The American Churches in World War I

Bibliographic Data

ID8206946
AuthorsJohn F Piper, John Piper (American Academy of Religion, corresponding author)
Year1970
Volume38
Issue2
Pages147-155
Publication date1970-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/xxxviii.2.147
OpenAlexW2002989297
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Americans found World War I a glorious, shameful, wonderful, catastrophic, magnificent, appalling war. The war proposed to establish a new world order similar to the social gospel vision of the Kingdom of God, but it ended in American failure to enter the League of Nations and with widespread despair over any future realization of the vision. The war promised to end war by the defeat of militarism, whereas it appears to have ushered in a century noted for war and militarism. When the guns of August finally stopped, the guns of history began. Historians have fought over the war almost as fiercely as participants fought in it. The soldiers of the pen have found small range of agreement beyond the consensus that the war is a benchmark in history, defining two eras, a prior one of progressivism, internationalism, and social concern, and a subsequent one of normalcy, isolationism, and social conformity. A recent volume on the war is titled: World War I: A Turning Point in Modern History.' Most contemporary students of religion in America share this consensus, both for the reasons historians give and for more specific religious or ecclesiastical ones. The area of greatest agreement among these students is that religion lost its vitality when it sold out to the nation's wartime goals. Ecclesiastical institutions gav away their independence in their wholehearted and uncritical involvement in the nation's war efforts. One of the major consequences of this was a religious depression. Church historians make few distinctions among the several major religious groups, including them all in the sellout and the subsequent fall; however, their focus is usually on Protestantism and the social gospel. If this gospel did not die in the war, it underwent a trauma of such proportions that it never fully recovered. The death of Walter Rauschenbusch in 1918 was the symbol of this change. The idealism and desire for social reform he represented defines a brief period which the war abruptly ended. Sellout is a cliche, or at best enigmatic shorthand for many specific points of view about the behavior of the churches during the war and the notable decrease in their influence after it. While the exact content of sellout varies widely from historian to historian, the source of it varies little. Almost to a man these students of American religion rely on the work of Ray H. Abrams, particularly his volume Preachers Present Arms, for the inspiration of their remarks about religion

Ancient history · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub