Christianity and Crisis

Toward the end of World War II, Americans contemplated the possibility of “world government” to prevent another catastrophe, especially after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan.

In 1946, Reinhold Niebuhr visited an evangelical church for an Easter worship service in a movie theater. He did not entirely enjoy the experience. Here are his reflections.

Browsing among the books, articles, and editorials of the past is instructive and exceedingly disturbing. One discovers the same concerns and anxieties as is everywhere apparent among thoughtful people now. Many paragraphs or sentences are as applicable today as they were then.

If we are to take a constructive part in world politics our leaders cannot assume that religious questions are unimportant.

In this article originally published by Christianity and Crisis on March 18, 1946, Charles W. Gilkey warns Americans not to worry that helping people abroad will make them “suckers.”

“A Christian knows, or ought to know, that an adequate Christian political ethic is not established merely by conceiving the most ideal possible solution for a political problem. He must, in all humility, deal with the realities of human nature, as well as the ideal possibilities.”

Published in Christianity and Crisis 75 years ago on March 18, 1946, the speech offers the future Secretary of State Dulles’ insights and recommendations for how the United States should utilize the newly established United Nations. Readers today can learn from how the great statesman saw the world as it dragged itself out of the ruins of a total war.

It is not our task, fellow churchmen, to offer programs for the ordering of human life today. It is our function to present to those concerned with the secular order those theological presuppositions which are the indispensable basis of national and international health.

Repentance, like faith, must be individual.