Mark Melton

From 1945 to 1947 as the United States and Soviet Union moved toward the Cold War, Christian realists writing for Reinhold Niebuhr’s journal, Christianity and Crisis, responded to global dilemmas. Here are five impressions of those articles, along with lessons for today.

The BBC should bring back the skepticism of pacifism that Doctor Who used to have.

George Marshall’s attempt to create peace between the Chinese nationalists and communists failed. Christian realists in 1947 considered why.

During an address to the US Congress on March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman called for military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece to counter communist threats. This began the Truman Doctrine, and Christian realists responded a month later.

In “Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter,” Timothy Keller reflects on how and why the secular hope of progress has failed, and he instead offers the Christian reason for hope.

Once again, public opinion polls have disappointed isolationists and others who want the United States to have a minimalist foreign policy. Almost overnight, a large swath of America now wants to counter Russia, and elected officials who want to keep their jobs have responded.

We are told that a policy of firmness must inevitably lead to war, while conciliation could guarantee peace. In the Nazi days this was called appeasement.

The US should continue to use public diplomacy so that the world does not get distracted and knows that Russia is the aggressor. But Washington must also be prepared with sanctions and other tools in case these efforts fail.

This remembrance helps develop a confident, enduring Christian hope that is more than wishful thinking and leads to real-world action.

We are in a battle with despair these days. One cannot but regret interpretations which weigh the struggle on the side of defeat, especially when one’s own judgment is that such interpretations leave out great areas of fact which give one the right to cherish hope.