James D Strasburg

This article examines the contested nature of American efforts to expand America’s twentieth century notion of tri-faith idealism—the unity of the three monotheistic faiths of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism—to include Muslims both at home and abroad. It does so through a contextual, historical study of the construction and dedication of the Islamic Center of Washington. The construction of the Islamic Center ultimately proved a lightning rod that electrified competing wings of Protestant Christian nationalism within in the United States—namely “inclusivist ecumenists” and “exclusivist populists.”

'God's Marshall Plan' explores the origins of Christian nationalism and Christian globalism-two competing theologies of global engagement-in the American Protestant encounter with twentieth-century Europe. It recovers the story of the American Protestants who crossed the Atlantic in an era of world war, tracked the rise of totalitarian dictators, mobilized against the Axis powers, and began to identify Europe as a continent in need of saving.

Emphasizing the agency of indigenous actors in mission, they affirmed German Protestant leaders were well-positioned to restore their place in ecumenical Christianity following the war. [...]the German-American Protestant exchange loses some of its historical complexity, and the agency of German Protestants in these partnerships is diminished. For historians of religion and mission, Enns's description of missional divergence within Protestantism helps explain in part how evangelical Protestants in both the United States and West Germany increased their share of the religious marketplace in the face of secularization, while ecumenical Protestants slid further into post-Protestant secularism.

In Then They Came for Me, historian Matthew Hockenos explores this broader transformation in Niemöller's life, illustrating in captivating detail how this German pastor left behind the nationalism and militarism that had led him to support Hitler and instead "beat swords into plowshares" as he became one of the most passionate promoters of peace and justice in the Cold War. [...]Hockenos uncovers new material on how Americans perceived Niemöller both before and after the Second World War. Through portraying his postwar transformation, it also captures "the challenges and limits" of one Protestant pastor's efforts to atone for his mistakes and pursue a prophetic path of peace and reconciliation.