God’s Marshall Plan

• Main Author: Strasburg, James D.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2021
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516447.003.0008

This chapter examines how ecumenical American Protestants sought to come to Europe’s “spiritual aid” through carrying out a “Marshall Plan for the Churches.” By the summer of 1947, these Protestant ecumenists were preparing to rebuild European churches, distribute material aid across the continent, and promote theological exchange across the Atlantic. All the while, they also sought to strengthen the standing of democracy and capitalism in Europe and, in particular, to bolster European spiritual defenses against communism. While German and European Protestants welcomed ecumenical aid, they also protested the Cold War interests of the United States. In particular, they challenged American ecumenists for contributing to the spread of what they deemed a new kind of American imperial order in the world. In response, a growing number of Europeans called on ecumenical Protestants across the North Atlantic to become a “third way” spiritual force between American democracy and Soviet communism.