The Great War And The Death Of God

A compelling analysis of how World War I spurred the rise of atheism and the subsequent effect on Western theology, philosophy, literature, and art. The catastrophic Great War left humanity in a world no longer trustworthy and reassuring but seemingly meaningless and indifferent. Instead of redressing humanity’s cosmic alienation, postwar Western culture abandoned its concern for cosmic meaning, lost its confidence in human reason, and enabled the scientific worldview of neo-Darwinian materialism to emerge and eventually dominate the Western mind. According to the proponents of that worldview, science is the only source of genuine truth, nature is the product of a blind evolutionary process, and reality at bottom is just physics and chemistry. Thus, God is dead and continued belief in a transcendently purposeful universe is intellectually indefensible and either disingenuous or delusional. By turning away from the eternal questions about the nature of reality, Western culture effectively ceded unwarranted credibility and prominence to neo-Darwinian materialism, including its recently strident New Atheism. “O’Connor revisits the 20th century’s journey from Nietzsche’s declaration of the ‘death of God’ to the rise of materialism as the dominant worldview of western intelligentsia. We live in a world that has largely expelled both mind and meaning from the citadels of serious intellectual pursuit, and O’Connor’s book is a fascinating and scholarly expedition into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of that troubling development.” —Carter Phipps, author of Evolutionaries “I found this topic to be top-rate. The book is well researched and conceived, nicely narrated and analyzed, and an original body of inquiry into a challenging, fascinating intellectual tradition.” —Ronald M. Johnson, Professor Emeritus of American History, Georgetown University

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.

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.

This book is an international comparative study of the British, German and French military chaplains during the First World War. It describes their role, position and daily work within the army and how the often conflicting expectations of the church, the state, the military and the soldiers effected these. This study seeks to explain similarities and differences between the chaplaincies by looking at how the pre-war relations between church, state and society influenced the work of these army chaplains.

Americans today harbor no strong or consistent collective memory of the First World War. Ask why the country fought or what they accomplished, and "democracy" is the most likely if vague response. The circulation of confusing or lofty rationales for intervention began as soon as President Woodrow Wilson secured a war declaration in April 1917. Yet amid those shifting justifications, Love and Death in the Great War argues, was a more durable and resonant one: Americans would fight for home and family. Officials in the military and government, grasping this crucial reality, invested the war with personal meaning, as did popular culture. "Make your mother proud of you/And the Old Red White and Blue" went George Cohan's famous tune "Over There." Federal officials and their allies in public culture, in short, told the war story as a love story. Intervention came at a moment when arbiters of traditional home and family were regarded as under pressure from all sides: industrial work, women's employment, immigration, urban vice, woman suffrage, and the imagined threat of black sexual aggression. Alleged German crimes in France and Belgium seemed to further imperil women and children. War promised to restore convention, stabilize gender roles, and sharpen male character. Love and Death in the Great War tracks such ideas of redemptive war across public and private spaces, policy and implementation, home and front, popular culture and personal correspondence. In beautifully rendered prose, Andrew J. Huebner merges untold stories of ordinary men and women with a history of wartime culture. Studying the radiating impact of war alongside the management of public opinion, he recovers the conflict's emotional dimensions--its everyday rhythms, heartbreaking losses, soaring possibilities, and broken promises.

An examination of how the US military in Hawaii is depicted by museum curators, memorial builders, film makers, and newspaper reporters. These mediums convey information, and engage their audiences, in ways that, together, form a powerful advocacy for the benefits of militarism in the islands.

It is very hard to endure the bombs, Father. It will be difficult for anyone to survive and come back safe and sound from the war. The son who is very lucky will see his father and mother... (Extract from a letter by an Indian soldier serving in France, written on 14 January 1915 to his father) The Great War, as the First World War was referred to, saw the service of over 1.3 million Indians, of whom 74,000 never made it back home. For their families, the War was something they could not fully fathom. Soldiers from the Indian subcontinent won over 12,908 awards for bravery, including 11 Victoria Crosses. Yet this unprecedented show of valour by Indian soldiers remains largely unsung and unrecognised-particularly in India. Commemorating hundred years of the end of the First World War, this volume brings together diverse voices-Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, Sarojini Naidu, Mohamed Ali, Chandradhar Sharma Guleri and many more-that reflect a variety of attitudes among Indians towards the War. Included too are Rakhshanda Jalil's original translations of the works of Urdu poets of the time capturing their responses to the War. This volume of writings, originally written in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali and English, attempts to recognise and remember the contribution of the unknown soldiers to the Great War.