The twentieth century has been the age of ever expanding technocracy, a feature which neither that century's passing nor the shift from a modernist paradigm to postmodernity has diminished. Rather, the drift towards rule by technocrats, allegedly impartial souls, undriven by dogma and supposedly free of the partisan concerns that motivate the rest of us, has intensified. Neither has religious life, avowedly the realm of the spirit and private communion with God, been free of this propensity. Instead, the twentieth century witnessed the rise of the ecumenical movement, an attempt to unify the disparate churches on a global basis - a sort of ecclesiastical counterpart to the League of Nations and, later, the U.N.. Indeed, as this book shows, churchly pressure played a role in the birth of the U.N. itself.
     Perhaps to the embarrassment of conservative Christians today, the ecumenical enterprise began its public career in largely evangelical soil, at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910. But its subsequent history was driven, not by a missionary passion to convert eternal souls, nor by theology or ideology, nor even by great leaders. It was advanced rather by committees, agreements and conferences. Its theology was designedly minimalist, for its underlying conviction was that the values of management and omnicompetent government were one with those of the Sermon on the Mount; the former was but the latter writ large and transposed into the public arena.
     The ironical conclusion was that the age that was in full retreat from Christian orthodoxy and supernaturalism witnessed a paradoxical confidence that the Kingdom of God - established, of course, by human management skills - was just around the corner.
     Dr. Erdmann, in Building the Kingdom of God on Earth, ably traces the story from 1919 to 1945. The results are illuminating. Scrutinising the documentary evidence (including a very large amount of private correspondence) in impressive detail, he demonstrates how key, highly placed individuals in both Britain and America attempted to harness the churches for a secular technocratic programme to build a new world order - and ultimately a world government - that would rest upon the minimalist theology of a vague Christian ethic. The easy assumptions inherent in such aspirations, namely the superiority of 'Western Christian civilisation' and the ability of the West to impose its will upon the non West, are unlikely to recommend themselves today, even to so conservative a commentator as S. P. Huntington - or, for that matter, to Martin Erdmann or myself.
     Nevertheless, the consequences of the story told here live on, both in the ongoing technocratic trajectory as a whole and in the ecumenical movement. As these pages show, the individuals like John Foster Dulles who come together to make 'big plans' for us lesser mortals are not dispassionately benevolent intelligences. Like all people, they are affected by their peer group: that is, by one another. Beginning by representing their churches to the various ecumenical bodies, they swiftly moved to its reverse; that is, a position of representing ecumenism (i.e. their technocratic peers) to the churches to which they still (nominally) belonged.
     It was a privilege to be involved in the long, arduous process of seeing this writing come to fruition in its initial form as a doctoral thesis, and is a delight to see it now published for a wider readership. It is devoutly to be hoped that it will secure the attention - and provoke the debate - which so important a topic and study demands.