From the Archives of Christianity & Crisis Magazine: October 13, 1947.

Shortly after he appeared on the cover of Time, English historian Arnold Toynbee wrote an essay about how Christians should view history.

In the following article from 75 years ago, Howard V. Yergin warned Americans about the emerging Italian constitution that would effectively privilege Catholics and treat religious minorities less favorably.

The economic aid which is required could not be a matter of pure generosity. Nations as nations are incapable of such generosity.

“The people of Munich were informed by proclamation of the city administration that the requisition of private homes for army housing was to be carried through, and to a greater extent than had been hitherto feared.”

Man is troubled—more troubled than at any previous time in the brief sojourn of his kind on this planet. Wars, revolutions and social convulsions all indicate the depth of his disquiet. He is troubled because he does not know, and he wants to know, the meaning of his own life.

After traveling through Europe in 1947—including to Scotland, Amsterdam, and Switzerland—Reinhold Niebuhr wrote some reflections, including on state churches, the Truman Doctrine, Christian political parties, and more.

Recognizing the place for a genuine religious hope born of faith and for an enthusiasm for realization of social and ethical gains in any historical situation, Christianity will nevertheless, when true to itself, set its face against utopianism or popular brands of optimism.

At the end of Reinhold Niebuhr’s travels across Western Europe in 1947, he spent a week at the Ecumenical Institute, a facility near Geneva. He was hopeful of how this project would bless the church life of the world, and he offered observations about discussions there about communism, church-state relations, Christian political parties, and more.

Now what is here symbolized has been the most fundamental idea in our American democracy. Ours is a government by discussion.