Religion and the Cold War (review)

Dianne Kirby, lecturer in the School of History and International Affairs at the University of Ulster, has edited an interesting volume of thirteen essays, twelve of which were originally presented at a conference held at the same university in April, 2000. Her fundamental tenet, vigorously defended in her introductory essay and echoed in each of the subsequent papers, is that religion must be recognized by scholars "not only as a vital ingredient essential for a full understanding of the Cold War, but also as a means of bringing fresh new perspectives into Cold War scholarship" (p. xiii). Decrying the absence of this consideration in so much of the historiography produced by the decidedly secularized Academy, she has helped to remedy the situation through this contribution, which should be of interest to scholars of the period.

The papers included are focused almost entirely within a North Atlantic and European perspective. With a heavy emphasis on the Catholic Church, the volume includes some consideration of Orthodox and Protestant themes and issues. The volume could well be entitled "Christianity and the Cold War in Europe and North America." But I do not mean to suggest that the material is too limited or parochial. Rather, it suggests that the volume is but a beginning to a study of the Cold War that includes the reality of religious perspectives and beliefs as motives and causes of individual and collective decisions and actions in human history. Studies that consider religion and religious belief along with other causes and effects of the Cold War in Latin America, for example, while not entirely absent, are rare. So too, it seems, are studies which consider such a perspective with regard to the Islamic world. It might be hoped that the conference which led to this volume would spawn others that would be even more inclusive.

With regard to the Russian Orthodox Church, Anna Dickenson of the University of Birmingham argues that the wartime concessions by the USSR, necessitated by the state's need to survive, in the end enabled the long-term survival of the Church. The ironical posture of Stalin, who used a loyal Orthodox patriarchate in order to eliminate underground churches and thus to destroy religious opposition to the regime, has, of course, left consequences that have outlived the Cold War. There is some further consideration of the Soviet State in the article on cinematic propaganda in the 1950's by Tony Shaw of the University of Hertfordshire. Shaw compares the approach to religious themes in the USSR with those found in British and American films. He claims that these presentations were very important in the formation of popular conceptions of the Cold War.

Specifically Protestant perspectives and themes are taken up by Matthew D. Hockenos of Skidmore College, Hartmut Lehmann, the Director of the Max-Plank-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen, and Ian Jones of the University of Sheffield. Hockenos discusses in some detail the process by which the Confessing Church's Council of Brethren attempted to come to grips with Lutheran collaboration with the Nazi regime. The political influence of the Darmstadt statement (1947), calling for a socially activist church, is also highlighted. Lehmann creatively presents the shift in ideology of the German Democratic Republic, which led to dramatic rehabilitation of the image of Martin Luther and the relativizing of the image of Thomas Münster. In this context, he has interesting observations to make with regard to the demise of Marxist historical scholarship in the 1970's. Jones explores local Anglican responses to the East-West conflict in postwar England.

Catholicism and political history are studied in the essays by Frank J. Coppa, professor of history at St. John's University, Peter C. Kent of the University of New Brunswick, John Pollard, Charles R. Gallagher, S.J., of the College of the Holy Cross, and Paul Hainsworth of the University of Ulster. Coppa and Kent reach different conclusions with regard to the effectiveness...