Henry Wallace

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.

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.

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

“The resistance to Russian expansion in Europe is right. The spectacle of American progressives supporting Wallace in opposing that resistance brings dismay to most European democrats.”

Keynoting a “Beat Dewey” rally at Madison Square Garden on September 12, 1946, Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace warned Americans against the Truman administration’s “get tough with Russia” policy. Reinhold Niebuhr responded.

The foreign policies of Teddy Roosevelt and his distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt represent an intersection between two different Protestant worldviews.