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CHRISTIANS KILLING CHRISTIANS
The Christian Century
June 20 2014
Jun 20, 2014 by Jonathan H. Ebel
In this centennial of the beginning of the Great War, citizens,
scholars, artists, and politicians will set aside time, measure out
words, and use painting, sculpture, and film to recall the four years
of ferocious violence that shaped the modern world. This is both good
and important.
It is good because the Great War has too long been
overshadowed--especially in the United States--by the still greater
war that came along two decades later. It is important because the
lessons of the Great War are both more enduring and more applicable
to our current religio-political moment than those that emerged from
the mid-century struggle against expansionist totalitarianisms.
For many, the lessons of the Great War revolve around accidents of
history and their ability to warp the noblest of intentions. For
others these lessons pertain to the interconnectedness of "progress"
and barbarity. Still others see the Great War as a case study in
the waste that governments and industry are willing to generate in
pursuit of power and wealth.
In recent years more scholars have begun to examine the Great War
for lessons about religion and war. The result has been a small
but fascinating collection of works on the religious cultures of
combatant nations as they were expressed by politicians, civilian
clergy, chaplains, and military personnel. For the most part,
these works have focused on single nations, weaving together the
religious, the social, and the military in meaningful but bounded
studies--monographs in the truest sense.
Philip Jenkins builds upon this specialized historiography as it
treats the Great War as a global religious conflict. His vividly
written synthesis be-longs at the top of reading lists on the conflict.
Not only does Jenkins provide detailed accounts of interactions between
religion and militarism, religion and combat, and religion and trauma
on all sides of the war, he also demonstrates that the world torn
apart by the Great War was a world of many shared religious concerns
and vocabularies, a world that needed the extreme fission that religion
accomplishes in order to launch and sustain such a brutal conflict.
With the balance and perspective of an experienced historian, Jenkins
presents and interprets the religious cultures of the warring nations
alongside each other, building as convincing an argument as I have
yet seen for the deep importance of religion at all levels and in
all phases of the war.
"Christian leaders," he writes, "gave an absolute religious
underpinning to warfare conducted by states that were seen as executing
the will of God." But this sacralization was something more than the
eager pronouncements of self-important or sycophantic divines. It
emerged from and to a large extent harmonized with "religious language
and assumptions [that] were omnipresent, . . .
part of the air people breathed."
Popular tales of angels and ghosts fighting alongside soldiers,
reflections on the workings of fate and chance, and stories equating
the suffering, dying soldier with Christ emerged on both sides of
the Western Front and on most European and American home fronts,
demonstrating a widespread predisposition to view and experience
the war as more than an earthly endeavor. The words of one German
soldier fighting at Verdun could well have been written by a soldier
or civilian on the other side of the war: "Here we have war, war in
its most appalling form, and in our distress we realize the nearness
of God."
Jenkins also moves the narrative beyond the trenches of the Western
Front to the far reaches of the warring empires to demonstrate that the
religious effects of the conflict--and attempts to discern religious
meaning in it--extended well beyond Europe and what was once called
Christendom. This broad approach bears good fruit as he weaves into
the narrative a wide range of actors, actions, and alliances and
argues for the global religious consequences of the Great War.
"When elites might have become secular," Jenkins writes, "ordinary
people tended to maintain their faiths against those of their rulers,
whether in Ireland, India, or Armenia, and religious identifications
became all the stronger in times of conflict." Though the heart of his
story is still the war on the Western front, the religious dynamics
of the Eastern front, the communist war against the Russian Orthodox
Church, the Armenian genocide, struggles among religious actors in
India, Africa, and Singapore, and postwar religious nationalisms all
find their way into his narrative in meaningful ways. These events,
and the identities that shaped and were shaped by them, did not vanish
into history when the Allies and Germany signed a ceasefire agreement
at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918.
As with any work of historical synthesis so broad in scope, The Great
and Holy War gives up something in nuance and specificity to gain what
it does in breadth. But other than a few overstretched comparisons
to current religious militarisms, the trade seems well worth it.
Jenkins's in-text citations and thorough notes will lead the interested
reader to more than enough specificity. (For instance, the archives
of the Christian Century offer example after example of full-throated
support for America's righteous war against Germany.)
Had Jenkins invested more time in discussing regional or national
specifics, the book might not have been as effective as it is in
recovering the rhetoric, symbols, expectations, and narratives shared
by the warring powers. These compelling and troubling comparisons
make the Great War seem all the more tragic, all the more perverse,
all the more important to study.
With so much in common both in the mainstream and at the margins,
how could such a chasm have opened between the nations? How could
so many lives have been swallowed? Comprehensive answers elude us
still, but Jenkins's excellent study demonstrates that the pursuit
of such answers requires us to look closely at religion--even if we
are tempted to look away.
http://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2014-06/christians-killing-christians
The Christian Century
June 20 2014
Jun 20, 2014 by Jonathan H. Ebel
In this centennial of the beginning of the Great War, citizens,
scholars, artists, and politicians will set aside time, measure out
words, and use painting, sculpture, and film to recall the four years
of ferocious violence that shaped the modern world. This is both good
and important.
It is good because the Great War has too long been
overshadowed--especially in the United States--by the still greater
war that came along two decades later. It is important because the
lessons of the Great War are both more enduring and more applicable
to our current religio-political moment than those that emerged from
the mid-century struggle against expansionist totalitarianisms.
For many, the lessons of the Great War revolve around accidents of
history and their ability to warp the noblest of intentions. For
others these lessons pertain to the interconnectedness of "progress"
and barbarity. Still others see the Great War as a case study in
the waste that governments and industry are willing to generate in
pursuit of power and wealth.
In recent years more scholars have begun to examine the Great War
for lessons about religion and war. The result has been a small
but fascinating collection of works on the religious cultures of
combatant nations as they were expressed by politicians, civilian
clergy, chaplains, and military personnel. For the most part,
these works have focused on single nations, weaving together the
religious, the social, and the military in meaningful but bounded
studies--monographs in the truest sense.
Philip Jenkins builds upon this specialized historiography as it
treats the Great War as a global religious conflict. His vividly
written synthesis be-longs at the top of reading lists on the conflict.
Not only does Jenkins provide detailed accounts of interactions between
religion and militarism, religion and combat, and religion and trauma
on all sides of the war, he also demonstrates that the world torn
apart by the Great War was a world of many shared religious concerns
and vocabularies, a world that needed the extreme fission that religion
accomplishes in order to launch and sustain such a brutal conflict.
With the balance and perspective of an experienced historian, Jenkins
presents and interprets the religious cultures of the warring nations
alongside each other, building as convincing an argument as I have
yet seen for the deep importance of religion at all levels and in
all phases of the war.
"Christian leaders," he writes, "gave an absolute religious
underpinning to warfare conducted by states that were seen as executing
the will of God." But this sacralization was something more than the
eager pronouncements of self-important or sycophantic divines. It
emerged from and to a large extent harmonized with "religious language
and assumptions [that] were omnipresent, . . .
part of the air people breathed."
Popular tales of angels and ghosts fighting alongside soldiers,
reflections on the workings of fate and chance, and stories equating
the suffering, dying soldier with Christ emerged on both sides of
the Western Front and on most European and American home fronts,
demonstrating a widespread predisposition to view and experience
the war as more than an earthly endeavor. The words of one German
soldier fighting at Verdun could well have been written by a soldier
or civilian on the other side of the war: "Here we have war, war in
its most appalling form, and in our distress we realize the nearness
of God."
Jenkins also moves the narrative beyond the trenches of the Western
Front to the far reaches of the warring empires to demonstrate that the
religious effects of the conflict--and attempts to discern religious
meaning in it--extended well beyond Europe and what was once called
Christendom. This broad approach bears good fruit as he weaves into
the narrative a wide range of actors, actions, and alliances and
argues for the global religious consequences of the Great War.
"When elites might have become secular," Jenkins writes, "ordinary
people tended to maintain their faiths against those of their rulers,
whether in Ireland, India, or Armenia, and religious identifications
became all the stronger in times of conflict." Though the heart of his
story is still the war on the Western front, the religious dynamics
of the Eastern front, the communist war against the Russian Orthodox
Church, the Armenian genocide, struggles among religious actors in
India, Africa, and Singapore, and postwar religious nationalisms all
find their way into his narrative in meaningful ways. These events,
and the identities that shaped and were shaped by them, did not vanish
into history when the Allies and Germany signed a ceasefire agreement
at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918.
As with any work of historical synthesis so broad in scope, The Great
and Holy War gives up something in nuance and specificity to gain what
it does in breadth. But other than a few overstretched comparisons
to current religious militarisms, the trade seems well worth it.
Jenkins's in-text citations and thorough notes will lead the interested
reader to more than enough specificity. (For instance, the archives
of the Christian Century offer example after example of full-throated
support for America's righteous war against Germany.)
Had Jenkins invested more time in discussing regional or national
specifics, the book might not have been as effective as it is in
recovering the rhetoric, symbols, expectations, and narratives shared
by the warring powers. These compelling and troubling comparisons
make the Great War seem all the more tragic, all the more perverse,
all the more important to study.
With so much in common both in the mainstream and at the margins,
how could such a chasm have opened between the nations? How could
so many lives have been swallowed? Comprehensive answers elude us
still, but Jenkins's excellent study demonstrates that the pursuit
of such answers requires us to look closely at religion--even if we
are tempted to look away.
http://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2014-06/christians-killing-christians