World War One German belt buckle. 'God With Us'
Posted on 10/26/2018 12:45:18 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
In the land of religious history, Philip Jenkins towers like a giant.
Here, we discuss the religious dimension of World War I and his newest book, “The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade.”
RNS: You say that World War I was “a religious crusade.” This sounds like a scandalous idea. Can you explain what you mean?
PJ: If I myself believed that it was a crusade, that would indeed be scandalous. Actually, I am arguing that a great many people at the time saw it in those terms, which is also scandalous, in a different way.
When we look at the history of that war, we have to be struck by the religious and supernatural language in which it was imagined, throughout the whole conflict, and at all levels of society. This was not just a case of statements put out by propaganda agencies trying to scare up recruits. Nor was the religious fervor confined to the opening weeks of the war, before people knew better.
Throughout, and in every country, the war was presented as a holy war, a cosmic struggle. The war was fought by the world’s leading Christian nations, and on all sides, clergy and Christian leaders offered a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric. Many spoke the language of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon.
Without that religious dimension, we cannot understand why the nations went to war, nor how ordinary people imagined the conflict.
(Excerpt) Read more at religionnews.com ...
The Catholic Church was also completely transformed, and we see the war’s impact on key figures who would dominate the church’s thought through the second Vatican Council. Pope Benedict XVI actually took his name from the Pope who served in that war, a man he admired. Even when Pope Francis took office, his speeches quoted Léon Bloy, an apocalyptic French thinker of the Great War.
Two other epochal events for Christianity were a direct consequence of the war: the attempted genocide of Christians across much of the Middle East, and the birth of mass popular Christianity in black Africa. And the two greatest events in Jewish history during the century – the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel – could never have happened without the First World War.
For Muslims, too, all subsequent politics have been shaped by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, and the termination of the caliphate a few years later. Most insurgent Islamist movements around the world today trace their origins to that post-war crisis.
RNS: In some ways, we’re still feeling the affects of World War I today, then, aren’t we?
PJ: Across the board, whichever faith we look at...(Excerpt. See link.)
My theory is you can trace the beginning of the decline and fall of Western civilization to the collapse of the “Christmas Truce” of 1914.
Every nation in that conflict (except the Ottoman Empire) was avowedly Christian. Most soldiers were Christians, either as being real believers, or at least culturally Christian and believed in and followed Christian teachings.
When the troops sang Christmas carols to each other on Christmas Eve and then came out of the trenches and celebrated Christmas Day with each other, that was the last opportunity for everyone to just put down their guns and say that the whole war was stupid and nobody knew what they were fighting about. But they got back into the trenches.
And everything followed.
Communism and the fall of Russia
The birth of Nazism (Adolf Hitler was a decorated soldier in the trenches—who knows how much of his derangement developed during that period).
Nihilism
Economic dysfuntion which led to runaway inflation in Germany and eventually worldwide economic depression.
World War II (continuation of WWI)
The worldwide spread of Communism and the Cold War
Etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KHoVBK2EVE
That retarded War also firmly fixed Wilson era progressive politics into American life.
The author is absolutely correct in his view that WWI set off great and far-reaching changes in society, Christianity and Islam.
I don’t know if leaders of the day saw it as a “crusade” though. The propaganda of the time certainly used religious imagery, but my favorite books on the subject by Tuchman, Max Hastings (and others) all point to the balance of power questions, alliances, naval power in the quest for colonial dominance, and military planning - as the motivations and direct causes of the war.
Excellent Post- Archduke Ferdinand’s license’s plate A111 118.
In my opinion World War I allowed the progressives running America that time could conflate patriotism with Progressive policies that were sick and anti-American. And a lot of that has survived to this very day.
Good post.
I was going to say something similar but you said it better.
World War One German belt buckle. 'God With Us'
“That retarded War also firmly fixed Wilson era progressive politics into American life.”
Teddy Roosevelt was a progressive a decade before Wilson. And not just a progressive Republican, of which there were many- he ran for President on the Progressive Party ticket in 1912, spoiling the reelection of Taft and guaranteeing a Wilson victory.
A large number of Teddy Roosevelt progressive Republicans ended up supporting his cousin FDR and even joined his administration.
The “Cousins War”, that wrecked the civilization of Europe. Gave rise to Bolshevik Russia and eventually Nazi Germany.
Barbara Tuchman’s ‘The Guns of August’ is a great book on WWI. I read Keegan’s ‘The First World War’ as well.
One theme you often see is the difficulty of figuring out why Germany and Austria decided to go to war over the assassination.
I guess a land grab for the disintegrating Ottoman Empire makes as much sense as anything else.
Austria it’s easy to see, the assassination of the Archduke by the Serbian terrorist group (Which had Serbian Intel connections!).
To me the three nations that absolutely wanted war was Serbia, Austro-Hungary (Wanted “limited” war against Serbia!) and France (Revenge for the Franco-Prussian War & recovery of Alsace-Loraine!). The rest of them just stumbled into it to a lesser or greater degree! The two nations that had the least reasons to get involved was UK & us!
George Orwell wrote a not-so-well known novel called “Coming Up for Air,” which centered around the theme that all that was pleasant and beautiful in England was destroyed by World War I, and that everything everyone believed in and took for granted was permanently shattered.
Orwell wrote the novel on the eve of World War II.
I think WWI did change the world including Britain.
Britain passed the first gun control act in 1919 probably as a reaction to The Bolshevik Revolution.
Before WWI according to Inspector Colin Greenwood, there were less armed robberies in Britain per year than fingers on your hand.
He may have said hands, and maybe just England as I am going on memory.
Were the good guys the ones with “God with us” on their belt buckles?
That would depend on who you ask.
Decent article until the end. The perfessor was overcome in his purple haze. Equates Christianity with moslem dictates. Convert or die perfessor? Where is that in the 10 Commandments?
Weak and illogical conclusion.
Which ones? On the eastern front, soldiers of both sides had that phrase on their helmets.
Yeah. Bolshevism and the precursors to Nazism had more to do with the rejection of Christianity as the focal point of civilization. Those movements had their basis in the idolatry of science and the worship of man and race, as opposed to faith.
People were not thinking about God and the afterlife — but were preoccupied instead with the upwards Evolution towards building a perfect world here on earth and ushering in a new millenium of scientific advancement and manmade achievement.
This is what brought Europe down at the dawn of the 20th Century. The sinking of the Titanic was quite symbolic.
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