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The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade
The Great and Holy War offers the first look at how religion created and prolonged the First World War. At the one-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, historian Philip Jenkins reveals the powerful religious dimensions of this modern-day crusade, a period that marked a traumatic crisis for Western civilization, with effects that echoed throughout the rest of the twentieth century. The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. Thanks to the emergence of modern media, a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was given 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. Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels and apparitions, visions and the supernatural was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the major 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 numerous 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 as never before and shows how religion informed and motivated circumstances on all sides of the war.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Philip Jenkins
72 books150 followersJohn Philip Jenkins was born in Wales in 1952. He was educated at Clare College, in the University of Cambridge, where he took a prestigious “Double First” degree—that is, Double First Class Honors. In 1978, he obtained his doctorate in history, also from Cambridge. Since 1980, he has taught at Penn State University, and currently holds the rank of Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities. He is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion.
Though his original training was in early modern British history, he has since moved to studying a wide range of contemporary topics and issues, especially in the realm of religion.
Jenkins is a well-known commentator on religion, past and present. He has published 24 books, including The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South and God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis (Oxford University Press). His latest books, published by HarperOne, are The Lost History of Christianity and Jesus Wars (2010).
His book The Next Christendom in particular won a number of honors. USA Today named it one of the top religion books of 2002; and Christianity Today described The Next Christendom as a “contemporary classic.” An essay based on this book appeared as a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly in October 2002, and this article was much reprinted in North America and around the world, appearing in German, Swiss, and Italian magazines.
His other books have also been consistently well received. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 2003, Sir Lawrence Freedman said Jenkins's Images of Terror was “a brilliant, uncomfortable book, its impact heightened by clear, restrained writing and a stunning range of examples.”
Jenkins has spoken frequently on these diverse themes. Since 2002, he has delivered approximately eighty public lectures just on the theme of global Christianity, and has given numerous presentations on other topics. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in many media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Republic, Foreign Policy, First Things, and Christian Century. In the European media, his work has appeared in the Guardian, Rheinischer Merkur, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Welt am Sonntag, and the Kommersant (Moscow). He is often quoted in news stories on religious issues, including global Christianity, as well as on the subject of conflicts within the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, and controversies concerning cults and new religious movements. The Economist has called him “one of America's best scholars of religion.”
Over the last decade, Jenkins has participated in several hundred interviews with the mass media, newspapers, radio, and television. He has been interviewed on Fox's The Beltway Boys, and has appeared on a number of CNN documentaries and news specials covering a variety of topics, including the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, as well as serial murder and aspects of violent crime. The 2003 television documentary Battle for Souls (Discovery Times Channel) was largely inspired by his work on global Christianity. He also appeared on the History Channel special, Time Machine: 70s Fever (2009).
Jenkins is much heard on talk radio, including multiple appearances on NPR's All Things Considered, and on various BBC and RTE programs. In North America, he has been a guest on the widely syndicated radio programs of Diane Rehm, Michael Medved, and James Kennedy; he has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, as well as the nationally broadcast Canadian shows Tapestry and Ideas. His media appearances include newspapers and radio stations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Brazil, as well as in many different regions of the United States.
Because of its relevance to policy issues, Jenkins's work has attracted the attention of gove
Though his original training was in early modern British history, he has since moved to studying a wide range of contemporary topics and issues, especially in the realm of religion.
Jenkins is a well-known commentator on religion, past and present. He has published 24 books, including The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South and God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis (Oxford University Press). His latest books, published by HarperOne, are The Lost History of Christianity and Jesus Wars (2010).
His book The Next Christendom in particular won a number of honors. USA Today named it one of the top religion books of 2002; and Christianity Today described The Next Christendom as a “contemporary classic.” An essay based on this book appeared as a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly in October 2002, and this article was much reprinted in North America and around the world, appearing in German, Swiss, and Italian magazines.
His other books have also been consistently well received. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 2003, Sir Lawrence Freedman said Jenkins's Images of Terror was “a brilliant, uncomfortable book, its impact heightened by clear, restrained writing and a stunning range of examples.”
Jenkins has spoken frequently on these diverse themes. Since 2002, he has delivered approximately eighty public lectures just on the theme of global Christianity, and has given numerous presentations on other topics. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in many media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Republic, Foreign Policy, First Things, and Christian Century. In the European media, his work has appeared in the Guardian, Rheinischer Merkur, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Welt am Sonntag, and the Kommersant (Moscow). He is often quoted in news stories on religious issues, including global Christianity, as well as on the subject of conflicts within the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, and controversies concerning cults and new religious movements. The Economist has called him “one of America's best scholars of religion.”
Over the last decade, Jenkins has participated in several hundred interviews with the mass media, newspapers, radio, and television. He has been interviewed on Fox's The Beltway Boys, and has appeared on a number of CNN documentaries and news specials covering a variety of topics, including the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, as well as serial murder and aspects of violent crime. The 2003 television documentary Battle for Souls (Discovery Times Channel) was largely inspired by his work on global Christianity. He also appeared on the History Channel special, Time Machine: 70s Fever (2009).
Jenkins is much heard on talk radio, including multiple appearances on NPR's All Things Considered, and on various BBC and RTE programs. In North America, he has been a guest on the widely syndicated radio programs of Diane Rehm, Michael Medved, and James Kennedy; he has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, as well as the nationally broadcast Canadian shows Tapestry and Ideas. His media appearances include newspapers and radio stations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Brazil, as well as in many different regions of the United States.
Because of its relevance to policy issues, Jenkins's work has attracted the attention of gove
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November 22, 2021
Love Is Hate
According to Philip Jenkins, religion probably didn’t cause the Great War with its 10 million dead, four destroyed empires, and a continuing legacy of international instability, but it certainly prepared for and sustained it. As a consequence, religion itself, particularly Christianity - Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic - was fundamentally transformed even if it took several generations to understand what that transformation entailed. Christianity revealed itself to be as subject to corruptive manipulation and profound evil as any other human institution. It is not an exaggeration to say that this revelation inspired several new (and often contradictory) theological drives.
Christendom, however one chooses to define that conceptual entity, had been badly damaged by the Protestant Reformation but Christianity continued to dominate European culture in its various national forms. The French Revolution and its aftermath further undermined the Church by demonstrating its intimate connection with national power. But it was the Great War which proved beyond doubt that the spirit of Christianity had become, if it was not always, one of extreme national violence. As Jenkins summarizes the situation: “Christians in all combatant nations—including the United States—entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of cosmic war. None found any difficulty in using fundamental tenets of the faith as warrants to justify war and mass destruction.”
Somewhat surprisingly, the blatant and almost universal encouragement of the Christian churches to engage in the war from 1914 onwards did not immediately cause a reduction in mainstream church membership. But the experience of both the war and the inherent contradictions in Christian teaching had two highly consequential effects that were masked by this apparent stability: The rapid growth of parallel spiritual movements both within and without Christianity; and an equally rapid development of alternative institutional theologies. The effects of these movements would only become apparent from the 1960’s to the present day.
The immediate ‘beneficiaries’ of the trauma of the Great War were those previously relatively marginal sects and cults - Pentecostals, charismatics, and non-charismatic Evangelicals. Unsurprisingly perhaps, since these have a minimal reliance on formal doctrine and therefore can be perceived as a reaction against the intellectual Christianity which had so avidly promoted the disaster. Other groups with some distance from the established churches - Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and various occult and spiritualist cults, for example - also grew rapidly. The prevailing religious sentiment according to Jenkins was one of apocalypticism, that is, of the approach if not imminence of the Final Judgment. This feeling would become a dominant force in the dispensationalism and its political manifestation in the latter third of the century.*
The war also catalysed a fundamental re-direction of Christian theological thought, particularly ecclesiology, the religious theory of the Church itself. The Swiss, Karl Barth, arguably the most influential European religious thinker of the 20th century, constructed his so-called dialectical theology as a direct attack on the existing ‘liberal’ theological arguments for war and the widespread support for it among clerical leaders on all sides (See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). The Catholic Church was somewhat slower off the mark, but it too permitted and eventually fostered the creation of a rather radical practical theology of the relationship between religion and the world. The most dramatic result of this new thinking by scholars like Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, among many others was the Second Vatican Council which effectively ‘re-institutionalized’ the Church.
Jenkins’s study does not claim to be a detailed sociological analysis of the Great War. Nor does it attempt to trace the specific emotional or intellectual threads which emerged from the conflict. It is therefore more suggestive than definitive. Nonetheless his overall conclusions are significant. Clearly Christianity was not destroyed in either an institutional or personal sense; but it became something that no one anticipated: “Europe’s Christianity survived the Great War, but in ways that would have startled and often horrified the church leaders of the previous centuries. The war sparked a religious and cultural revolution within the faith”
Jenkins also recognizes what might be called the extreme vulnerability of Christianity to not just the power of the state but also to virtually unlimited self-rationalization. He makes it clear that this is not a temporary condition: “As we examine the mainstream assumptions of the greatest churches at the time, we repeatedly see just how close to the surface of the Christian and biblical tradition such patterns of state alliance and militancy actually lie, and how easily ideas of the church militarist emerge in times of crisis. A study of history, up to and including the twentieth century, must make us question any attempts to dismiss such uses of Christianity as a crude distortion of the faith.”
Living as we do now in the Age of Trump and Putin it is obvious that the danger posed by Christian involvement in politics is not limited to the issue of war. Christianity, if anything, has become more tribal since the Great War. But it has become no less emotionally powerful and intellectually self-serving.
*Jenkins published in 2014, thus to early to include an account of the Evangelical/Trump phenomenon or the Orthodox/Putin alliance.
According to Philip Jenkins, religion probably didn’t cause the Great War with its 10 million dead, four destroyed empires, and a continuing legacy of international instability, but it certainly prepared for and sustained it. As a consequence, religion itself, particularly Christianity - Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic - was fundamentally transformed even if it took several generations to understand what that transformation entailed. Christianity revealed itself to be as subject to corruptive manipulation and profound evil as any other human institution. It is not an exaggeration to say that this revelation inspired several new (and often contradictory) theological drives.
Christendom, however one chooses to define that conceptual entity, had been badly damaged by the Protestant Reformation but Christianity continued to dominate European culture in its various national forms. The French Revolution and its aftermath further undermined the Church by demonstrating its intimate connection with national power. But it was the Great War which proved beyond doubt that the spirit of Christianity had become, if it was not always, one of extreme national violence. As Jenkins summarizes the situation: “Christians in all combatant nations—including the United States—entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of cosmic war. None found any difficulty in using fundamental tenets of the faith as warrants to justify war and mass destruction.”
Somewhat surprisingly, the blatant and almost universal encouragement of the Christian churches to engage in the war from 1914 onwards did not immediately cause a reduction in mainstream church membership. But the experience of both the war and the inherent contradictions in Christian teaching had two highly consequential effects that were masked by this apparent stability: The rapid growth of parallel spiritual movements both within and without Christianity; and an equally rapid development of alternative institutional theologies. The effects of these movements would only become apparent from the 1960’s to the present day.
The immediate ‘beneficiaries’ of the trauma of the Great War were those previously relatively marginal sects and cults - Pentecostals, charismatics, and non-charismatic Evangelicals. Unsurprisingly perhaps, since these have a minimal reliance on formal doctrine and therefore can be perceived as a reaction against the intellectual Christianity which had so avidly promoted the disaster. Other groups with some distance from the established churches - Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and various occult and spiritualist cults, for example - also grew rapidly. The prevailing religious sentiment according to Jenkins was one of apocalypticism, that is, of the approach if not imminence of the Final Judgment. This feeling would become a dominant force in the dispensationalism and its political manifestation in the latter third of the century.*
The war also catalysed a fundamental re-direction of Christian theological thought, particularly ecclesiology, the religious theory of the Church itself. The Swiss, Karl Barth, arguably the most influential European religious thinker of the 20th century, constructed his so-called dialectical theology as a direct attack on the existing ‘liberal’ theological arguments for war and the widespread support for it among clerical leaders on all sides (See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). The Catholic Church was somewhat slower off the mark, but it too permitted and eventually fostered the creation of a rather radical practical theology of the relationship between religion and the world. The most dramatic result of this new thinking by scholars like Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, among many others was the Second Vatican Council which effectively ‘re-institutionalized’ the Church.
Jenkins’s study does not claim to be a detailed sociological analysis of the Great War. Nor does it attempt to trace the specific emotional or intellectual threads which emerged from the conflict. It is therefore more suggestive than definitive. Nonetheless his overall conclusions are significant. Clearly Christianity was not destroyed in either an institutional or personal sense; but it became something that no one anticipated: “Europe’s Christianity survived the Great War, but in ways that would have startled and often horrified the church leaders of the previous centuries. The war sparked a religious and cultural revolution within the faith”
Jenkins also recognizes what might be called the extreme vulnerability of Christianity to not just the power of the state but also to virtually unlimited self-rationalization. He makes it clear that this is not a temporary condition: “As we examine the mainstream assumptions of the greatest churches at the time, we repeatedly see just how close to the surface of the Christian and biblical tradition such patterns of state alliance and militancy actually lie, and how easily ideas of the church militarist emerge in times of crisis. A study of history, up to and including the twentieth century, must make us question any attempts to dismiss such uses of Christianity as a crude distortion of the faith.”
Living as we do now in the Age of Trump and Putin it is obvious that the danger posed by Christian involvement in politics is not limited to the issue of war. Christianity, if anything, has become more tribal since the Great War. But it has become no less emotionally powerful and intellectually self-serving.
*Jenkins published in 2014, thus to early to include an account of the Evangelical/Trump phenomenon or the Orthodox/Putin alliance.
July 5, 2015
Philip Jenkins has written a fairly exhaustive review of the religious ramifications of World War One, both in terms of how religious views/beliefs contributed to popular mindsets going into the war and during the horrors of that war, and also in terms of how they affected the century since that war ended. Of the two aspects of the book, the second is the one that truly captured my interest and attention the most.
Initially, I found it somewhat hard to engage in the discussion of pre-War apocalyptic fervor, the various intra-war country to country analyses of clergy roles and church discussions. There wasn't anything I could grab hold of as I watched these representatives of various churches aligning with their governments in many instances. But that alone is really an important fact to encounter.
What truly caught my attention were the changes in the world of religion since WWI---and this is truly world-wide---as the war resulted in the end or change of many colonial rules in Africa and Asia. What had been very small changes in the Islamic and Christian churches escalated mightily over the past 100 years. Here is where I thought Jenkins shined, And here is also where the information holds so much that is of import to our daily lives today.
For many, the two parts may hold together equally well (it may have been some personal issue on my part that prevented my fully appreciating the first section) but, as far as I am concerned, the post war section, which of course does build on some of the earlier data, is well worth the reading all by itself.
As an added note, the text is fully footnoted and has some illustrations.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
Initially, I found it somewhat hard to engage in the discussion of pre-War apocalyptic fervor, the various intra-war country to country analyses of clergy roles and church discussions. There wasn't anything I could grab hold of as I watched these representatives of various churches aligning with their governments in many instances. But that alone is really an important fact to encounter.
What truly caught my attention were the changes in the world of religion since WWI---and this is truly world-wide---as the war resulted in the end or change of many colonial rules in Africa and Asia. What had been very small changes in the Islamic and Christian churches escalated mightily over the past 100 years. Here is where I thought Jenkins shined, And here is also where the information holds so much that is of import to our daily lives today.
For many, the two parts may hold together equally well (it may have been some personal issue on my part that prevented my fully appreciating the first section) but, as far as I am concerned, the post war section, which of course does build on some of the earlier data, is well worth the reading all by itself.
As an added note, the text is fully footnoted and has some illustrations.
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.
January 21, 2018
What is the relationship between religion and violence?
This question has grabbed my attention for much of my adult life, starting with grad school. I was assigned to TA a Bible as Literature class; not having been raised with any religion, I rapidly set to study, and was (among other things) amazed at the sheer amount of violence and horror in Tanakh. This led me to explore the centuries of writing about violence and religion, an exploration that only deepened on September 11th, 2001. As a professor at a small college, I helped a group of faculty and students explore the emerging conflict, including trying to understand religion's role.
This interest brought me to Philip Jenkin's powerful Great and Holy War. Many people see the 20th century as driven by competing secular ideologies (fascism, communism, decolonialism, etc.).
In this setting World War I appears as the first war of science and industry, the first great modern conflict. In contrast, Jenkins assembles a powerful case for understanding World War I as a deeply religious conflict.
Great and Holy War begins by demonstrating how the gigantic horrors of WWI summoned up religious responses from participants. Many soldiers, leaders, observers, and civilians saw the bloodshed and destruction as apocalyptic, or as signs of divine wrath, or as creating martyrs, or as summoning up vengeful ghosts. All of this makes sense if we recall that the belligerent nations were, in 1914, deeply religious, many with religious authorities intertwined with state power. Some of those authorities and believers called on religious reasons to understand or support the war, even to the uttermost. Jenkins does a terrific job of assembling quotations from clerics of all kinds, calling on their followers to murder, destroy, exterminate, and sterilize.
For example, from the bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, came this jeremaiad:
These beliefs appeared in every involved nation, in Jenkins' account: Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Italy. I'm impressed at how he takes care to not just focus on Anglophonic countries. WWI is when Portugal saw the Fatima visions, for instance.
Jenkins does a commendable job in broadening our attention to areas beyond the western front. He takes care to show how Russian orthodoxy committed itself to holy war. He addresses the complex intersection of Judaism and WWI, from the importance of Jewish soldiers in different armies (on both sides!) to the decisive John Chilembwe (269-270). He reminds us that the (Islamic) Ottoman empire's genocidal attack on (Christian) Armenians was, in part, a religious struggle (chapter 11). Indeed, the sultan launched his empire into WWI as a holy war, while German agents sought to spark jihad against British and French colonial regimes, with some real effects, including organized violence (345).
There are so many ways that religious believers brought their faiths to bear that I cannot summarize them all here. Let me mention Jenkins' keen eye for imaginative writers. He begins with Arthur Machen's "Angel of Mons", where a defeated British army successfully summons up Agincourt's dead to defend them from German attack. Jenkins reminds us that J.R.R. Tolkien experienced the western front's horrors, which we can see in the famous "Dead Marshes" scene, among others. And he recalls that Carl Jung, absent from the war in neutral Switzerland, nonetheless addressed it in his cryptic Seven Sermons to the Dead. Jenkins even establishes a link between Rudolf Steiner, visionary on multiple levels, and the von Moltke family, leaders of the German war machine (156).
I approve of how Great and Holy War does not end with November 11, 1918, but carries on as wars continued to rage, most notably in eastern Europe and the Middle East. The book reminds us that religion played a huge role in the Russian Revolution and Civil War ("a full-scale religious civil war" (201)), and that many believers beyond the Orthodox spent the next generations terrified of a Soviet-style campaign against belief; the 20th century's anticommunist movement would draw heavily on religion. It also reminds us that after 1918 the victorious nations struggled to manage their expanded empires. "[B]etween 1919 and 1925 Britain's newly founded Royal Air Force saw action against Muslim rebels and enemy regimes in Somalia, Afghanistan, Waziristan, and Iraq." (349)
The book addresses the post-Armistice civil strife within Germany, which appears in the notorious Nazi theme, the Horst Wessel song, where the "postwar" dead appear:
Throughout the book Jenkins looks even further ahead, to WWI's century of influence. He finds the war to have rebooted a global sense of Islam, a development obviously of today's moment. He sees WWI as launching the huge shift of Christianity to Africa (starting with "an African reformation", 325). He argues that while the passionate, public religiosity of WWI faded afterwards, its currents continued to flow and develop.
Strongly recommended.
This question has grabbed my attention for much of my adult life, starting with grad school. I was assigned to TA a Bible as Literature class; not having been raised with any religion, I rapidly set to study, and was (among other things) amazed at the sheer amount of violence and horror in Tanakh. This led me to explore the centuries of writing about violence and religion, an exploration that only deepened on September 11th, 2001. As a professor at a small college, I helped a group of faculty and students explore the emerging conflict, including trying to understand religion's role.
This interest brought me to Philip Jenkin's powerful Great and Holy War. Many people see the 20th century as driven by competing secular ideologies (fascism, communism, decolonialism, etc.).
In this setting World War I appears as the first war of science and industry, the first great modern conflict. In contrast, Jenkins assembles a powerful case for understanding World War I as a deeply religious conflict.
The First World War was a thoroughly religious event, in the sense that overwhelmingly Christian nations fought each other in what many viewed as a holy war, a spiritual conflict.Each chapter takes a different run at the problem. So rich is the subject, and so assiduous Jenkins' approach, that I have to identify these topics to give a sense of the book's richness.
(5)
Great and Holy War begins by demonstrating how the gigantic horrors of WWI summoned up religious responses from participants. Many soldiers, leaders, observers, and civilians saw the bloodshed and destruction as apocalyptic, or as signs of divine wrath, or as creating martyrs, or as summoning up vengeful ghosts. All of this makes sense if we recall that the belligerent nations were, in 1914, deeply religious, many with religious authorities intertwined with state power. Some of those authorities and believers called on religious reasons to understand or support the war, even to the uttermost. Jenkins does a terrific job of assembling quotations from clerics of all kinds, calling on their followers to murder, destroy, exterminate, and sterilize.
For example, from the bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, came this jeremaiad:
[K]ill Germans - do kill them; not for the sake of killing, but to save the world, to kill the good as well as the bad, to kill the young as well as the old, to kill those who have shown kindness to our wounded as well as those fiends... I look upon it as a war for purity, I look upon everyone who died in it as a martyr. (71)
These beliefs appeared in every involved nation, in Jenkins' account: Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Italy. I'm impressed at how he takes care to not just focus on Anglophonic countries. WWI is when Portugal saw the Fatima visions, for instance.
Jenkins does a commendable job in broadening our attention to areas beyond the western front. He takes care to show how Russian orthodoxy committed itself to holy war. He addresses the complex intersection of Judaism and WWI, from the importance of Jewish soldiers in different armies (on both sides!) to the decisive John Chilembwe (269-270). He reminds us that the (Islamic) Ottoman empire's genocidal attack on (Christian) Armenians was, in part, a religious struggle (chapter 11). Indeed, the sultan launched his empire into WWI as a holy war, while German agents sought to spark jihad against British and French colonial regimes, with some real effects, including organized violence (345).
There are so many ways that religious believers brought their faiths to bear that I cannot summarize them all here. Let me mention Jenkins' keen eye for imaginative writers. He begins with Arthur Machen's "Angel of Mons", where a defeated British army successfully summons up Agincourt's dead to defend them from German attack. Jenkins reminds us that J.R.R. Tolkien experienced the western front's horrors, which we can see in the famous "Dead Marshes" scene, among others. And he recalls that Carl Jung, absent from the war in neutral Switzerland, nonetheless addressed it in his cryptic Seven Sermons to the Dead. Jenkins even establishes a link between Rudolf Steiner, visionary on multiple levels, and the von Moltke family, leaders of the German war machine (156).
I approve of how Great and Holy War does not end with November 11, 1918, but carries on as wars continued to rage, most notably in eastern Europe and the Middle East. The book reminds us that religion played a huge role in the Russian Revolution and Civil War ("a full-scale religious civil war" (201)), and that many believers beyond the Orthodox spent the next generations terrified of a Soviet-style campaign against belief; the 20th century's anticommunist movement would draw heavily on religion. It also reminds us that after 1918 the victorious nations struggled to manage their expanded empires. "[B]etween 1919 and 1925 Britain's newly founded Royal Air Force saw action against Muslim rebels and enemy regimes in Somalia, Afghanistan, Waziristan, and Iraq." (349)
The book addresses the post-Armistice civil strife within Germany, which appears in the notorious Nazi theme, the Horst Wessel song, where the "postwar" dead appear:
Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,This mix of religion, politics, imagination, and violence appears in the 1920s within the American KKK, which had a strongly religious mission as well as symbolism (206). It appears in the brutal war between (Christian) Greece and (Islamic, though soon to be securalized) Turkey (1919-1923).
Marschier'n im Geist in unser'n Reihen mit
(Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.)
Throughout the book Jenkins looks even further ahead, to WWI's century of influence. He finds the war to have rebooted a global sense of Islam, a development obviously of today's moment. He sees WWI as launching the huge shift of Christianity to Africa (starting with "an African reformation", 325). He argues that while the passionate, public religiosity of WWI faded afterwards, its currents continued to flow and develop.
Strongly recommended.
June 19, 2019
It is easy to blame everything on Germany, a la Barbara Tuchman, but this book makes clear there were vicious attitudes and bad behavior on all sides......in the name of religion. Many church leaders and Christians were corrupted by their hateful war-mongering.
This book lends weight to the Christopher Hitchens thesis that religion poisons everything. His hero, and one of my heroes is George Orwell. Hitchens had this to say about Orwell...
“Orwell was one of those upon whom nothing was lost. (This included, as Orwell himself said: “the power of facing unpleasant facts”). By declining to lie, even as far as possible to himself, and by his determination to seek elusive but verifiable truth, he showed how much can be accomplished by an individual who unites the qualities of intellectual honesty and moral courage.”
We need this more than ever, especially in our assessment of how religion and politics rationalize hate. We need to see all of this for what it really is.
============
I've known from studying the Nazi Reich in college that most of the non-Jewish academics and intellectuals lined up behind Hitler. But I'm learning this whole process started with WW I. Some of the country's top scholars and theologians actually formulated rationalizations for violence and conquest based on what they presumed was an extension of Protestant Christian doctrine. I had no idea it was that explicit and that influential. This, no doubt, was a factor in getting most of the professing Christians in Germany to fall in line. There was a continuity from this that carried right into the Third Reich.
French Catholics had their own version of this sense of spiritual mission connected to the war. Although, in keeping with the Catholicism of that time and place, it tended to be more mystical. Meanwhile, the cult of Joan of Arc in France reached new heights during the war.
There was a powerful streak of pacifism in the U.S. that opposed intervention. Oddly, it was the liberal progressive Christians, practicers of the social gospel (feeding the poor, providing housing), who championed intervention as part of its goal to spread the Kingdom of God on earth. By 1917, many former pacifists were on board with this.
"IN WHATEVER COUNTRY WE look at, we find strikingly similar interpretations of the war. We can see this from two themes in particular, namely the framing of the nation’s enemies as anti-Christians, if not actually as the Antichrist, and also the potent concepts of martyrdom and redemptive sacrifice that pervaded wartime language. Countries at war generally demonize their opponents, if only because dehumanization makes it easier to kill them."
The American Congregationalist minister, Newell Dwight Hillis, proposed a final solution for the German nation responsible for such crimes:
“In utter despair . . . statesmen, generals, diplomats, editors are now talking about the duty of simply exterminating the German people.” American eugenic laws already ordained painless medical sterilization for “confirmed criminals and hopeless idiots.” So why not Germans?"
British war leader David Lloyd George declared:
"The stern hand of Fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things which matter for a nation— the great peaks we had forgotten, of Honor, Duty, Patriotism, and clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven."
In Mein Kampf, Hitler singled out Lloyd George as a rhetorical genius, whom he imitated in his own speeches.
An Anglican bishop, Arthur Ingram, claimed that British soldiers would return from war "purged and purified." The great poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was involved in the horrific Battle of the Somme, responded with his poem, "They"....
The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
'In a just cause: they lead the last attack
'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
'New right to breed an honourable race,
'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'
'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.
' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'
Robert Graves recalled...
"The war made most of the English soldiers in the purgatorial trenches lose all respect for organized Pauline religion, though still feeling a sympathetic reverence for Jesus as our fellow sufferer."
But there was still superstition. As Paul Fussell remarks, “No frontline soldier was without his amulet, and every tunic pocket became a reliquary.”
To the despair of the Protestant clergy who distributed Bibles and New Testaments among the forces, soldiers collected and treasured these items not as sources of wisdom and inspiration, but as talismans. American soldiers in particular wanted a Bible in their pockets when they advanced into battle. Even if they never bothered to open the books to read the actual Bible text, plenty of them were looking for protective spells rather than inspiration.
For Catholics it was rosaries and holy medals.
At home, there were apocalyptic expectations, that started in the 19th century and carried over to the 20th.
“The nations of Europe battle, and unconsciously prepare the way for the return of the Lord Jesus,” declared one pastor.
These expectations had reached fever pitch after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Within months of the earthquake, a revival in Los Angeles launched the Pentecostal movement.
But these allusions to Armageddon were in vain. According to devout Christian and scholar, C.S. Lewis, the whole thing was a false prophecy to begin with. The Bible is wrong.
https://bloggingtheology.net/2016/05/...
For Roman Catholics, various prophecies, very broadly stated, were given by the Virgin Mary as she appeared in various apparitions. The Lady of Fatima vision in May 1917 was the most famous of that era. Some Germans opted to venerate Martin Luther instead, with undertones of racism and anti-Semitism.
In the aftermath of WW I, Europe became secular while end times fanaticism got new life in the U.S. Religion in the U.S. is still largely political, especially in evangelical ranks, and is not the force for charity it should be. Instead, as in WW I, it has allied itself with unsavory political actors that call into question the legitimacy of the belief systems and actions of these religious entities. "By their deeds ye shall know them." Measured against the Biblical standard of kindness, they flunk the test.
Mark Twain's "war prayer" goes with this book...
https://warprayer.org
This book lends weight to the Christopher Hitchens thesis that religion poisons everything. His hero, and one of my heroes is George Orwell. Hitchens had this to say about Orwell...
“Orwell was one of those upon whom nothing was lost. (This included, as Orwell himself said: “the power of facing unpleasant facts”). By declining to lie, even as far as possible to himself, and by his determination to seek elusive but verifiable truth, he showed how much can be accomplished by an individual who unites the qualities of intellectual honesty and moral courage.”
We need this more than ever, especially in our assessment of how religion and politics rationalize hate. We need to see all of this for what it really is.
============
I've known from studying the Nazi Reich in college that most of the non-Jewish academics and intellectuals lined up behind Hitler. But I'm learning this whole process started with WW I. Some of the country's top scholars and theologians actually formulated rationalizations for violence and conquest based on what they presumed was an extension of Protestant Christian doctrine. I had no idea it was that explicit and that influential. This, no doubt, was a factor in getting most of the professing Christians in Germany to fall in line. There was a continuity from this that carried right into the Third Reich.
French Catholics had their own version of this sense of spiritual mission connected to the war. Although, in keeping with the Catholicism of that time and place, it tended to be more mystical. Meanwhile, the cult of Joan of Arc in France reached new heights during the war.
There was a powerful streak of pacifism in the U.S. that opposed intervention. Oddly, it was the liberal progressive Christians, practicers of the social gospel (feeding the poor, providing housing), who championed intervention as part of its goal to spread the Kingdom of God on earth. By 1917, many former pacifists were on board with this.
"IN WHATEVER COUNTRY WE look at, we find strikingly similar interpretations of the war. We can see this from two themes in particular, namely the framing of the nation’s enemies as anti-Christians, if not actually as the Antichrist, and also the potent concepts of martyrdom and redemptive sacrifice that pervaded wartime language. Countries at war generally demonize their opponents, if only because dehumanization makes it easier to kill them."
The American Congregationalist minister, Newell Dwight Hillis, proposed a final solution for the German nation responsible for such crimes:
“In utter despair . . . statesmen, generals, diplomats, editors are now talking about the duty of simply exterminating the German people.” American eugenic laws already ordained painless medical sterilization for “confirmed criminals and hopeless idiots.” So why not Germans?"
British war leader David Lloyd George declared:
"The stern hand of Fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things which matter for a nation— the great peaks we had forgotten, of Honor, Duty, Patriotism, and clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven."
In Mein Kampf, Hitler singled out Lloyd George as a rhetorical genius, whom he imitated in his own speeches.
An Anglican bishop, Arthur Ingram, claimed that British soldiers would return from war "purged and purified." The great poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was involved in the horrific Battle of the Somme, responded with his poem, "They"....
The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
'In a just cause: they lead the last attack
'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
'New right to breed an honourable race,
'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'
'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.
' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'
Robert Graves recalled...
"The war made most of the English soldiers in the purgatorial trenches lose all respect for organized Pauline religion, though still feeling a sympathetic reverence for Jesus as our fellow sufferer."
But there was still superstition. As Paul Fussell remarks, “No frontline soldier was without his amulet, and every tunic pocket became a reliquary.”
To the despair of the Protestant clergy who distributed Bibles and New Testaments among the forces, soldiers collected and treasured these items not as sources of wisdom and inspiration, but as talismans. American soldiers in particular wanted a Bible in their pockets when they advanced into battle. Even if they never bothered to open the books to read the actual Bible text, plenty of them were looking for protective spells rather than inspiration.
For Catholics it was rosaries and holy medals.
At home, there were apocalyptic expectations, that started in the 19th century and carried over to the 20th.
“The nations of Europe battle, and unconsciously prepare the way for the return of the Lord Jesus,” declared one pastor.
These expectations had reached fever pitch after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Within months of the earthquake, a revival in Los Angeles launched the Pentecostal movement.
But these allusions to Armageddon were in vain. According to devout Christian and scholar, C.S. Lewis, the whole thing was a false prophecy to begin with. The Bible is wrong.
https://bloggingtheology.net/2016/05/...
For Roman Catholics, various prophecies, very broadly stated, were given by the Virgin Mary as she appeared in various apparitions. The Lady of Fatima vision in May 1917 was the most famous of that era. Some Germans opted to venerate Martin Luther instead, with undertones of racism and anti-Semitism.
In the aftermath of WW I, Europe became secular while end times fanaticism got new life in the U.S. Religion in the U.S. is still largely political, especially in evangelical ranks, and is not the force for charity it should be. Instead, as in WW I, it has allied itself with unsavory political actors that call into question the legitimacy of the belief systems and actions of these religious entities. "By their deeds ye shall know them." Measured against the Biblical standard of kindness, they flunk the test.
Mark Twain's "war prayer" goes with this book...
https://warprayer.org
September 17, 2019
Excellent look at the way Religion played it's role and the way the war changed religion. Light was shined onto subjects I thought I knew, such as the massacre of the Kurds, the burning heart of Christ, and much more.
Buy it if you are a history buff, a theology buff or both.
Buy it if you are a history buff, a theology buff or both.
March 5, 2019
Really thought-provoking. I am a big Jenkins fan (his Lost History of Christianity and Jesus Wars are both very much worth your time), and this one makes a pretty compelling case for WWI as culturally and religiously transformative in a way that WWII, despite its arguably greater horrors, wasn't. That last bit just gets asserted in the conclusion, which could maybe use more evidence, but we are already on p.377, so I get it.
Jenkins drags us into a morass of 4-horsemen allusions--bestsellers, political rhetoric, poetry--and scarily militant adoration of things like zeppelins (which we see being celebrated by poets and theologians as doing, quite literally, the work of God) to document, to my eyes pretty convincingly, the depth of religious conviction that attended the war on all sides. He documents in quite disturbing detail the quantity of literal crusade rhetoric emanating from all sides--including but not limited to General Allenby's seizure of Jerusalem, which Punch commemorated by having Richard I look down from heaven to rejoice that at last the city had been retaken..."exactly" (because that's obviously a mystically important number) 730 years after Saladin took it back from the original crusaders. And you can find that kind of holy-war rhetoric erupting from every major nation involved. For US historians, this helps contextualize Wilson's messianic approach, which now looks basically, well, normal rather than some weird outpost of fervor. (He makes the same point here he made in Laying Down the Sword: any Westerner who attempts to spout off about jihad and some essential Islamic tropism toward violence should spend about 10 minutes looking into his/her own history and holy books. I appreciate that he doesn't hammer it in, since that feels like an argument for another time.)
Bonus points for looking into the war's religious impact in places like Africa, which he's already touched on in ANOTHER of his books, about the coming spread of Christianity to the Global South--the normative believer will soon be, if it isn't already, an African woman, and he suggests how and why the immediate post-war period helped make that happen. He digs up a host of weird social/religious connections that both went into and came out of it--he's especially good on the cultish/esoteric doctrinal responses to the war that you see in the craze for spiritualism (maybe the dead weren't really gone!), fantasies about long-dead patriots rising to fight anew for the homeland, mass hysteria (visions of the sun whirling in the sky and the Virgin Mary's return), and especially in both postwar far-right craziness and places like Hollywood, where he notes the effect of such thought on the work of people like Fritz Lang (and you could make the same case for James Whale's Frankenstein, though he doesn't touch on it) and the veritable mobbing of Aleister Crowley by film folk. If you're fighting for God in a war and you lose, he points out, you have to do some kind of work to figure out where to go next--militant secularism (he observes that the Soviets built their notorious White Sea labor camp and canal on top of a monastery)? some sort of folkloric pagan revival? new theological approaches to the question of meaning and God's influence on the world? Jenkins makes a compelling case that we can even see traces of such thought in the words of Pope John Paul II when he stood up to the USSR and as late as the foundation of the EU and in its flag.
Among a galaxy of I-didn't-know-thats, maybe the most painful of the ironies is German-Jewish poet Ernst Lissauer's bloodthirsty 1914 "Hate Song Against England," which, Jenkins notes, anti-Semites "rejected as un-German....Real Germans knew nothing of such implacable hatred against any nation or race."
Jenkins drags us into a morass of 4-horsemen allusions--bestsellers, political rhetoric, poetry--and scarily militant adoration of things like zeppelins (which we see being celebrated by poets and theologians as doing, quite literally, the work of God) to document, to my eyes pretty convincingly, the depth of religious conviction that attended the war on all sides. He documents in quite disturbing detail the quantity of literal crusade rhetoric emanating from all sides--including but not limited to General Allenby's seizure of Jerusalem, which Punch commemorated by having Richard I look down from heaven to rejoice that at last the city had been retaken..."exactly" (because that's obviously a mystically important number) 730 years after Saladin took it back from the original crusaders. And you can find that kind of holy-war rhetoric erupting from every major nation involved. For US historians, this helps contextualize Wilson's messianic approach, which now looks basically, well, normal rather than some weird outpost of fervor. (He makes the same point here he made in Laying Down the Sword: any Westerner who attempts to spout off about jihad and some essential Islamic tropism toward violence should spend about 10 minutes looking into his/her own history and holy books. I appreciate that he doesn't hammer it in, since that feels like an argument for another time.)
Bonus points for looking into the war's religious impact in places like Africa, which he's already touched on in ANOTHER of his books, about the coming spread of Christianity to the Global South--the normative believer will soon be, if it isn't already, an African woman, and he suggests how and why the immediate post-war period helped make that happen. He digs up a host of weird social/religious connections that both went into and came out of it--he's especially good on the cultish/esoteric doctrinal responses to the war that you see in the craze for spiritualism (maybe the dead weren't really gone!), fantasies about long-dead patriots rising to fight anew for the homeland, mass hysteria (visions of the sun whirling in the sky and the Virgin Mary's return), and especially in both postwar far-right craziness and places like Hollywood, where he notes the effect of such thought on the work of people like Fritz Lang (and you could make the same case for James Whale's Frankenstein, though he doesn't touch on it) and the veritable mobbing of Aleister Crowley by film folk. If you're fighting for God in a war and you lose, he points out, you have to do some kind of work to figure out where to go next--militant secularism (he observes that the Soviets built their notorious White Sea labor camp and canal on top of a monastery)? some sort of folkloric pagan revival? new theological approaches to the question of meaning and God's influence on the world? Jenkins makes a compelling case that we can even see traces of such thought in the words of Pope John Paul II when he stood up to the USSR and as late as the foundation of the EU and in its flag.
Among a galaxy of I-didn't-know-thats, maybe the most painful of the ironies is German-Jewish poet Ernst Lissauer's bloodthirsty 1914 "Hate Song Against England," which, Jenkins notes, anti-Semites "rejected as un-German....Real Germans knew nothing of such implacable hatred against any nation or race."
December 25, 2014
On the 28th of June 1914 in the Bosnian capitol of Sarajevo a young Serb, Gavrilo Princip, fired a pistol at The Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, killing them both. His actions lit a long time primed fuse that led to war. A war that, according to some scholars, did not end until 1945. A war that changed not only Europe, but the entire world as well. A war that is still with us, even today.
Philip Jenkins has written an excellent book on the role that religion played in World War I. Both sides invoked the name of God in championing their cause, both used biblical analogies and loaded medieval words to describe the other. Jenkins goes into detail to describe how and why this was done. With this being the centennial year there are already several very good books on the causes for and the stages of the war. In order to understand some of the emotional and spiritual motivation for the war, make room for this very good book.
Philip Jenkins has written an excellent book on the role that religion played in World War I. Both sides invoked the name of God in championing their cause, both used biblical analogies and loaded medieval words to describe the other. Jenkins goes into detail to describe how and why this was done. With this being the centennial year there are already several very good books on the causes for and the stages of the war. In order to understand some of the emotional and spiritual motivation for the war, make room for this very good book.
September 14, 2015
Philip Jenkins is among the most complete religious historians we have writing today, and this book--like Lost Christianities, The New Christendom, and Jesus Wars goes deeply into the study of World War I. The title here, The Great and Holy War is fully borne out by Jenkins's research.
The first half of the book covers the war's impact on the western nations that waged it. Initially, denominations with close ties to warring states--Anglicanism in Britain, Lutheranism in Germany--supported the war and justified the slaughter that was to come. But as the war went on, religious movements swept Europe. Spiritualism promised families to communicate with lost brothers and sons. Miracles and angel sitings were reported in the press. Ghosts were expected to rise up and continue the struggle for their beleaguered comrades. Most notably, the Fatimid prophecies swept Portugal and gave rise to Marian movements within the Catholic church.
In the second half, Jenkins examines the global consequences of the war. Zionism boomed and led Jews toward the creation of Israel following the next world war. In Africa, Christian evangelists began to turn the tide against animism. Islam initially struggled with the loss of the Ottoman caliph, but later turned that confusion into a commitment to fundamentalism and the writings of mid-century jihadi philosophers like Qutb. And the Middle East, which at the time the war began was still a polyglot collection of religions--20% of the population was Christian--began to eradicate Christian communities and fall into Wahhabi Islam's backwards sway. Jenkins covers movements from Morocco to the East Indies in this section, a truly global survey of religion during and after the Great War.
This is an important book for those who want to understand the underpinnings of the religious and political world today.
The first half of the book covers the war's impact on the western nations that waged it. Initially, denominations with close ties to warring states--Anglicanism in Britain, Lutheranism in Germany--supported the war and justified the slaughter that was to come. But as the war went on, religious movements swept Europe. Spiritualism promised families to communicate with lost brothers and sons. Miracles and angel sitings were reported in the press. Ghosts were expected to rise up and continue the struggle for their beleaguered comrades. Most notably, the Fatimid prophecies swept Portugal and gave rise to Marian movements within the Catholic church.
In the second half, Jenkins examines the global consequences of the war. Zionism boomed and led Jews toward the creation of Israel following the next world war. In Africa, Christian evangelists began to turn the tide against animism. Islam initially struggled with the loss of the Ottoman caliph, but later turned that confusion into a commitment to fundamentalism and the writings of mid-century jihadi philosophers like Qutb. And the Middle East, which at the time the war began was still a polyglot collection of religions--20% of the population was Christian--began to eradicate Christian communities and fall into Wahhabi Islam's backwards sway. Jenkins covers movements from Morocco to the East Indies in this section, a truly global survey of religion during and after the Great War.
This is an important book for those who want to understand the underpinnings of the religious and political world today.
May 16, 2014
Thanks to goodreads and Erik at Harperone for providing me with this interesting work on World War I. Every war has multiple causes and having just read "The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation" by Avner Offer, I was pleased when access to food was mentioned. However, the book is about the religious aspects of that war. This work covers the religious intensity of the populace as the war began. Among the interesting tidbits is the origins of the "Angel of Mons" (English bowmen) in a Sci-Fi story which people decided to believe, as they did many of the occult (friend of a friend) stories published by the media. In essence, 'modern media reinforced medieval beliefs'. As with most wars, each side believed God was on their side. While the book sometimes bounces back or forward in time it done to connect the religious aspects of the war with prior and post war events.
Authorities in all countries involved used religion to demonize the enemy while sanctifying their own side. Unfortunately, both sides used religion to incite disorder in their opponent. In many cases it was for short term gain without looking at the long-term effects. That is, what they created for future generations. Religion was used to justify atrocities before, during and after the War. Pogroms, massacres and mass forced removals were committed by both sides all in the name of religious purity. Many books have been written about war, this book provides a much needed look at one of the less promulgated aspects of the war.
Authorities in all countries involved used religion to demonize the enemy while sanctifying their own side. Unfortunately, both sides used religion to incite disorder in their opponent. In many cases it was for short term gain without looking at the long-term effects. That is, what they created for future generations. Religion was used to justify atrocities before, during and after the War. Pogroms, massacres and mass forced removals were committed by both sides all in the name of religious purity. Many books have been written about war, this book provides a much needed look at one of the less promulgated aspects of the war.
January 27, 2015
For the last year I have been listening to Hardcore History’s podcast on World War I. It has been fascinating and educational. I never realized how absolutely awful World War I was, nor do I think I took seriously how much the world changed. Really, our modern world was born in World War I. Most of all, I now know that the worst place in history I can imagine being is a trench during WWI.
I was pleasantly surprised that during this same time one of my favorite authors, Philip Jenkins, published a book on the religious aspects of World War I – The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. Jenkins has made his name by writing on global Christianity and the history of Christianity outside the west. A few of those same themes appear here, as it was during and after World War I that Christianity began to explode in places like Africa. One of the reasons for this was the breaking of colonialism that began at this time.
Jenkins book is a page-turner, illustrating how all sides invoked God as they went to war. He talks about the Germans, English and French and then moves on to talk about the Jews, Muslims and Christians in colonial lands. Most impressive is that he does not stop at the end of WWI but traces the story through to WWII and beyond. The events of World War I continue to have aftershocks today. If you are interested in history and religion and how both play into contemporary events, check out Jenkins’ book.
I was pleasantly surprised that during this same time one of my favorite authors, Philip Jenkins, published a book on the religious aspects of World War I – The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. Jenkins has made his name by writing on global Christianity and the history of Christianity outside the west. A few of those same themes appear here, as it was during and after World War I that Christianity began to explode in places like Africa. One of the reasons for this was the breaking of colonialism that began at this time.
Jenkins book is a page-turner, illustrating how all sides invoked God as they went to war. He talks about the Germans, English and French and then moves on to talk about the Jews, Muslims and Christians in colonial lands. Most impressive is that he does not stop at the end of WWI but traces the story through to WWII and beyond. The events of World War I continue to have aftershocks today. If you are interested in history and religion and how both play into contemporary events, check out Jenkins’ book.
March 4, 2017
Philip Jenkins' book "The Great and Holy War" touches on the religious aspects of World War I--the motivations of the actors involved in the war, the religious rhetoric used by both sides in the war and above the consequences for religion world wide in the ensuing decades. It is on the last score that Jenkins is at his best, and is on the safest ground historically speaking; I don't think anyone can deny how much it shaped the modern Middle East, or the major world religions of Christianity and Islam. However, he is on much less sturdy ground with regards to the first two, in my opinion. He cites extensively the religious rhetoric of preachers and politicians alike, but I did not come away convinced that everyone he quoted thought they were fighting an actual religious war, as opposed to fighting a war with religious ideas. Part of the problem is that he never really defines "religion" and uses that ambiguity to define everything from Nationalism to Spiritualism as "religion" without making clear by what criteria some social phenomena was NOT religion. Thus it explains too much and too little at the same time; as he surely knows, defining "religion" in universal terms is a major problem for academics, given that all the things that can fall under its umbrella. I also thought he de-emphasized formal, doctrinal differences between Christianity and Islam, and Judaism, too much by lumping all of their rhetoric under the label of "holy war." There are rather importance differences between those faiths on that point, and I suppose Jenkins didn't emphasize this because he wanted to make the case that "religion" in general was important to the war globally and in Europe. I got the sense reading the book that the audience Jenkins wanted to reach were secular types, who can't imagine anyone actually being motivated by anything one might call "religion." And this is probably a book for the "religiously unmusical," to use Weber's phrase. Personally, I think trying to tell the story of WWI as a religious war doesn't work as an explanation for the war, and if you are looking for a daring new interpretation of the war or its causes, this is not it. But if you are looking for a readable overview of the various ways in which "religion" broadly defined, impinged on and was affected by the war, then "The Great and Holy War" will serve that purpose admirably for years to come.
May 2, 2018
This book in many ways is actually two separate but similar works combined. The first half deals directly with WWI. With a surplus of quotes and references, he shows how various religious figures used scripture and spiritual talk to justify their participation in the war and how God was on their side and against their enemies. Here Jenkins works chronologically forward stopping at each major country (Russia, Germany, France, GB, USA, and sometimes others) along the way. Part of me wanted to believe that he is cherry picking his sources and showing only one side of the coin. Surely there were plenty of other spiritual voices that were offering a much more moderate voice. But another part of me can remember the sickening abundance of patriotic nationalism wrapped up as spirituality in more current conflicts or even such social media viruses as the issue of kneeling during the national anthem. If people today can bend and warp scripture to conform to their own political agendas or personal biases today then surely they were doing the same one hundred years ago.
The second part of the book then deals with the consequences of the war in general and specifically the consequences, short and long term, of the religious rhetoric that each side blatantly bandied about. I firmly believe that no single event changed and then shaped our modern world as drastically as this war and Philip Jenkins only scratches the surface on one aspect of how this is so.
Both parts of this book are an excellent read and something everyone with an interest on how current events, our modern world map, and geopolitical conflicts have come to be what they are today. My largest complaint is that a largely disproportionate section of this was spent on Christianity. As horrible as the conflict between soldier and soldier in the European conflicts was and as disgusting as the justifications pastors and political leaders gave for it, it pales in comparison to the jihad waged in the attempt to eradicate an entire people group. The 1.5-2 million noncombatants massacred in their homes and the millions of others forcefully uprooted deserved far more airtime than Jenkins gave it.
The second part of the book then deals with the consequences of the war in general and specifically the consequences, short and long term, of the religious rhetoric that each side blatantly bandied about. I firmly believe that no single event changed and then shaped our modern world as drastically as this war and Philip Jenkins only scratches the surface on one aspect of how this is so.
Both parts of this book are an excellent read and something everyone with an interest on how current events, our modern world map, and geopolitical conflicts have come to be what they are today. My largest complaint is that a largely disproportionate section of this was spent on Christianity. As horrible as the conflict between soldier and soldier in the European conflicts was and as disgusting as the justifications pastors and political leaders gave for it, it pales in comparison to the jihad waged in the attempt to eradicate an entire people group. The 1.5-2 million noncombatants massacred in their homes and the millions of others forcefully uprooted deserved far more airtime than Jenkins gave it.
Read
July 11, 2014"Jenkins’s most important contribution comes in the book’s second half, as he surveys what the war did to religion. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism all experienced upheaval. Jenkins identifies the war’s consequences as nothing short of a 'global religious revolution.' ... Although Jenkins does not put it in these terms, it is clear that the First World War, while in important ways a modern war of religion, was more precisely a war of civil religion. The great powers, including the United States, easily mobilized religion to wage a crusade because both church and state had been in the habit of doing so for centuries, especially since the age of romantic nationalism that swept Europe after the French Revolution. If there ever had been a united 'Christendom,' by 1914 Christianity had been nationalized, instrumentalized, and divided into competing brands of civil religion. In the course of constructing the modern 'secular' state, nationalism freely appropriated the language, symbolism, ritual, and dogma of Christianity."
Read the full review here: http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
Read the full review here: http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
June 9, 2014
On the 100th anniversary year of the beginning of World War I, this book looks at the sense in which it was a great religious war.
I'm an admirer of several of Mr. Jenkins' books, but I came into this one with the wrong expectations. I somehow expected a chronicle of how the war began with what was really a religious dispute and exploded into what really was a worldwide religious conflagration.
That wasn't the case, though, and the book is more topical than chronological and therefore lacks a storyline.
What was disheartening to me was to learn that most of the major players in the Great War were at least nominally Christian-majority countries, and that soldiers on both sides were being encouraged to win one for Jesus and lick the heathen enemies. The scenario was somewhat different in World War II.
Jenkins makes the case that World War I transformed religious life throughout the world in a way that still is being experienced.
Passages of the book were very interesting to me, but on the whole it all seemed rather unfocused.
Which I realize could also be said of this review.
I'm an admirer of several of Mr. Jenkins' books, but I came into this one with the wrong expectations. I somehow expected a chronicle of how the war began with what was really a religious dispute and exploded into what really was a worldwide religious conflagration.
That wasn't the case, though, and the book is more topical than chronological and therefore lacks a storyline.
What was disheartening to me was to learn that most of the major players in the Great War were at least nominally Christian-majority countries, and that soldiers on both sides were being encouraged to win one for Jesus and lick the heathen enemies. The scenario was somewhat different in World War II.
Jenkins makes the case that World War I transformed religious life throughout the world in a way that still is being experienced.
Passages of the book were very interesting to me, but on the whole it all seemed rather unfocused.
Which I realize could also be said of this review.
December 24, 2015
The history of World War One has been overshadowed by the history of World War Two, although the first war was much more important. The world changed dramatically after that first war, and it's impossible to understand the modern world -- especially the modern Middle East -- without understanding how it came to be. The modern wars of today -- From Bosnia to Syria -- are the bitter fruits of a world torn asunder 100 years ago that is still attempting to sort itself out using bombs, bullets, propaganda, and Holy War rhetoric.
September 4, 2014
Philip Jenkins, The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (New York: HarperOne, 2014). Hardcover / Kindle
The Great War (1914–1918) is a turning point in world history. It destroyed empires and created nations. It wrecked Christendom, catalyzed secularism, and unleashed global religious forces that continue to affect the world today. “Only now, after a century,” writes Philip Jenkins in The Great and Holy War, “are we beginning to understand just how utterly that war destroyed one religious world and created another.”
Many books have been published to mark the centennial of the start of World War I. Some narrate the history of the entire conflict; others study this or that aspect of it in depth. Jenkins’s book belongs to the latter category. It focuses on how European combatants framed the conflict using the holy war rhetoric of medieval Christendom. Nations used this rhetoric whether or not they had an established state church. Soldiers were viewed as martyrs. They claimed angelic and miraculous interventions on the battlefield. Among the heterodox, paranormal, occult experiences were common. Even radical social movements such as Soviet Communism, though they were avowedly godless, expressed their aspirations in apocalyptic and millenarian terms.
After surveying the religious dimension of the rhetoric and experience of the combatants, Jenkins then shows some of the global consequences that arose in the aftermath of war. The Great War was truly a world war in that the empires fought over their colonies and enlisted their colonized subjects to fight on European soil. As they enlisted this or that colonized group to fight for them, they unleashed forces such as Zionism, anticolonialism, Armenian genocide, African indigenous churches, and politicized Islam—forces that had sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit religious dimensions.
These forces continue to influence world events today. Consider the Israel-Gaza conflict. The British Mandate in Palestine came about because of the Entente Powers defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which until then had held sway in that region. The United Kingdom had promised Zionists that it would work to establish a national Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1917. But it also made promises to Arabs, and established Hashemite kingdoms in Transjordan and Iraq after the war. Facing Western dominance in their ancestral homelands, Arabs developed two contrary responses: a secularized Arab pan-nationalism and a politicized Islam. Secularism was the choice of many Arab Christians and other minorities, who longed for Arab statehood but did not want Muslim dominance. Politicized Islam, on the other hand, longed to reestablish the caliphate, the Muslim umma (peoplehood, empire), and sharia as the law of the land. In Palestine, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas represent these contrary responses.
Or consider the depredations of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has been in the news of late for expelling Christians from their ancestral homelands. Until the Great War, the Middle East, though predominantly Muslim, contained substantial Christian minorities, groups that claimed direct links to the Apostolic Age and whose tenure in the land preceded the rise of Islam by centuries. This was especially the case in the region now known as Turkey, whose major cities were mentioned in the New Testament and which had been the Byzantine heartland in the 1100 years between Constantine and the fall of Constantinople. In 1915, fearing that the Entente Powers—who explicitly interpreted the Great War in terms of crusade and holy war—would destroy the caliphate and restore Christendom in Asia Minor, the Ottoman Turks began a genocide and expulsion of the Armenians, the Ottoman Empire’s largest Christian minority, as well as against Assyrian and Chalcedonian Christians. The genocide of the Armenians gave the Nazis hope that they likewise could murder the Jews with impunity. “Who, after all,” asked Adolph Hitler, “speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
It is easy for a Christian to point out these problems, which involve politicized Islam. But Christian readers of The Great and Holy War need to take to heart the lesson it teaches us about how easily biblical images and rhetoric, as well as the images and rhetoric of Christian tradition, can be used to incite, support, and sustain brutal warfare that kills millions. “[I]t is God who has summoned us to this war,” proclaimed Randolph McKim of Washington DC’s Episcopal Church of the Epiphany as the United States entered the war in 1917. “It is his war we are fighting.… This conflict is indeed a crusade. The greatest in history—the holiest. It is in the profoundest and truest sense a Holy War…. Yes, it is Christ, the King of Righteousness, who calls us to grapple in deadly strife with this unholy and blasphemous power [Germany].”
But just three years earlier, German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Vorwerk had reworked the Lord’s Prayer to say, in part, this: “Our Father, from the height of heaven, / Make haste to succor Thy German people. / Help us in the holy war…. In thy merciful patience, forgive / Each bullet and each blow / That misses the mark. / Lead us not into the temptation / Of letting our wrath be too gentle / In carrying out They divine judgment…. Thine is the kingdom, / The German land. / May we, through Thy mailed hand / Come to power and glory.”
Even granting, as Jenkins does, that the Entente Powers had more justice in their cause than the Central Powers had in theirs, the contrary rhetoric of the Christians on both sides of this conflict call into question whether God was truly on either side or whether each was simply using him to justify their nation’s actions. No wonder, in the aftermath of the war, Christendom died in Europe and secularism began to take its place. It had been killed by Christians.
For revealing the religious contours of a European (and American) religious world order now gone; for demonstrating that Christians—not just Muslims—have a history of politicizing their religion for violent purposes, even in recent times; and for showing how the religious world we inhabit is one birthed in the fires of the Great War, I highly recommend Philip Jenkins’s The Great and Holy War.
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
The Great War (1914–1918) is a turning point in world history. It destroyed empires and created nations. It wrecked Christendom, catalyzed secularism, and unleashed global religious forces that continue to affect the world today. “Only now, after a century,” writes Philip Jenkins in The Great and Holy War, “are we beginning to understand just how utterly that war destroyed one religious world and created another.”
Many books have been published to mark the centennial of the start of World War I. Some narrate the history of the entire conflict; others study this or that aspect of it in depth. Jenkins’s book belongs to the latter category. It focuses on how European combatants framed the conflict using the holy war rhetoric of medieval Christendom. Nations used this rhetoric whether or not they had an established state church. Soldiers were viewed as martyrs. They claimed angelic and miraculous interventions on the battlefield. Among the heterodox, paranormal, occult experiences were common. Even radical social movements such as Soviet Communism, though they were avowedly godless, expressed their aspirations in apocalyptic and millenarian terms.
After surveying the religious dimension of the rhetoric and experience of the combatants, Jenkins then shows some of the global consequences that arose in the aftermath of war. The Great War was truly a world war in that the empires fought over their colonies and enlisted their colonized subjects to fight on European soil. As they enlisted this or that colonized group to fight for them, they unleashed forces such as Zionism, anticolonialism, Armenian genocide, African indigenous churches, and politicized Islam—forces that had sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit religious dimensions.
These forces continue to influence world events today. Consider the Israel-Gaza conflict. The British Mandate in Palestine came about because of the Entente Powers defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which until then had held sway in that region. The United Kingdom had promised Zionists that it would work to establish a national Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1917. But it also made promises to Arabs, and established Hashemite kingdoms in Transjordan and Iraq after the war. Facing Western dominance in their ancestral homelands, Arabs developed two contrary responses: a secularized Arab pan-nationalism and a politicized Islam. Secularism was the choice of many Arab Christians and other minorities, who longed for Arab statehood but did not want Muslim dominance. Politicized Islam, on the other hand, longed to reestablish the caliphate, the Muslim umma (peoplehood, empire), and sharia as the law of the land. In Palestine, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas represent these contrary responses.
Or consider the depredations of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has been in the news of late for expelling Christians from their ancestral homelands. Until the Great War, the Middle East, though predominantly Muslim, contained substantial Christian minorities, groups that claimed direct links to the Apostolic Age and whose tenure in the land preceded the rise of Islam by centuries. This was especially the case in the region now known as Turkey, whose major cities were mentioned in the New Testament and which had been the Byzantine heartland in the 1100 years between Constantine and the fall of Constantinople. In 1915, fearing that the Entente Powers—who explicitly interpreted the Great War in terms of crusade and holy war—would destroy the caliphate and restore Christendom in Asia Minor, the Ottoman Turks began a genocide and expulsion of the Armenians, the Ottoman Empire’s largest Christian minority, as well as against Assyrian and Chalcedonian Christians. The genocide of the Armenians gave the Nazis hope that they likewise could murder the Jews with impunity. “Who, after all,” asked Adolph Hitler, “speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
It is easy for a Christian to point out these problems, which involve politicized Islam. But Christian readers of The Great and Holy War need to take to heart the lesson it teaches us about how easily biblical images and rhetoric, as well as the images and rhetoric of Christian tradition, can be used to incite, support, and sustain brutal warfare that kills millions. “[I]t is God who has summoned us to this war,” proclaimed Randolph McKim of Washington DC’s Episcopal Church of the Epiphany as the United States entered the war in 1917. “It is his war we are fighting.… This conflict is indeed a crusade. The greatest in history—the holiest. It is in the profoundest and truest sense a Holy War…. Yes, it is Christ, the King of Righteousness, who calls us to grapple in deadly strife with this unholy and blasphemous power [Germany].”
But just three years earlier, German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Vorwerk had reworked the Lord’s Prayer to say, in part, this: “Our Father, from the height of heaven, / Make haste to succor Thy German people. / Help us in the holy war…. In thy merciful patience, forgive / Each bullet and each blow / That misses the mark. / Lead us not into the temptation / Of letting our wrath be too gentle / In carrying out They divine judgment…. Thine is the kingdom, / The German land. / May we, through Thy mailed hand / Come to power and glory.”
Even granting, as Jenkins does, that the Entente Powers had more justice in their cause than the Central Powers had in theirs, the contrary rhetoric of the Christians on both sides of this conflict call into question whether God was truly on either side or whether each was simply using him to justify their nation’s actions. No wonder, in the aftermath of the war, Christendom died in Europe and secularism began to take its place. It had been killed by Christians.
For revealing the religious contours of a European (and American) religious world order now gone; for demonstrating that Christians—not just Muslims—have a history of politicizing their religion for violent purposes, even in recent times; and for showing how the religious world we inhabit is one birthed in the fires of the Great War, I highly recommend Philip Jenkins’s The Great and Holy War.
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
June 9, 2020
quite extraordinary and unusual history of WWI, showing how each side brought god onto their side, causing big rises in religion around the world in Christianity, but also started fundamentalist Islam. It's the kind of book that needs to be read twice as it's so packed with information.
September 11, 2018
Dr. Philip Jenkins thesis centers around the thought that World War I was actually not a political war, but a religious one. He invokes images of Christianized Western Europe at the beginning of the 20th century as a type of Medieval landscape that went to war purely on the proposition of religious fervor. If you read this and are too skeptical, you should be. Mostly because I think that Dr. Jenkins argument is really weak.
You’d have to read the book to get a full grasp on the argument, but what I thought was most interesting is that by the end of the book, the culmination of all the evidence he presents warps into an entirely different idea. At the beginning, he lays out the fact that World War I was a “religious crusade.” By the end, the conclusions he draws from the rest of the book more resemble that World War I was a turning point in world history and it’s grasp on religious ideals. Now this is a thesis I can get behind.
Part of the reason why I think the religious crusade talk is weak considering the scope of World War I is because Dr. Jenkins utilizes really weak sources to back up his proposition. Isolated incidents of religious war percolate in any global conflict. He cites German Lutheran Pastors,English Anglican Pastors, and American Evangelical Pastors amongst others who all spoke out quite fervently in nationalistic language shrouded under the guise of religion as to why their side was fighting the war. But this doesn’t suggest that the entire war was started because of religion: it just demonstrates that in every age there are radical religiously convicted people who try to push a point under the auspice of religion. I’ve never heard of that before (see: the crusades).
I came to agree with the conclusions he purported by the end of the book though. The religious landscape of the world was forever altered by the First World War, and there is no doubt about this. Here are a couple of ways in which it changed:
1) In Europe, men and women were both so desensitized to the mass carnage that was brought about by the war that they lost their spiritual footing. Dr. Jenkins mentions that there was a crucial shift even before the war to a more secular society. Perhaps the war really brought about the mass secularization of Europe. When looking to Europe today, you see dwindling numbers of people who consider themselves overtly religious. Perhaps the two world wars that brought about so much pain and suffering are the genesis of this. Perhaps not.
2) The roots of anti-semitism can actually be traced to the end of World War I. The “Jewish problem” (I refer to this in the book I read called “In the Garden of Beasts“) was mostly fiction. It actually is rooted in German conspiracy theories that a) the German Jews shirked their civic duties to their country when they refused to go to the front to fight for Germany (this is a huge lie as over 80% of the Jews enlisted in the German Army saw combat on the Western Front) and b) they thought that after the war, there was another conspiracy that suggested that the Jews were working together to work their way to the top using their stereotyped financial prowess to ultimately bring a new world order into existence (also a ridiculous notion).
3) In one of the most interesting chapters of the book, he talks about how the war was also the genesis of radical Islam. I’ve written a little bit about this in the book “Fall of the Ottomans,” but essentially after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, three major things happened in the Middle East: a) the ottomans killed off thousands, if not millions, of Christians in areas that were the centers of probably the oldest types of Christianity in the world. Because of this, Muslims dominated the left over populous, making the Middle East dominantly Muslim. b) the British, after their takeover of Jerusalem and other centers, carved up the Middle East into national identities, new nations that had never been seen before. In fact, the Middle East as we know it today was because of the treaties at the end of World War I (see my book review on the Fall of the Ottomans for more information). c) The Ottoman’s were not pacifists, but had leadership to organize the separate factions of Islam. After the empire crumbled, the Shia versus Sunni argument came back to haunt them. In addition, bands of ultra-conservative Muslims formed coalitions that were once suppressed due to the rule of the Ottomans, therefore contributing to the rampant terrorist organizations that we see today.
In all, I think this was a really interesting book even if I disagreed with some of his reasonings.
You’d have to read the book to get a full grasp on the argument, but what I thought was most interesting is that by the end of the book, the culmination of all the evidence he presents warps into an entirely different idea. At the beginning, he lays out the fact that World War I was a “religious crusade.” By the end, the conclusions he draws from the rest of the book more resemble that World War I was a turning point in world history and it’s grasp on religious ideals. Now this is a thesis I can get behind.
Part of the reason why I think the religious crusade talk is weak considering the scope of World War I is because Dr. Jenkins utilizes really weak sources to back up his proposition. Isolated incidents of religious war percolate in any global conflict. He cites German Lutheran Pastors,English Anglican Pastors, and American Evangelical Pastors amongst others who all spoke out quite fervently in nationalistic language shrouded under the guise of religion as to why their side was fighting the war. But this doesn’t suggest that the entire war was started because of religion: it just demonstrates that in every age there are radical religiously convicted people who try to push a point under the auspice of religion. I’ve never heard of that before (see: the crusades).
I came to agree with the conclusions he purported by the end of the book though. The religious landscape of the world was forever altered by the First World War, and there is no doubt about this. Here are a couple of ways in which it changed:
1) In Europe, men and women were both so desensitized to the mass carnage that was brought about by the war that they lost their spiritual footing. Dr. Jenkins mentions that there was a crucial shift even before the war to a more secular society. Perhaps the war really brought about the mass secularization of Europe. When looking to Europe today, you see dwindling numbers of people who consider themselves overtly religious. Perhaps the two world wars that brought about so much pain and suffering are the genesis of this. Perhaps not.
2) The roots of anti-semitism can actually be traced to the end of World War I. The “Jewish problem” (I refer to this in the book I read called “In the Garden of Beasts“) was mostly fiction. It actually is rooted in German conspiracy theories that a) the German Jews shirked their civic duties to their country when they refused to go to the front to fight for Germany (this is a huge lie as over 80% of the Jews enlisted in the German Army saw combat on the Western Front) and b) they thought that after the war, there was another conspiracy that suggested that the Jews were working together to work their way to the top using their stereotyped financial prowess to ultimately bring a new world order into existence (also a ridiculous notion).
3) In one of the most interesting chapters of the book, he talks about how the war was also the genesis of radical Islam. I’ve written a little bit about this in the book “Fall of the Ottomans,” but essentially after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, three major things happened in the Middle East: a) the ottomans killed off thousands, if not millions, of Christians in areas that were the centers of probably the oldest types of Christianity in the world. Because of this, Muslims dominated the left over populous, making the Middle East dominantly Muslim. b) the British, after their takeover of Jerusalem and other centers, carved up the Middle East into national identities, new nations that had never been seen before. In fact, the Middle East as we know it today was because of the treaties at the end of World War I (see my book review on the Fall of the Ottomans for more information). c) The Ottoman’s were not pacifists, but had leadership to organize the separate factions of Islam. After the empire crumbled, the Shia versus Sunni argument came back to haunt them. In addition, bands of ultra-conservative Muslims formed coalitions that were once suppressed due to the rule of the Ottomans, therefore contributing to the rampant terrorist organizations that we see today.
In all, I think this was a really interesting book even if I disagreed with some of his reasonings.
March 12, 2024
The book I read was titled 'The Great and Holy War: How World War I Changed Religion For Ever' though when first published it was titled 'The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade' - significantly different descriptions - enough to make you imagine that they were different books or books with different thesis. In fact the different subtitles actually describe the books failure to be clear about what it is trying to say. It certainly fails to present a cogent arguments about the war changing religion or how it changes into a crusade. It sets up a lot of paper dragons such as 'World War I was supposed to take place in a secular age' and then goes on to tell us in a tone of amazed revelation that ordinary soldiers and their families expressed their views about the war, life, death, etc., using Christian terms of reference. That is about the level of the cogency of any argument in this book. The author has a real sense of how what people said at the time of WWI fits into a historical context - the kind of blood thirsty things various Church leaders said about their enemies during WWI fits into the way they spoke about wars in the colonial sphere over the previous fifty years - the words hadn't changed much - just that they were being used against other Europeans (i.e. white people) rather then colonial (i.e. blacks'). That this language should now demonize white men is not really surprising when you consider that the major atrocity attributed to German troops was the cutting off of the hands of Belgian children. That the Germans committed many atrocities that prefigure what happened on large scale in WWII is not to be denied but the cutting off of children's hands was totally spurious, but was continually repeated and believed throughout the War. It also banished from Europeans memory the fact that the only children who had had their hands cut off - in their probable tens of thousands - were African children in the Congo under the regimen of the Belgian King.
If you want to read a really excellent book on how the practices of colonial wars came home, took root and turned around and bit Europeans on the noise read Sven Lindqvists 'Exterminate All the Brutes'.
For a reader who has never seen the grotesque fulminations of religious leaders in the first world war then no doubt this book will be an eye opener - but it tells us less about religion during or after the first world war then about why it was so impossible for people to believe that the Germans were committing wholescale atrocities during WWII until the pictures came from the camp. The language used in WWI was so florid and overblown that it could never be used again.
I will give the book and author credit for including significant amounts of information on Russia and the position of the Orthodox Church - usually books like this even if claiming a general remit tend to be strictly Britain/France/German centered.
It would be unfair to say that this is a scissors and paste job put together to tie in with the First World War centenary - there is a good deal of work here but one wonders at the depth of the author's understanding of his material when he lumps Italy with France calling it a republic and says the horseman motif in Andrei Bely's novel 'St Petersburg' refers to one of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse when it is the central character/image in Pushkin's poem the Bronze Horseman that is referred to.
If you want to understand religion in the 19th and 20th century read Michael Burleigh's books 'Earthly Powers' and 'Sacred Causes'.
If you want to read a really excellent book on how the practices of colonial wars came home, took root and turned around and bit Europeans on the noise read Sven Lindqvists 'Exterminate All the Brutes'.
For a reader who has never seen the grotesque fulminations of religious leaders in the first world war then no doubt this book will be an eye opener - but it tells us less about religion during or after the first world war then about why it was so impossible for people to believe that the Germans were committing wholescale atrocities during WWII until the pictures came from the camp. The language used in WWI was so florid and overblown that it could never be used again.
I will give the book and author credit for including significant amounts of information on Russia and the position of the Orthodox Church - usually books like this even if claiming a general remit tend to be strictly Britain/France/German centered.
It would be unfair to say that this is a scissors and paste job put together to tie in with the First World War centenary - there is a good deal of work here but one wonders at the depth of the author's understanding of his material when he lumps Italy with France calling it a republic and says the horseman motif in Andrei Bely's novel 'St Petersburg' refers to one of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse when it is the central character/image in Pushkin's poem the Bronze Horseman that is referred to.
If you want to understand religion in the 19th and 20th century read Michael Burleigh's books 'Earthly Powers' and 'Sacred Causes'.
November 10, 2019
World War I, also called the “The Great War” took the lives of an estimated 10 million combatants. It was purportedly the war to end all wars, yet within 20 years it spawned an even more horrific conflict. The thesis of Philip Jenkins’ work is that WWI was the last great religious war, and that it in turn changed the future character of religion. What were the religious worldviews that both effected and were reshaped by this conflict? The ostensible start of the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. This is a volatile region wherein three major world religions converge: Roman Catholicism (Croatia), Eastern Orthodoxy (Serbia), and Islam (Bosnia). As the war ensues, add German Lutheranism, British Anglicanism, French Catholicism and finally American Fundamentalism. In France, secularism was already in a culture war with Catholicism, hence the dueling construction of the Eiffel Tower (secular) and the great cathedral of Sacré-Coeur (Sacred Heart built by Catholic conservatives). Russian Orthodoxy was soon to be decimated by the ruthless purges of a growing dialectical Marxism. German Lutheranism had been heavily infected by liberal theology, and had long-since “rejected unquestioning reliance on such traditional sources of religious authority as the Bible and early church tradition.” In its place, German protestants adhered to “incisive German scholarship” which gave allegiance to a “Zwei-Reiche-Lahre” (two kingdoms doctrine) which in turn gave rise to a form of social Darwinism which held that the “German Reich demanded attention as the highest accomplishment” of the kingdom of God.” American religion had become enamored with dispensational theology, which anticipated a cataclysmic war (Armageddon) that would usher in the millennial reign of Christ. Add to this motley mix the seminal hope of European Jews for a homeland (Balfour Declaration) and the growing tensions between Ottoman Turks, Christian Armenians, and Palestinian/Arabian Muslims. This war quickly devolved into a “holy war” between “holy nations,” each marching to their own version of “truth.” The author posits that these nations should have “heard countless echoes from their own rhetoric” if they had truly desired to staunch the march towards a second great war; as Jenkins astutely notes, “Ghosts marched.” Overall, this was a highly informative work. However I often found myself bogged down in a myriad of facts, while simultaneously not comprehending the author’s main premise.
December 8, 2017
There’s nothing like using religious imagery to demonize your opponent. Nothing comes closer to rallying your side to do the worst against the other side than claiming you’re engaged in god’s work. Philip Jenkin’s, “The Great and Holy War” demonstrates that on all fronts, from Germany to Britain to France to America to the Ottoman Empire and Russia and everyone else in between, religious concepts and messages were used to wage the First World War.
The most interesting aspect for me was two fold: First, all the sources presented from the pamphlets to the books and essays and speeches that were prepared and delivered to keep the hives humming require further reading. At least I found myself googling some of them as Jenkins wrote of them.
The second was that although the Ottoman Empire was very much involved and came to an end at the end of World War One, this war was primarily a civil war in Christendom. And afterwards, the losing sides had to evaluate why god let them lose. And then, the winning sides had to decide what to do with the vanquished. What was god’s next instructions?
It was interesting to see, too, how as the war dragged on, some people started looking towards other forms of spiritualism, particularly that of Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophy. And how as the war was ending, the old religions were undergoing a transformation. Many gave it up while others entrenched, felt a more literal reading of the holy texts was in order. And while in Russia, the Bolsheviks destroyed the church that was once tied to the Tsar, the people and the land; elsewhere, the churches were having to accept they no longer could tie themselves to the nations and accept living aside secular governments. Perhaps it can be said that World War One was the last time the west accepted any form of theocracy.
World War One in hindsight was such a ridiculous conflict, such a waste of life, such a disaster with nothing gained. In fact twenty-years on, it only gave us the Second World War. One wonders why there weren’t more desertions, more refusals to fight. Jenkins makes it clear: Wrap your message in religious language, and you can mobilize nations to war.
The most interesting aspect for me was two fold: First, all the sources presented from the pamphlets to the books and essays and speeches that were prepared and delivered to keep the hives humming require further reading. At least I found myself googling some of them as Jenkins wrote of them.
The second was that although the Ottoman Empire was very much involved and came to an end at the end of World War One, this war was primarily a civil war in Christendom. And afterwards, the losing sides had to evaluate why god let them lose. And then, the winning sides had to decide what to do with the vanquished. What was god’s next instructions?
It was interesting to see, too, how as the war dragged on, some people started looking towards other forms of spiritualism, particularly that of Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophy. And how as the war was ending, the old religions were undergoing a transformation. Many gave it up while others entrenched, felt a more literal reading of the holy texts was in order. And while in Russia, the Bolsheviks destroyed the church that was once tied to the Tsar, the people and the land; elsewhere, the churches were having to accept they no longer could tie themselves to the nations and accept living aside secular governments. Perhaps it can be said that World War One was the last time the west accepted any form of theocracy.
World War One in hindsight was such a ridiculous conflict, such a waste of life, such a disaster with nothing gained. In fact twenty-years on, it only gave us the Second World War. One wonders why there weren’t more desertions, more refusals to fight. Jenkins makes it clear: Wrap your message in religious language, and you can mobilize nations to war.
May 2, 2015
I was a history major at University. But I never read the politically-incorrect plus non-New Covenantal sermon statements which Jenkins documents christian pastors, on both sides of the conflict, as preaching.
I am appalled by Mr. Jenkins documentation of the role that clerics of every denominational stripe …Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant… contributed to the fueling of the deadly horrors of hyper-militarism, hyper-nationalism, and in Germany especially, antisemitic proto-Nazism.
I was equally shocked by things early 20th Century Christian pulpiteers preached about violence and war. What most taught isn't what Jesus and the New Covenant writers say for anyone to read, e.g., Matthew 5:38-48 & Romans 12:10-21!
The Muslim Ottoman Empire was the only state combattant that conformed with the hateful, violent dictates of their deity, Allah, in ruthlessly dealing with its infidel enemies. (Koran 5:33, 9:5, & 9:29 among over 100 similar verses.) It was during the WWI period that, what was left of the Islamic Caliphate in the Ottoman Empire, almost succeeded in complete genocide of the Armenian race.
You will find fascinating Mr. Jenkins explanation of the intricate weaving of a number of different themes which resulted in WWI being dubbed as a "holy war" by all sides of the unbiblical violence and most pulpits in every so-called "Christian country" participating in it.
Read this book and be flabbergasted!
Blessings in Jesus all,
GaryFPatton
© Copyright 2014.08.13 gfp ' 42™
I am appalled by Mr. Jenkins documentation of the role that clerics of every denominational stripe …Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant… contributed to the fueling of the deadly horrors of hyper-militarism, hyper-nationalism, and in Germany especially, antisemitic proto-Nazism.
I was equally shocked by things early 20th Century Christian pulpiteers preached about violence and war. What most taught isn't what Jesus and the New Covenant writers say for anyone to read, e.g., Matthew 5:38-48 & Romans 12:10-21!
The Muslim Ottoman Empire was the only state combattant that conformed with the hateful, violent dictates of their deity, Allah, in ruthlessly dealing with its infidel enemies. (Koran 5:33, 9:5, & 9:29 among over 100 similar verses.) It was during the WWI period that, what was left of the Islamic Caliphate in the Ottoman Empire, almost succeeded in complete genocide of the Armenian race.
You will find fascinating Mr. Jenkins explanation of the intricate weaving of a number of different themes which resulted in WWI being dubbed as a "holy war" by all sides of the unbiblical violence and most pulpits in every so-called "Christian country" participating in it.
Read this book and be flabbergasted!
Blessings in Jesus all,
GaryFPatton
© Copyright 2014.08.13 gfp ' 42™
October 17, 2014
I wrote this review for my school's monthly magazine.
This past summer marked the 100th anniversary of First World War (1914-1918), a war often forgotten and little understood. Philip Jenkins, professor of history at Baylor University, retells the story afresh in The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. Jenkins argues that we cannot understand the war apart from understanding its religious and spiritual aspects. "The war took place in a world in which religious faith was still the norm," he writes. Elsewhere he writes that "[r]eligion is essential to understanding the war, to understanding why people went to war, what they hoped to achieve through war, and why they stayed at war."
Jenkins does not recount the war in its entirety, but instead chooses to highlight several events and examples of the prevailing religious rhetoric. For example, he examines the national "messianic" visions of nations such as Germany and Russia and the calls-to-arms in America presented in crusading terms. In one chapter we read about the genocide of Armenians on the Eastern Front while in a different chapter he argues that the war set in motion a more activist radicalization of Islam.
Some readers will find his presentation disjointed, missing a unifying theme; others will appreciate the various selections that serve as snapshots into the religious dimensions of the war. All readers, however, will come away with a better understanding of the "Great and Holy War" and grasp how it irrevocably changed the world, even into our own present day.
This past summer marked the 100th anniversary of First World War (1914-1918), a war often forgotten and little understood. Philip Jenkins, professor of history at Baylor University, retells the story afresh in The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. Jenkins argues that we cannot understand the war apart from understanding its religious and spiritual aspects. "The war took place in a world in which religious faith was still the norm," he writes. Elsewhere he writes that "[r]eligion is essential to understanding the war, to understanding why people went to war, what they hoped to achieve through war, and why they stayed at war."
Jenkins does not recount the war in its entirety, but instead chooses to highlight several events and examples of the prevailing religious rhetoric. For example, he examines the national "messianic" visions of nations such as Germany and Russia and the calls-to-arms in America presented in crusading terms. In one chapter we read about the genocide of Armenians on the Eastern Front while in a different chapter he argues that the war set in motion a more activist radicalization of Islam.
Some readers will find his presentation disjointed, missing a unifying theme; others will appreciate the various selections that serve as snapshots into the religious dimensions of the war. All readers, however, will come away with a better understanding of the "Great and Holy War" and grasp how it irrevocably changed the world, even into our own present day.
January 12, 2018
Interesting expose of the religious dynamic at play in the years before, during, and after World War I (the Great War). Again, history is composed of a multitude of layers and perspectives, each essential to creating the panoramic story of the whole. As the author emphasizes throughout, understanding the motivations of this war and its impact on people, nations, and religious institutions (not to mention the converse - the impact of religious fervor on the war itself) is critical to properly understanding the context of the modern era; the Great War was arguably a monumental transformational moment whose long term results are evident in the 21st Century present reality. Fascinating, in that World War II is more frequently in vogue and a regular allusion in the common vernacular, yet arguably far less transformative than the first.
One quote from the conclusion that I appreciate: "Observing a revolution is quite different from comprehending it. Only now, after a century, are we beginning to understand just how utterly that war destroyed one religious world and created another." The first is a fitting critique to all those who would claim to understand our present moment, this modern era. We may be living in an age of technological, political, societal revolution, and on the cusp of more - but the dynamics are legion, and comprehension is a ways off, because the results are not yet known and the transformation is as yet incomplete. Best to continue to observe, than be too quick to render final judgment.
One quote from the conclusion that I appreciate: "Observing a revolution is quite different from comprehending it. Only now, after a century, are we beginning to understand just how utterly that war destroyed one religious world and created another." The first is a fitting critique to all those who would claim to understand our present moment, this modern era. We may be living in an age of technological, political, societal revolution, and on the cusp of more - but the dynamics are legion, and comprehension is a ways off, because the results are not yet known and the transformation is as yet incomplete. Best to continue to observe, than be too quick to render final judgment.
August 12, 2016
Muslims aren’t the only people who talk about holy wars and religious crusades. Philip Jenkins’ big point in The Great and Holy War is that “not just incidentally but repeatedly and centrally, official statements and propaganda declare that the war is being fought for God’s cause, or for his glory, and such claims pervade the media and organs of popular culture. Moreover, they identify the state and its armed forces as agents or implements of God. Advancing the nation’s cause and interests is indistinguishable from promoting and defending God’s cause or (in a Christian context) of bringing in his kingdom on earth.” Of course every combatant had other war aims as well, but so did the medieval crusaders and so do ISIS. Jenkins proves this part of his argument convincingly, bringing example after example of people claiming that the war was about doing God’s will. Sometimes his evidence is exaggerated or taken out of context – such as his failure to discuss the crusading imagery in D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (1915) within the context of Thomas Dixon’s attempt to revive the Klu Klux Klan, but it is nonetheless incontestable that a crazy number of Christians found religious meanings in the First World War.
Read my full review here: https://wordsbecamebooks.com/2016/08/...
Read my full review here: https://wordsbecamebooks.com/2016/08/...
May 6, 2015
That World War 1 "destroyed one religious world, and created another" is a thesis Jenkins well supports. This period of history witnessed the end of the Ottoman Empire and the redrawing of borders in the Middle East, the October Revolution, the Balfour Declaration supporting the formation of an independent Jewish state, and the end of the Caliphate. Colonial peoples began organizing for independence. In Europe itself, the war gave birth to apocalyptic interpretations of history on the one hand and challenged traditional teachings of the church on the other. In the years leading up to war, nationalism was fueled and sanctified in religious terms. Soldiers on all sides were fighting for the kingdom of God.
"Religion is essential to understanding the war, to understanding why people went to war, what they hoped to achieve through war, and why they stayed at war."
World War 1 serves as a sound warning of the dangers of religious culture wars and the idolatry of nationalism. It illustrates how quickly the world can change and the great capacity for evil that resides within us.
The war permanently changed the political, religious, and economic landscape not only of Europe, but the world.
"Religion is essential to understanding the war, to understanding why people went to war, what they hoped to achieve through war, and why they stayed at war."
World War 1 serves as a sound warning of the dangers of religious culture wars and the idolatry of nationalism. It illustrates how quickly the world can change and the great capacity for evil that resides within us.
The war permanently changed the political, religious, and economic landscape not only of Europe, but the world.
March 8, 2018
This book looks at the religious aspects of World War I. The author looks at how soldiers at the front experienced their religion, both in more orthodox ways and in terms of signs and wonders that they saw as evidences of the supernatural. The author looks at how the war changed the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim worlds. He credits the war with discrediting the established churches, and making way for the spread of Christianity into the developing world, enabling Zionism, and destroying Islamic political power to make way for new revivalist movements. The book is well-researched and documented. However, I thought the title was a little misleading. The author never really establishes that most people saw World War I in terms of a religious conflict. I would have also liked the author to have addressed urbanization and industrialization, both of which were occurring at the time, and both of which had negative effects on organized religion. I thought he should have looked at whether the soldiers that he describes who seemed to have such a close relationship with the supernatural were from rural areas or urban areas and what their backgrounds were like. However, I would recommend the book.
June 7, 2015
Examining a wide range of information about the causes, events, and aftermath of World War I, scholar/historian of religion Philip Jenkins paints a riveting tale of the religious aspects of that conflict, and the ramifications and changes affected by the event.
Apocalyptic views and changing social orders. Battlefield visions and the use of faith in the dissemination of propaganda. French Catholics against German Lutherans, Catholics and Protestants against Orthodox. European colonial powers against each other in their holdings in Africa and southeast Asia, the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the divvying-up of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent on the basis of European interests and religious affinities of the populace in the areas that the European powers controlled.
All fascinating (to me, at least).
Jenkins builds a good argument as to how WWI was a seminal event that sparked the development of today's shift of Christianity to the global south occurred, along with the seemingly meteoric rise of fundamentalist strains of all three Abrahamaic monotheistic religions, and the ramifications that are still being felt today in most parts of the world.
Apocalyptic views and changing social orders. Battlefield visions and the use of faith in the dissemination of propaganda. French Catholics against German Lutherans, Catholics and Protestants against Orthodox. European colonial powers against each other in their holdings in Africa and southeast Asia, the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the divvying-up of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent on the basis of European interests and religious affinities of the populace in the areas that the European powers controlled.
All fascinating (to me, at least).
Jenkins builds a good argument as to how WWI was a seminal event that sparked the development of today's shift of Christianity to the global south occurred, along with the seemingly meteoric rise of fundamentalist strains of all three Abrahamaic monotheistic religions, and the ramifications that are still being felt today in most parts of the world.
December 11, 2018
Important Perspective!
The author squeezes dense material into an easy-to-read package, full of relevant stories, vignettes and references. Highly recommended to better understand modern religious and societal trends.
The author squeezes dense material into an easy-to-read package, full of relevant stories, vignettes and references. Highly recommended to better understand modern religious and societal trends.
November 11, 2014
Fascinating look at the devastating impact of the Great War on the religious life of Europe. Some sections are more interesting than others. The rise of the modern occult (and the modern horror film) is really a reaction to the staggering loss of life.
One problem with this book is that Philip Jenkins is not really functioning as an impartial historian, more like an apologist for the established Christian churches of Europe. He goes way out of the way to praise leaders who condemned the great war, (especially if they happen to be Roman Catholic) but reserves only stinging scorn for Protestant leaders who supported their country and their fighting men. He's also very, very careful to sidestep any questions about the Catholic church's accountability for centuries of European anti-Semitism, and especially for what that anti-Semitism led to in the Twentieth Century.
It's no accident that this book has a favorable blurb on the back cover from The American, the official newspaper of the Jesuit order.
One problem with this book is that Philip Jenkins is not really functioning as an impartial historian, more like an apologist for the established Christian churches of Europe. He goes way out of the way to praise leaders who condemned the great war, (especially if they happen to be Roman Catholic) but reserves only stinging scorn for Protestant leaders who supported their country and their fighting men. He's also very, very careful to sidestep any questions about the Catholic church's accountability for centuries of European anti-Semitism, and especially for what that anti-Semitism led to in the Twentieth Century.
It's no accident that this book has a favorable blurb on the back cover from The American, the official newspaper of the Jesuit order.
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