The Roots of the Religious Cold War: Pre-Cold War Factors

Abstract

The article is an examination of the roots of the amalgam of complex forces that informed the ‘religious cold war’. It looks at the near and the more distant past. Naturally this includes consideration of the interwar years and those of the Second World War. It also means addressing divisions in Christianity that can be traced back to the end of the third century, to the official split of 1054 between Catholic and Orthodox, the impact of the Crusades and the entrenched hostility that followed the fifty-seven years imposition on Constantinople of a Latin Patriarch. It surveys the rise of significant forces that were to contribute to, as well as consolidate and strengthen, the religious cold war: civil religion, Christian fundamentalism and the Religious Right. The article examines both western and eastern mobilization of national religious resources for political purposes.

Keywords

• religious cold war
• Christendom
• communism
• East-West divide
• civil religion
• Christian fundamentalism
• American foreign policy
• the Vatican
• ecumenical movement