WWII’s Spiritual Legacies

Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called Nazism the first “great revolution” against Christendom. (Arguably the French and Bolshevik Revolutions were predecessors.) For this reason, among others, he founded the journal Christianity & Crisis in early 1941 to rally American Protestant opinion towards intervention against the Axis powers, and to reject their post WWI isolationism and pacifism, which he called a “cult of peace.”

Niebuhr, the former pacifist, saw what Paul Miller describes, which was that “World War II started when preexisting national grievances met economic catastrophe, which in turn led to ideological radicalization, the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism, and eventually international aggression.” These ideological and military aggressions were, Miller rightly notes, “all enabled by the vacuum of global leadership by liberal powers.” Miller is understandably concerned that similar conditions exist today, potentially leading to WWII’s sequel. Only “drastic action” by today’s liberal powers will avert calamity’s replication.

(Read article here.)