Markku Ruotsila – Författare

For most of his sixty-year career, the Reverend Carl McIntire was at the center of controversy. The best known and most influential of the fundamentalist radio broadcasters and anticommunists of the Cold War era, his many enemies depicted him as a dangerous far rightist, a racist, or a "McCarthyite" opportunist engaged in red-baiting for personal profit. Despised and hounded by liberals, revered by fundamentalists, and distrusted by the center, he became a lightning rod in the early American culture wars. Markku Ruotsila's Fighting Fundamentalist, the first scholarly biography of McIntire, peels off the accumulated layers of caricature and makes a case for restoring McIntire to his place as one of the most consequential religious leaders in the twentieth-century United States. The book traces McIntire's life from his early twentieth-century childhood in Oklahoma to his death in 2002. From his discipleship under J. Gresham Machen during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, through his fifty-year pastorate in Collingswood, NJ, and his presidency of the International Council of Christian Churches, McIntire--Ruotsila shows--stands out as the most important fundamentalist of his time. Based on exhaustive research in fifty-two archival collections--including the recently opened collection of the Carl McIntire papers and never-before seen FBI files--Ruotsila looks beyond the McIntire of legend. Instead, Ruostila argues, McIntire was a serious theological, political, and economic combatant, a tireless organizer who pioneered the public theologies, inter-faith alliances, and political methods that would give birth to the Christian Right. The moral values agenda of the 1970s and after would not have existed without the anti-communist and ant-New Deal activism that McIntire inaugurated in the 1930s.

This book examines the intertwined dynamics of Churchill's anticommunist and geopolitical thought. It looks at the ways in which he attempted to use Finland as both tool and ally in the anticommunist projects of the twentieth century. Finland appeared a staunch ally in Churchill's recurring efforts to destroy or negate international communism, but the broader concerns of geopolitics and Great Power diplomacy complicated what might have been a simple task of teaming up with like-minded Finns. The resulting tensions are explored and explained in this study of comparative anticommunism based on Churchill's private papers and on additional British, Finnish and American documents.

This book examines the intertwined dynamics of Churchill's anticommunist and geopolitical thought. It looks at the ways in which he attempted to use Finland as both tool and ally in the anticommunist projects of the twentieth century. Finland appeared a staunch ally in Churchill's recurring efforts to destroy or negate international communism, but the broader concerns of geopolitics and Great Power diplomacy complicated what might have been a simple task of teaming up with like-minded Finns. The resulting tensions are explored and explained in this study of comparative anticommunism based on Churchill's private papers and on additional British, Finnish and American documents.

This work examines in a comparative historical way the socialist, liberal and conservative strands of Anglo-American anticommunist thought before the Cold War. In so doing, this book provides us with an intellectual pre-history of Cold War attitudes and policy positions.

This work examines in a comparative historical way the socialist, liberal and conservative strands of Anglo-American anticommunist thought before the Cold War. In so doing, this book provides us with an intellectual pre-history of Cold War attitudes and policy positions.

The roots of conservative Christian skepticism of international politics run deep. In this original work, Markku Ruotsila artfully unearths the historical and theological origins of evangelical Christian thought on modern-day international organizations and U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the fierce debates over the first truly international body - the League of Nations.After describing the rise of the Social Gospel movement that played a vital, foundational role in the movement toward a League of Nations, "The Origins of Christian Anti-Internationalism" examines the arguments and tactics that the most influential confessional Christian congregations in the United States - dispensational millenialists, Calvinists, Lutherans, and, to a lesser extent, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Christian Restorationists - used to undermine domestic support for the proposed international body. Ruotsila recounts how these groups learned to co-opt less religious-minded politicians and organizations that were likewise opposed to the very concept of international multilateralism.In closely analyzing how the evangelical movement successfully harnessed political activism to sway U.S. foreign policy, he traces a direct path from the successful battle against the League to the fundamentalist-modernist clashes of the 1920s and the present-day debate over America's role in the world.This exploration of why the United States ultimately rejected the League of Nations offers a lucid interpretation of the significant role that religion plays in U.S. policymaking both at home and abroad. Ruotsila's analysis will be of interest to scholars and practitioners of theology, religious studies, religion and politics, international relations, domestic policy, and U.S. and world history.