Like many, Miller had been disillusioned by US failure to support a Wilsonian peace following World War I. He spent most of the 1920s in Europe as a Rhodes scholar and student Christian leader, where he witnessed firsthand the resurgence of nationalism in the forms of Soviet Russian isolationism, German and Italian Fascism, and fears concerning the “Americanization of Europe.” In fact, Miller penned one of the original analyses of Americanization in hopes of calming new nation-state rivalries. When he took over the Chairmanship of Protestantism’s most global network, the World’s Student Christian Federation (WSCF), in 1928, Miller began to advocate for world Protestant unity (or “ecumenism”) as a form of countervailing power politics, or what he called “counter-pressure.” Miller held out ecumenism as a counter-totalitarian solution—a “higher form of collectivism”—in response to the collapse of liberal international order during the Great Depression. At the same time, as a Virginia politician, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) activist, and outspoken World War II pro-interventionist, Miller kept faith that American power could aid the building of Christian World Community.
Miller thus offers a unique window into the parallel progress of transnational religion and superpower hegemony. He demonstrates the Christian roots of the CFR’s “realistic Wilsonianism.” He furthermore suggests how ecumenical Protestants pioneered a new politics of space and place, called today “glocalization,” while deliberately trying to co-opt Roman Catholic universalism.