Divinely Sanctioned: The Anglo-American Cold War Alliance and the Defence of Western Civilization and Christianity, 1945–48

Abstract

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.