vernacular of "lifestyle evangelism" and "holism" which was not necessarily coherent or uncontested, but rather that the discourse itself encompassed tensions, differences and ambivalence.
