Abstract
Religion has not been given serious consideration in examining Harry S Truman's conduct of the Cold War, yet throughout his administration the President sought to construct an international anti-communist religious front. This article examines Truman's approach to the World Council of Churches in Formation in 1948 as a means of examining a currently contentious area in Cold War historiography, the role and significance of religion. Marxist atheism provided a window of vulnerability, the Achilles' heel of communism from the West's religio-political perspective. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that Christianity was appropriated by Western propagandists and policy-makers for their anti-communist arsenal. Ironically, however, Truman's Cold War scheme was essentially defeated by the much older religious cold war between Catholic and Protestant. Nonetheless, Truman's intervention in the religious realm had profound repercussions for ecclesiastical relations and also on the course and nature of the burgeoning Cold War.
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