Great War Religious Dimensions

The First World War was a transformative event, affecting international culture, economics, and geopolitics. Though often presented as the moment heralding a new secular era of modernity, in actuality the war experience was grounded in religious faith and ritual for many participants. This Element examines how religion was employed by the state to solicit support and civic participation, while also being subordinated to the strategic and operational demands of the combatant armies. Even as religion was employed to express dissent, it was also used as a coercive tool to ensure compliance with the wartime demands of the state on civilians.

The Great and Holy War offers the first look at how religion created and prolonged the First World War, and the lasting impact it had on Christianity and world religions more extensively in the century that followed. The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. A steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was served to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Philip Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels, apparitions, and the supernatural, was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the Abrahamic religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - paving the way for modern views of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism. Connecting remarkable incidents and characters - from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, the Christmas Truce to the Armenian Genocide - Jenkins creates a powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global politics, history, and spiritual crisis. We cannot understand our present religious, political, and cultural climate without understanding the dramatic changes initiated by the First World War. The war created the world's religious map as we know it today.

Faith in the Fight tells a story of religion, soldiering, suffering, and death in the Great War. Recovering the thoughts and experiences of American troops, nurses, and aid workers through their letters, diaries, and memoirs, Jonathan Ebel describes how religion--primarily Christianity--encouraged these young men and women to fight and die, sustained them through war's chaos, and shaped their responses to the war's aftermath. The book reveals the surprising frequency with which Americans who fought viewed the war as a religious challenge that could lead to individual and national redemption. Believing in a "Christianity of the sword," these Americans responded to the war by reasserting their religious faith and proclaiming America God-chosen and righteous in its mission. And while the war sometimes challenged these beliefs, it did not fundamentally alter them. Revising the conventional view that the war was universally disillusioning, Faith in the Fight argues that the war in fact strengthened the religious beliefs of the Americans who fought, and that it helped spark a religiously charged revival of many prewar orthodoxies during a postwar period marked by race riots, labor wars, communist witch hunts, and gender struggles. For many Americans, Ebel argues, the postwar period was actually one of "reillusionment." Demonstrating the deep connections between Christianity and Americans' experience of the First World War, Faith in the Fight encourages us to examine the religious dimensions of America's wars, past and present, and to work toward a deeper understanding of religion and violence in American history.

This three-volume reference provides a complete guide for readers investigating the crucial interplay between war and religion from ancient times until today, enabling a deeper understanding of the role of religious wars across cultures. Containing some 500 entries covering the interaction between war and religion from ancient times, the three-volume War and Religion: An Encyclopedia of Faith and Conflict provides students with an invaluable reference source for examining two of the most important phenomena impacting society today. This all-inclusive reference work will serve readers researching specific religious traditions, historical eras, wars, battles, or influential individuals across all time periods. The A–Z entries document ancient events and movements such as the First Crusade that began at the end of the 10th century as well as modern-day developments like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Subtopics throughout the encyclopedia include religious and military leaders or other key people, ideas, and weapons, and comprehensive examinations of each of the major religious traditions' views on war and violence are presented. The work also includes dozens of primary source documents—each introduced by a headnote—that enable readers to go directly to the source of information and better grasp its historical significance. The in-depth content of this set benefits high school and college students as well as scholars and general readers.

A transnational comparative history of lived religion and everyday Catholicism in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the Great War.

Although seen widely as the twentieth-century's great religious war, as a conflict between the god-fearing and the godless, the religious dimension of the Cold War has never been subjected to a scholarly critique. This unique study shows why religion is a key Cold War variable. A specially commissioned collection of new scholarship, it provides fresh insights into the complex nature of the Cold War. It has profound resonance today with the resurgence of religion as a political force in global society.

This academic inquiry attempts to explore the state of relations between the German Christian missionaries and the Christian English government before and after World War I in India; the unpleasant consequences on German Missionaries and their families by the unwarranted attack of the German Cruiser SMS Emden on the Madras Presidency, aggravated further by the act of a former soldier in the guise of a missionary. It uncovers the involvement of the German military, Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient (NfO) and the Hindu revolutionaries in causing unrest in India to derail the economy and tarnish the image of the British Government. It exposes the joining forces of diametrically opposite ideologies, the German Christian Government, German Christian missionary in NfO and the Indian Hindu revolutionaries, on a common platform. Likewise, it uncovers the manipulation of the selfsame Scripture by the doctrinally similar Christian denominations to whip up their clashing nationalistic passions. Further, this research narrates the bitter experiences of separated missionary spouses, scattered family members, the plight of children, deportation, gruelling voyages, seasickness, experiences of missionaries as Prisoners of War (POW), etc. The following three methods were combined for this research: a World War I historiographical approach coupled with a collective biographical approach and an entanglement approach. I used archived and published English, German, and Tamil sources. The main archives were the Political Archives of the Foreign Office (PAAA) in Berlin, the archives of the Franckeshe Foundations in Halle, the Mission Society in Leipzig, the British Library in London, and the United Theological College Bangalore, the Gurukul Lutheran Theological College, Chennai and Avanakappakam (National Archives), Chennai, the materials in the Political Foreign Office (PAAA) in Berlin concerning the correspondence between the Intelligence Service for the Orient and the Indian revolutionaries; the archive of the Franckeshe Foundation in Halle contained in the two-volumes in one file from the Indian Mission during the war (1914 -1916) and The Leibniz Centre for Modern Orient archives Berlin.

The First World War had powerful religious dimensions. The war after all, 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. Not in medieval or Reformation times, but in the age of aircraft and machine guns, the majority of the world's Christians were engaged in a religiously defined struggle that claimed the lives of more than ten million soldiers and sailors and of millions of civilians. Later generations find that passionate religious commitment deeply troubling and in need of urgent explanation. Without appreciating its religious and spiritual aspects, we cannot understand the First World War. More important, the world's modern religious history makes no sense except in the context of that terrible conflict. The war created our reality. Remembering Armageddon grows out of a symposium held at Baylor University in 2014, which reflected on the role of religion in the First World War, and the relationship between Christianity and state violence. Contributors include Barry Hankins, Philip Jenkins, Darin D. Lenz, Sarah Miglio and Richard M. Gamble. Book jacket.