When World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, most Americans believed in staying out of the conflict, not knowing that the United States would be pulled into it two years later. Many in religious communities especially clung to the pacifism fostered after the end of World War I. For instance, the Rev. Dr. George A. Buttrick, president of the Federal Council of Churches, said in 1939, "We [Americans] must be neutral from high and sacrificial motives — not for physical safety, not in an attempt to maintain an impossible isolation from world problems, assuredly not for commercial gain, but rather because we know war is futile and because we are eager through reconciliation to build a kindlier world." Ironically, American involvement in the war in the early 1940s would prove the decisive factor in its end.

Source...