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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 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.
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.
Church leaders and their contrasting opinions in the face of the Great War Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, was the incarnation of the Belgian resistance against the German occupation during the First World War. With his famous pastoral letter of Christmas 1914 ‘Patriotisme et Endurance’ he reached a wide audience, and gained international influence and respect. Mercier’s distinct patriotic stance clearly determined his views of national politics, especially of the 'Flemish question', and his conflict with the German occupier made him a hero of the Allies. The Germans did not always know how to handle this influential man of the Church. Pope Benedict XV did not always approve of the course of action adopted by the Belgian prelate. Whereas Mercier justified the war effort as a just cause in view of the restoration of Belgium's independence, the Pope feared that "this useless massacre" meant nothing but the "suicide of civilized Europe”. Through a critical analysis of the policies of Cardinal Mercier and Pope Benedict XV, this book sheds revealing light on the contrasting positions of Church leaders in the face of the Great War.
'May the eyes of Canada never be blind to that glorious light which shines upon our young national life from the deeds of those "who counted not their lives dear unto themselves"'. When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, the Canadian chaplain Frederick George Scott volunteered for service despite his fears. He spent four long years in the trenches on the western front, where he developed close bonds with his fellow soldiers and sought to maintain his faith while the world around him collapsed into chaos. In evocative language befitting his background as a poet, Scott lays bare the horrors of modern warfare. Filled with heart-wrenching descriptions and tragic detail, The Great War as I Saw It is a powerful meditation on the Canadian experience during World War I and an important look into the life of the ordinary soldier.
This transnational comparative history of Catholic everyday religion in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the Great War transforms our understanding of the war's cultural legacy. Challenging master narratives of secularization and modernism, Houlihan reveals that Catholics from the losing powers had personal and collective religious experiences that revise the decline-and-fall stories of church and state during wartime. Focusing on private theologies and lived religion, Houlihan explores how believers adjusted to industrial warfare. Giving voice to previously marginalized historical actors, including soldiers as well as women and children on the home front, he creates a family history of Catholic religion, supplementing studies of the clergy and bishops. His findings shed new light on the diversity of faith in this period and how specifically Catholic forms of belief and practice enabled people from the losing powers to cope with the war much more successfully than previous cultural histories have led us to believe.
It is estimated that around 50,000 Brigade Lads served in the First World War, during which many honours and distinctions were awarded. The Brigade contributed two Service Battalions of the King's Royal Rifle Corps whose members were comprised entirely of past and present members of the Church Lads' Brigade. These were known as 'Pals' Battalions. The story of the battalion centres around the experiences of eight men who served and some who died in the Battles of The Somme, Arras and The Lys. In the latter half of the nineteenth century influential Christians were worried about the poor spiritual and physical development of young people. It was at that time that 'Brigade' groups began to spring up all over the UK. Walter Mallock Gee, who was Secretary of the Junior Branch of the Church of England Temperance Society and a 'Volunteer' Army Officer, founded the Church Lads' Brigade in 1891. By 1908 the membership of the brigade stood at about 70,000 in 1,300 companies. When the 'Call to Arms' came from Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener in 1914, thousands of Britain's youth flocked to join the armed forces. Members of the Church Lads' Brigade joined up in their droves at recruiting stations all over Great Britain. Two Battalions were formed entirely from serving and ex-members of the Church Lad's Brigade. The 16th (Service) Battalion and later the 19th (Service) Battalion, both sponsored by the Church Lads' Brigade, became known as 'The Churchmen's Battalion'. In 1914 no one could have imagined the horrendous stories that would unfold from the bloody massacre at so many notorious battles across Belgium and the fields of Flanders. Ypres, Passchendale, Somme, Arras, Lys, and the brutal decimation of the battalion during the hell of the fighting at High Wood. No one could have imagined the discomfort and disease brought on by living in a trench full of water for days on end, or 'over the top' through acres of knee-high mud. More than 24 of the Church Lads' Brigade were awarded a Victoria Cross for their bravery, but by 1918 many of those gallant young Lads would not return home. This is their story.
"The Church of England and the First World War (first published in 1978) explores in depth the role of the church during the tragic circumstances of the First World War using biographies, newspapers, magazines, letters, poetry and other sources in a balanced evaluation. The myth that the war was fought by 'lions led by donkeys' powerfully endures turning heroes into victims. Alan Wilkinson demonstrates the sheer horror, moral ambiguity, and the interaction between religion, the church and warwith a scholarly, and yet poetic, hand. The author creates a vivid image of the church and society, includes views of the Free Churches and Roman Catholics, portrays the pastoral problems and challenges to faith presented by war, and the pressures for reform of church and society. The Church of England and the First World War is written with compelling compassion and great historical understanding, making the book hard to put down. This expert and classic study will grip the religious and secular alike, the general reader or the student."
Famed as the birthplace of modern industry and the first cast iron metal single span bridge, Ironbridge is venerated the world over yet its social history is at times unfamiliar.One hundred years ago this sleepy town, set by the river Severn, willingly volunteered its lifeblood to a war that everyone confidently believed would be a short-lived, adventurous romp. Misled by government propaganda, they soon discovered through fighting relative's letters and various official news reports, many of which are unearthed for the first time throughout this book, that it had rapidly degenerated into an endless morass of bloody violence with the probability of their men meeting a painful death on a daily basis thrown in for good measure.The town's wartime heritage is one of enterprise and hard work as the majority of the Great War gun-fodder comprised working-class men drawn from prestigious local companies. Maw & Co, the world-famous ceramic tile maker, raised its own company of enlisted fighting men, in common with other businesses nationwide, that were known as Pals Battalions. As in most instances across the land, it subsequently paid a heavy price for this mass act of patriotism. Ironbridge also became a cradle of the fledgling women's wartime workforce, who helped produce vital heavy munitions components at another famous local company's works.Ironbridge in the Great War is the story of the town's great sacrifice, as evidenced by the numerous and diverse war monuments that populate the town and its surrounding hamlets. This is detailed work that includes fascinating facts about the town, which, despite being constantly under the world spotlight, remained, until now, a part of its hidden wartime social history.
A comparative study of the cultural impact of the Great War on British and German societies. Taking medievalism as a mode of public commemorations as its focus, this book unravels the British and German search for historical continuity and meaning in the shadow of an unprecedented human catastrophe.