The Ecumenical Spirit.

The 1940s brought an unprecedented lessening of tensions between faiths and cooperation between denominations. A spirit of ecumenism, or cooperation between churches, dominated. This new spirit had a variety of sources, including the impact of the Holocaust, the development of Catholic modernism, wartime cooperation between British and American churches, and the suburbanization of churches. At the popular level the new spirit sought to do away with longstanding religious animosities, especially between Catholics and Jews and between Protestants and Catholics. The ecumenical spirit also created new organizational cooperation between denominations, especially in charity work, missionary activities, and political programs. These activities found expression in the creation of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and would result in the creation of a formal ecumenical body, the National Council of Churches, in 1950. By the end of the decade the...