Germany’s unprovoked aggression in Belgium created the imperative. Britain had signed a treaty with Belgium in 1839, guaranteeing its neutrality in the event of a European conflict. After Germany declared war on France, London issued Berlin an ultimatum not to invade Belgium. But the Kaiser ignored the warning and masses of German troops poured across the border.
Within hours Great Britain was at war with Germany. Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, addressing the House of Commons on August 6, 1914, emphasized the nation’s political and moral commitments: “I do not believe any nation ever entered into a greater controversy . . . with a clearer conscience and a stronger conviction that it is fighting, not for aggression, not for the maintenance of its own selfish interest, but that it is fighting in defense of principles, the maintenance of which is vital to the civilization of the world.”23 If the First World War became something like a religious war, it did not begin this way.
A MODERN CRUSADE
The ethos of patriotism and muscular faith could serve a noble purpose. It conditioned a generation of young men for the unprecedented sacrifices of the First World War. From the opening days of the conflict, however, British clergymen seized upon this ethos and transformed it into something more: the doctrine of the holy war.
Under this vision, the aims of the state became almost identical to those of the church. Practically speaking, this meant that political and military objectives were given a religious rationale, backed up by the Bible. Britain was by no means unique in this regard: every combatant nation adopted more or less the same posture. Religious leaders across national and religious lines became fervent defenders of the war effort. “Clergymen dressed Jesus in khaki and had him firing machine guns,” writes one historian. “The war became one not of justice but of righteousness.”24 In sermons, books, articles, and pamphlets, they portrayed the conflict as a holy crusade: a spiritual battle against a demonic foe with whom no compromise was possible.
How do we explain it? The reasons were complex; the influence of Christianity in society, of course, looked different in Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and elsewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, the European states all had long traditions of “national” or “established” churches, meaning state support for a favored Christian denomination. The alliance of church and state allowed the secular goals of government to get mixed up with spiritual goals of Christianity.
Add to this the rise of the most potent political ideology of the hour: nationalism. The nation-state was replacing religion as a powerful source of meaning and identity in people’s lives. “Nationalism effortlessly incorporated some of the major themes of the Judeo-Christian tradition,” writes Michael Burleigh in Earthly Powers: Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War. This included “the belief that a people had been chosen to fulfill a providential purpose.”25
For devoted nationalists, their patriotic faith was equivalent to membership in an alternative church. For religious believers, nationalism offered a grandiose political outlet for their faith commitments. The result was the birth of Christian nationalism, the near sanctification of the modern state.
In his classic critique of British foreign policy, Imperialism (1902), J. A. Hobson accused the Church of England of invariably giving its blessing to the nation’s military adventures. “In England the State Church has never permitted the spirit of the Prince of Peace to interfere when statesmen and soldiers appealed to the passions of race-lust, conquest, and revenge.”26 Although not accurate—church leaders could take the government to task for its moral lapses—the charge was by no means groundless. As the established church, the Church of England was integral to the British state and most often sided with King and Parliament on issues concerning the national interest.
The situation was much the same in Germany, where Protestant clerics received government support and, in turn, tended to support the state in its domestic and foreign policy. Thus, in September 1914, a group of ninety-three leading German intellectuals, including many theologians, issued a declaration endorsing without qualification the Kaiser’s war policy as essential to the defense of Christian civilization.27 Catholic clergy in France followed a similar pattern. Even ministers in the United States, with no established church, caught war fever. Such was the crusading mood on both sides of the Atlantic that even religious groups active in the peace movement at the turn of the century gave themselves fully to the cause.
The Christian nationalism that characterized the religious communities of Europe, however, only partly explains this enthusiasm. To it must be added The Myth of Progress that, as we’ve seen, functioned for many like a substitute faith. Many religious believers—especially those drifting away from historic Christianity—adopted its secular aims and assumptions. “One thing is clear: the future of the world is democratic, and nothing can stop it,” proclaimed a London minister. “Progress is by Divine authority, by Divine necessity; God is the great innovator.”28
ENGLAND AS THE SALT OF THE EARTH
As Christian clergy transformed themselves into holy warriors, one theme appeared in common among the combatants: the belief that their nations were specially chosen by Providence to accomplish his progressive purposes on the world stage. Fidelity to God demanded fidelity to one’s country as God’s instrument, especially in wartime. Cross and Crown must be kept together.
In England, this idea could be traced as far back as the English Reformation, launched in the 1530s under Henry VIII. Once Protestantism, embodied in the Anglican Church, became the nation’s official religion, church and state joined in common cause against Catholicism. As such, they represented a new and vital front in the advance of God’s kingdom. “This schema,” writes historian John Spurr, “gave a leading role to the godly prince, the new Constantine, whose task it was to further the Reformation, take on Antichrist and hasten the final apocalypse.”29
By the time of the Glorious Revolution (1689), Great Britain’s self-identity as an exceptional nation—as a nation chosen by God for holy purposes—was secure. The First World War revealed that the concept was alive and well, at least among many of the clergy. “Who are we?” asked John Hancock in God’s Dealings with the British Empire (1916). In answering, Handcock piled one biblical image on top of another. “We are God’s chosen people, His inheritance, the salt of the earth, His loved ones, His glory, the people He delights in, His sons and His daughters. What more can we wish for?”30
Likewise, T. W. Crafer, vicar of All Saints Church, Cambridge, saw England, like Israel, as the apple of God’s eye. “We believe that we are a nation wondrously favored by God, and we like to think of ourselves as a chosen people, whose name stands in the world for righteousness and peace.” An empire as powerful as Great Britain, he reasoned, fighting to defend the weak against the strong, “must be a precious instrument for good in the hands of God.”31 The wartime advocacy of Bishop Winnington-Ingram, as described by his biographer, probably applied to the majority of English clergymen: “There was for him a sacredness about England which was beyond argument. . . . His instinctive judgment was that the national cause must be right.”32
Britons of all classes could point to their empire’s many accomplishments: its lead role in abolishing the international slave trade, its expanding panoply of human liberties, its united commonwealth, its civilizing influence wherever the Union Jack found safe harbor. Under this view, England was “the polished arrow” in the quiver of the Almighty, a nation with a special task in the world.33
It was the English clergy, though, that transformed the political-military task of punishing German aggression into a righteous crusade: a struggle between Christianity and paganism. Ministers of the Church of England, as servants of God and of the state, became some of the most effective recruiting agents during the war.34
AMERICA AS A CITY ON A HILL
The concept of America as an exceptional nation is as old as the republic, and older still. Ever since John Wint
hrop and his band of Puritans landed at Massachusetts Bay in 1630, Americans have thought of themselves as pilgrims on a divine “errand in the wilderness,” destined to establish a holy commonwealth and “a city on a hill.”
This theme reappears constantly, framing the nation’s political crises beginning with the American Revolution. Evangelical ministers blessed the cause of independence from their pulpits throughout the war.
Preaching before the Connecticut General Assembly, Ezra Stiles used Deuteronomy 26:19 to address “the political welfare of God’s American Israel.”35 The most rationalistic of the American Founders—including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams—argued in much the same terms. “Their God was intimately involved in the events of American history,” writes Conrad Cherry in God’s New Israel. “Divine Providence was the force that moved the United States to liberty; eventually providence would, through the example of the United States, direct the world to the same end.”36
Thus, on April 2, 1917, when Woodrow Wilson delivered his brief to Congress for American intervention in the First World War, he echoed the themes of American Exceptionalism that had inspired virtually every president before him. He said it was America’s privilege to “spend her blood and her might” for the principles of liberty and justice upon which the nation was founded. Leading a concert of peace-loving nations, the United States “shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.” Paraphrasing Martin Luther’s rebuttal to ecclesiastical tyranny at the Diet of Worms, he concluded: “God helping her, she can do no other.”37
Wilson came to office promising to keep America out of a European war. His conversion set off the equivalent of a tent revival meeting among the nation’s clergy. Monsignor C. F. Thomas, speaking at St. Patrick’s Church in Washington DC, saw the Divine hand at work in America’s historic commitment to democratic ideals. “The Providence of God destines this nation to last—indefinitely, we confidently trust,” he said. “The whole world looks to us to carry to the future what will save the future from disorder, confusion, anarchy, perhaps dissolution. But our trust cannot be fulfilled without the loyalty, love, personal and patriotic efforts of each and every individual.”38
Samuel Zane Batten, a Baptist preacher and secretary of the Northern Baptist Convention’s War Commission, attached deep spiritual significance to America’s engagement: “This war for the destruction of injustice of inhumanity is a holy crusade and a continuation of Christ’s sacrificial service for the redemption of the world.”39 Likewise, Randolph McKim, a Presbyterian minister in Washington DC, put the war in essentially apocalyptic terms: “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.”40
GERMANY: GOD IS WITH US
Germany under the Kaiser was even more brazen about associating its political claims with the Divine Will. In Berlin, Emperor Wilhelm II, who also served as supreme bishop of the Prussian Church, delivered this message to his troops at the outbreak of war: “Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, on me as German Emperor, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon. His sword and His visor. . . . Death to cowards and unbelievers!”41
The problem in Germany went much deeper than an eccentric Kaiser. Taking Christian nationalism to its logical conclusion, many pastors equated Christianity with the German Volk. “The German national soul is saturated with the spirit of God,” proclaimed Gottfried Naumann. “We fight for this soul on behalf of the world, because we know that it is a work of God and contains God’s blessings for the entire world.”42 Theologian Ernst Troeltsch made no distinction between the will of a “divine world ruler” and German culture. “Our faith is not just that we can and must defend our state and homeland but that our national essence contains an inexhaustible richness and value that are inexpressibly important for mankind, a value that the Lord and God of history has entrusted to our protection and development.”43
In Earthly Powers, historian Michael Burleigh suggests that liberal Protestant theologians, by emphasizing the “immanence” or immediate presence of God, were prone to confuse the Volksgeist with the Holy Spirit. Their theology “meant that He was manifest in the intense emotions of August 1914, directing the movements of German armies at war.”44
The outpouring of support among the German people for war—and the apparent return of worshippers to formerly empty churches—seemed to signal a New Pentecost. Ministers spoke of an Offenbarung, or “revelation,” as well as Verklärung, or “transfiguration,” to describe the war’s effects on the national climate. The slogan Gott mit uns (God with us) became a favorite expression of the German people.45 “Germany’s Protestant preachers and theologians frankly exulted in the outbreak of war,” writes Philip Jenkins. “Christian leaders treated the war as a spiritual event, in which their nation was playing a messianic role in Europe and the world.”46
THE BEAST OF BERLIN
If the nations of Europe and the United States were indeed engaged in a holy war, then their enemies were God’s enemies as well; they were the minions of the Evil One. And if Scripture was any guide, there could be no surrender, no compromise with the forces of evil—only a total war to defeat them.
As leader of the Central Powers, the German “Hun” became the principal object of vilification among the Allied nations. In a popular war tract, American writer Elbert Hubbard pressed home this question: “Who lifted the lid off of hell?”47 Fundamentalist preacher Billy Sunday, as incendiary as a Molotov cocktail, spoke for clerics on both sides of the Atlantic: “If you turn Hell upside down, you’ll find ‘Made in Germany’ stamped on the bottom.”
Before examining the contribution of the churches to the demonization campaign, we should remember that Germany authorized numerous acts of aggression and vindictive violence that outraged the democratic Allies. After German troops invaded Belgium, reports of atrocities against civilians filtered out of the country: massacres, the use of women and children as human shields, rape, the mistreatment and execution of prisoners, and other war crimes. C. S. Lewis wrote his father in October 1914, mentioning a friend who was “employed at his camp the other day in unloading a train of seriously wounded soldiers from the front: from whom he learned that the newspaper stories of German atrocities (mutilation of nurses, killing wounded, etc.) were not in the least exaggerated.”48
Exaggeration or not, to the English clergy this was “savagery reduced to a science.” Britain established the Bryce Commission to investigate the allegations. Though its assessment of German guilt was severely criticized after the war, the commission was essentially correct in its major conclusions. “These were not just the actions of soldiers out of control of their officers,” writes Dan Todman in The Great War: Myth and Memory. “German atrocities were a matter of policy, not just panic.”49
The Germans blackened their reputation further when they sliced their way into northern France. German troops savaged the historic library of Louvain and destroyed the Gothic cathedral of Rheims, known as “the Parthenon of France.” In February 1915, German U-boats attacked commercial vessels, essentially declaring that Germany would make no distinction between military and civilian targets.
Germany was also the first nation to use chemical weapons on the battlefield. On April 22, at Ypres, the Germans released 168 tons of chlorine gas along a four-mile front. French troops watched “awestruck and dumbfounded” as a grey-green mist washed over them, filling the eyes, nose, and throat with a noxious odor.50 By preventing the lungs from absorbing oxygen, chlorine causes its victims to slowly drown in their own fluids. Thrown into a panic—none of the French soldiers knew what the gas was—men fled for their lives. The advancing Germans were stunned by the scene: five thousand enemy soldiers on their backs, gasping for air, suffocating in agony and terror.51
To th
e Allies, all of this symbolized a German assault on the values of Western civilization. By May 1915, when the Bryce Commission report was translated into thirty languages, an image of German militarism, barbarism, and realpolitik run amok was set in stone.
Even so, G. A. Studdert Kennedy, one of Britain’s best-known chaplains, encouraged soldiers on the front by applying the Bible in ways that offend modern sensibilities: “A traitor friend betrayed the Christ . . . a traitor nation has crucified the world!” As Studdert Kennedy saw it, the Germans had debased Christian morality and replaced it with the values of brute force and paganism: “The god the German leaders worship is an idol of the earth—a crude and cruel monster who lives on human blood.”52
James Plowden-Wardlaw, Vicar of St. Clement’s in Cambridge, accused the Kaiser and his army of worshipping Satan in the form of a Prussian tribal god. “How angels must weep,” he said, “to see the tragedy of the fall, the moral fall, of Germany.”53 Many ministers insisted that the war bring about “a complete end” to the German system: “The world can never be safe until this new cancer is cut clean out of the body of humanity.”54 As the war dragged on, references in sermons and religious literature to the biblical end times grew more frequent. H. C. Beeching, Dean of Norwich, offered a typical indictment against Germany and its allies: “We are fighting for others as well as for ourselves . . . for Christ against anti-Christ,” he wrote. “And so the battle is not ours, it is indeed Armageddon. Ranged against us are the Dragon and the False Prophet.”55
A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism In the Cataclysm of 1914–1918 Page 5