A uniquely dangerous and promising time: America's protestant establishment confronts a new world, 1941-1950

Abstract

Between 1941 and 1950, America's Protestant establishment confronted a rapidly changing world. Liberal Protestants who found their voice through the Federal Council of Churches and such journals of opinion as The Christian Century and Christianity and Crisis viewed the onset of war in 1941 as both a danger and an opportunity. The dangerous war against totalitarianism provided an opportunity to fashion a new world order should the conflict end successfully. Drawing upon their prominent place in American society, liberal Protestants attempted to realize the promise presented by the world crisis. Especially important in this effort was the Federal Council's Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, chaired by John Foster Dulles. Throughout the war years, this organization held national study conferences, issued declarations on the necessary ingredients of long-term world peace, and petitioned governments to consider their proposals. More importantly, they worked diligently to shape a public opinion that would accept and promote internationalist policies in the postwar world. The awesome destructive force that brought the war to an end at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the escalating Cold War with the Soviet Union, fractured the wartime liberal Protestant consensus and eventually divided anti-war accommodationists and Christian Realists. Yet their efforts during the 1940s were important. Their strong advocacy for international cooperation, a world security organization, and American involvement in world affairs helped build public support for the United Nations and even the policy of containment. Their persistent appeals for a just economic order that included greater government involvement in economic affairs and for racial justice and an end to segregation helped to build support for the ascendancy of postwar American liberalism. In its program to construct a just and durable peace, the Protestant establishment contributed to the shape of postwar America.