Abstract
Do we find similar tendencies when we turn from war and politics to war and religion? Does religion make war? In the case of the Crusades and the 16th-century wars of religion, the answer might seem obvious. But it would be hard to argue conversely that "war is the health of religion" or that "war makes the church (or the mosque)." Nevertheless, from antiquity to the present day, religion has shaped war and war has shaped religion, sometimes consciously and deliberately, sometimes with consequences evident only generations later, and always with complex twists and turns. In The Great and Holy War, Baylor historian [Philip Jenkins] explores this two-way relationship in the extraordinary circumstances of World War I. Known for his sweeping global histories of Christianity, Jenkins explores the religious "mood" and motivations that, in his judgment, pervaded all sides of the Great War. Inexplicably, in the century since the war, no scholar has attempted this sort of comparative religious history of a conflict that did so much to remake Europe, her far-flung colonies, and the United States. Such neglect is unaccountable given how prominently religion appeared in the war's rhetoric and symbolism, whether from official propaganda, belligerent clergy, or common soldiers. Jenkins's volume comes, then, as a welcome contribution to scholarly understanding of the relationship between religion and the First World War and the consequences of that volatile mixture down to the present day. 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.