Isolationism

Christian clergymen of today typically prefer to disparage power and prestige as demonic ensnarements that Jesus shunned when offered. But Jesus exemplifies not the rejection of power per se but rather a godly deployment of it.

In this convicting article, originally published in Christianity and Crisis on March 8, 1943, Editor Howard C. Robbins decries isolationism as the ideology of less prosperous and influential times. He exhorts the United States to assume the responsibility demanded of a large nation-state and work to “end international anarchy.” Evoking the spirit of George Washington’s Farewell Address, Robbins pleads the United States to embrace a central role in international politics. Furthermore, he implores the American public to follow in Washington’s footsteps by shedding partisan politics.

The story of Christmas is a story of hope realized. God came to earth as a man in the person of Jesus the Christ, thus confirming the prophecy delivered to Eve, the promise given to Abraham, the kingdom foretold to David. And so, in that spirit, says Edward L. Parsons in this piece, Christians living through the Second World War should put their faith into action to help bring peace to the world. With the Prince of Peace as their savior and model, Christians can restore order and bring justice to their fellow image-bearers.

Pat Buchanan derides internationalists as dreamers disregarding his supposedly sensible neo-isolationist realism but advocates a nearly Utopian perspective.

This provocative article written by Donald H. Stewart in the heat of World War II calls on the American Church to guide America toward a responsible patriotism which jettisons hatred and self-righteous aggrandizement while remembering “judgment belongeth unto God.”

This article about the viewpoints of Christians & the Church in response to World War II was originally published in Christianity & Crisis on June 15, 1942.

On May 18, 1942, the Editors of Christianity & Crisis sought fit to postulate and navigate what the world would look like with a victory against the Axis Powers. In this article, Eduard Heimann masterfully articulates the challenges and requirements that the Allied forces would face in attempting to reorganize and rebuild Europe.

President Obama’s foreign policy would have been more understandable if he had never pretended to care, if he hadn’t talked like Vaclav Havel and then acted like Henry Kissinger.

President Franklin Roosevelt called the Japanese surprise attack on December 7 “a date which will live in infamy.” Perhaps an even greater infamy was the vacuous form of liberalism that denied the existence of radical evil, making it almost incapable of distinguishing between flawed democracies and fascist barbarism.