Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960

In volume three of this outstanding series on the history of religion in the modern United States, Marty turns a critical eye to the behavior of Christian churches during WWII. He points to the major Christian churches' failure to address significant moral issues arising from the war: the defense of Jews and other refugees, the internment of Japanese civilians, racial segregation, the military tactic of saturation bombing of civilians, and the use of the atomic bomb. Immediately after the war, Protestant leaders returned to their inglorious preoccupation with the threat to religious freedom posed by Roman Catholicism. Only with the social prosperity of the late 1950s did American religious life take on a more forgiving role that embraced ecumenism.