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History 20th Century

For God and Globe

Christian Internationalism in the United States between the Great War and the Cold War

by (author) Michael G. Thompson

Publisher
Cornell University Press
Initial publish date
Nov 2015
Category
20th Century, Religion, Politics & State, History & Theory
Recommended Age
18
Recommended Grade
12
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780801452727
    Publish Date
    Nov 2015
    List Price
    $71.95

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Description

For God and Globe recovers the history of an important yet largely forgotten intellectual movement in interwar America. Michael G. Thompson explores the way radical-left and ecumenical Protestant internationalists articulated new understandings of the ethics of international relations between the 1920s and the 1940s. Missionary leaders such as Sherwood Eddy and journalists such as Kirby Page, as well as realist theologians including Reinhold Niebuhr, developed new kinds of religious enterprises devoted to producing knowledge on international relations for public consumption. For God and Globe centers on the excavation of two such efforts?the leading left-wing Protestant interwar periodical, The World Tomorrow, and the landmark Oxford 1937 ecumenical world conference. Thompson charts the simultaneous peak and decline of the movement in John Foster Dulles's ambitious efforts to link Christian internationalism to the cause of international organization after World War II.

Concerned with far more than foreign policy, Christian internationalists developed critiques of racism, imperialism, and nationalism in world affairs. They rejected exceptionalist frameworks and eschewed the dominant "Christian nation" imaginary as a lens through which to view U.S. foreign relations. In the intellectual history of religion and American foreign relations, Protestantism most commonly appears as an ideological ancillary to expansionism and nationalism. For God and Globe challenges this account by recovering a movement that held Christian universalism to be a check against nationalism rather than a boon to it.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Michael G. Thompson is Research Associate and Adjunct Lecturer at the United States Studies Centre of the University of Sydney.

Editorial Reviews

For God and the Globe is a careful study of another yet-unexplored period of the role of religion in American life. It sets a high standard as a defining work for the interwar ecumenical movement.

The American Historical Review