Divinely Sanctioned
The Anglo-American Cold War Alliance and the Defence of Western Civilization and Christianity, 1945–48
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10074573 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dianne Kirby (University of Ulster at Jordanstown, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 385-412 |
| Publication date | 2000-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/002200940003500304 |
| OpenAlex | W2119718230 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
In the rhetoric of the Cold War, Christianity became a means of distinguishing between socialism and communism, of dramatizing and publicizing the Soviet regime as an evil power and the Cold War as a Manichean conflict and of consolidating the western alliance, the ‘special relationship’ in particular. Harry Truman's increasing tendency, and that of his administration, to view opposition to the Soviet Union from an ideological perspective is the key to understanding Ernest Bevin's now well-known series of papers to the Cabinet, beginning with ‘The First Aim of British Foreign Policy’ in early January 1948 and ending with ‘The Threat to Western Civilisation’ in early March, which outlined his ‘spiritual concept of Western Union’ and officially established IRD (Information Research Department). It is also a means of gaining insight into the tacit understandings and nuanced relationship that existed between the USA and Britain in the immediate postwar period in the joint implementation of containment. This article explores Bevin's plan for ‘a sort of spiritual federation of the West’, intended to overcome potential opposition in the USA from Labour backbenchers and from within the Cabinet to closer Anglo-American relations, to suggest that the only real importance Bevin attached to ideological aspects was as a way to consolidate Anglo-American relations. His actions contributed to an intensification of the Cold War, the transformation of Christian leaders into Cold War warriors and the transmogrification of Christianity into a politicized doctrine
Alliance · Christianity · Communism · Doctrine · Ideology · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Western culture · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies
Missionary Primitivism and Chinese Modernity
Christian co-operation and the ecumenical ideal in the 1930s and 1940s
The Watch Tower Society and the End of the Cold War
The Cambridge History of Christianity
Whose occident? Methodological parochialism in research on the West
Bridging the Gap between the Sacred and the Secular in the History of American Foreign Relations
Western Union, “Spiritual Union,” and European Integration, 1948–1951
Judeo-Christian democracy and the Transatlantic Right
Of Catholics, Commies, and the Anti-Christ
Reflecting on the ‘cultural turn’
Anglo-American relations and the religious cold war
The meaning of Madingley
John Foster Dulles
Britain, Europe and Christendom in Mid-Twentieth-Century British Christian Thought
The state as citizen
Nihilism and the Cold War
The Church of Scotland's Special Commission on Communism, 1949–1954
Christian co-operation and the ecumenical ideal in the 1930s and 1940s
The high wire act
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,76 |
| Citation span | 2001 - 2022 (22) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 19 |