‘God’s Totalitarianism’: Ecumenical Protestant Discourse during the Good War, 1941–45

Abstract

Abstract This essay looks at the American liberal/ecumenical Protestant response to the rise of totalitarian states during the 1930s and 1940s. A Theological Discussion Group, which included Reinhold Niebuhr and a number of other prominent young churchmen, lent their talents to the progress of a ‘World Christian Community’. They hoped global Protestantism could act as a countervailing force to secular nationalist rivalry. In turn, World Council of Churches leaders presented World War II as the ‘rescue of Christendom’ to parishioners and politicians. They imagined the creation of a postwar ‘new Christendom’ with Catholics. While their totalising discourse served the purpose of distinguishing their agenda from Americanisation and other secular crusades, it did involve them for a season in the very reform strategies that religious liberals supposedly opposed.