In early July 2024, at the fourth annual National Conservatism Conference in Washington D.C., Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Doug Wilson, Pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, ID, met to discuss Christian nationalism in America.¹ During a panel, the two agreed that the state should maximize its Christian commitments as a way of addressing the crisis of morality and meaning in American. Implicit in their discussion is the claim that Christianity provides the vehicle through which society may be restored to a more pristine state. Yet this is not a novel impulse, as William Inboden’s Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment demonstrates. This work recounts the efforts of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to revive America’s flagging spirituality and to use religion as a weapon against Soviet Communism in the 1950s, and it provides a helpful lens to better understand the modern Christian nationalist vision.

At the time of its publication in 2008, Religion and American Foreign Policy was the most comprehensive study of the religious aspects of U.S. foreign policy in the late 1940s and 1950s. This well-written contribution—a winner of the Brewer Prize for outstanding work on the history of Christianity—is still a must-read for anyone seeking to understand what I like to refer to as America’s “Third Great Awakening” during the early years of the Cold War.² The prose and pace of the book are excellent, and the outline is easy to follow. It argues that religion functioned as both a cause and an instrument in the developing stages of the post-war conflict. Inboden successfully defends his thesis by demonstrating the centrality of religious rhetoric and belief in both the private and public spheres of post-war America.

Part one of the book surveys American Protestantism and its relationship to U.S. foreign affairs between 1945–60. First, it examines the efforts of the Protestant Liberal establishment, between 1945–52, to present a unified vision for American foreign policy. Though the leaders of the various mainline denominations wielded significant influence, they found themselves vacillating between a utopian vision of the future on the one hand, and a more realistic outlook on the other. All of them agreed that the United States had an important role to play in the post-war world. Yet they disagreed on how to define that role. Between 1953–60, Protestant leaders became even more divided over how to respond to Soviet Communism. Former Protestant missionaries, working with the government to normalize U.S.-China relations, highlight this ongoing disunity. They differed on whom the United States should support once Mao came to power. One side was dogmatically opposed to communism and wanted to back Chiang Kai-shek’s exiled Nationalists in Taiwan. The other was more sympathetic toward communism and preferred recognition of the Chinese Communist Party. When confronted with Eisenhower’s exhortation for Protestants, Jews, and Catholics to come together in the spiritual conflict against the Kremlin, many mainline Protestant leaders were either unable or unwilling to look past their historical differences.

The second part of the book covers the same time period (1945–60) and demonstrates the lengths to which Truman and Eisenhower went to build a religious coalition to combat communism. They found many American politicians, public intellectuals, and religious figures who were more than willing to unite under a common spiritual banner. Truman, for example, appointed Myron Taylor as his envoy to the Vatican, who worked to establish a trans-Atlantic religious coalition with Pope Pius XII and ultimately to keep the Italian Communist Party from gaining national power in 1948. Ultimately, though many of Truman’s other efforts were unsuccessful, his emphasis on the religious factor laid much of the groundwork upon which the Eisenhower administration would later capitalize. Fully intent on re-establishing a moral foundation for American society, and facing the disintegration of Protestant Liberal unity, Eisenhower founded his own public government religious organizations which were focused on ecumenism and direct ideological confrontation with atheistic communism. The result was a religious propaganda effort on an industrial scale which sought to bolster “Judeo-Christian” morality and spirituality both at home and abroad. He began all his cabinet meetings with prayer, he oversaw the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and he instituted “In God We Trust” as the official motto of the United States.

Religion and American Foreign Policy is an important contribution, which demonstrates the complicated relationship Americans have with religion. Inboden convincingly argues that religion was one of the central factors which U.S. elites highlighted when contrasting their intellectual system with the Soviets. The examination of Protestant Liberalism’s fragmentation is particularly helpful for understanding Eisenhower’s commandeering of the religious crusade against communism. The book’s conclusions also raise questions regarding the secularization thesis which was prominent in the twentieth century. Faced with the communist threat, Inboden demonstrates that Americans quickly reverted to spirituality and theistic religion as both a defensive shield and an offensive weapon. Ultimately, this volume is required reading for anyone interested in the relationship between state and religion in the twentieth century. The bibliography provides a wealth of related resources, and since its release, the book is still relied upon heavily by scholars of diplomatic history and American religion. It is not an overstatement to call this work groundbreaking.

Since the publication of Religion and American Foreign Policy, Other historians have continued to examine the curious surge of religious fervor in the public sphere during the 1950s. They are generally agreed that, although Eisenhower’s civil religion failed to endure (it had largely died out by 1960), its effects are still felt today in American society. One of the enduring consequences of the government’s use of religion as a weapon against communism is the narrative that America has always been a Christian nation. We believe this in large part because Truman, Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and many other public leaders consistently held up America’s belief in God as that which set it apart from the godless Muscovites in the Kremlin. Scholars remind us that there were many critics of the Third Great Awakening as it was in full swing. Many Americans felt pressured to affirm belief in a “higher power” because to admit doubt or agnosticism would seem unpatriotic. Historians also note that Protestants at the highest echelons of government (Truman, Eisenhower, Dulles, etc.) promoted a Christianity which was incredibly shallow. According to the Eisenhower administration, faith in God necessarily resulted in freedom, democracy, equality under the law, property ownership, and a host of other American ideals. In other words, we believe in democracy, so we also naturally believe in God. One public intellectual in the 1950s said that democracy was nothing more than faith in the American way of life.

William Inboden’s book provides a helpful window into the past, but it may also help us think wisely about the validity of modern Christian nationalists’ vision for the future. Advocates of the movement desire a broad, non-ecclesiastical Christianity which will rule the public sphere. They claim this will create an environment which will be inclusive for Jews and Catholics, and will serve to confront godless secularism. It will also reinvent our society, they assure us, so that the societal benefits which naturally flow out of Christianity will again flourish. The history of America’s Third Great Awakening, however, demonstrates that this has been tried before. As Inboden shows us, we have already witnessed the U.S. Government’s attempts to direct and engineer a wide-spread revival of American spirituality in the 1950s with dubious results. If nothing else, Religion and American Foreign Policy demonstrates that there is nothing new under the sun.

Notes

1. Jon Brown, “Doug Wilson, Al Mohler discuss Christian nationalism at conservative conference,” Christian Post, July 11, 2024.
2. Other books dealing with American religion and the early Cold War are: Dianne Kirby, “Religion and the Cold War: An Introduction,” in Religion and the Cold War, ed. Dianne Kirby (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); T. Jeremy Gunn, Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion (Westport: Praeger, 2008); Jonathan P. Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Anchor, 2012); Carl R. Weinberg, Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021); James D. Strasburg, God’s Marshall Plan: American Protestants and the Struggle for the Soul of Europe (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2021).

William Indobden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

©Paul Fine. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• Paul Fine

  

  Paul C. Fine is pursuing a DPhil in the history of modern theology at Oxford University (Wolfson College) where he focuses on the development of American civil religion during the early Cold War. He previously served in the United States Marine Corps and as a contractor for the US Government. Paul holds an MA in Historical Theology from Westminster Seminary California and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.

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