preview

Ww1 Religious Revolution

Good Essays

Throughout the ages there have been several main religions to include Christianity, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. There have been wars in the name of religion, as well as massacres for the same reason. However over the last century there has been a shift in ideology, a fracture in religious ideology that have caused multiple subgroups of the originals to form and prosper which have I believe came to be because of multiple wars. “Religion is central to "understanding the war, to understanding why people went to war, what they hoped to achieve through war, and why they stayed at war." Just as important were the long-term religious consequences. The war triggered "a global religious revolution. The details may …show more content…

Rather than wrestling with that unsettling irony, however, all sides rushed to condemn enemy nations as ungodly and to proclaim fellow believers as de facto infidels” (McKenzie).

“Russians denounced Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm as the Antichrist. English bishops informed their countrymen that they were God's "predestined instruments to save the Christian civilization of Europe." Americans were not immune from such ideology. They learned that God was summoning them to war against Germany, calling on them "to grapple in deadly strife with this unholy and blasphemous power” (McKenzie).
If we focus on the short-term and concentrate on Europe, the conflict's impact seems disastrous. Russia, in 1914, was home to nearly one quarter of the world's Christians; the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing murderous upheaval nearly obliterated the Orthodox Church. Germany's dominant Lutheran Church survived, but at the price of compromises with a secular messianic …show more content…

For some, the futility and brutality of the lethal conflict destroyed any vestige of faith, while others found refuge in their religion. Often, the pain of war altered, but did not erase, faith. For those on the Home Front, and for the survivors and the bereaved after the war, constant contact with their faith offered some gleam of comfort. Organized religion attempted to rise to the challenge of the war, and tried to meet the social challenges of economic depression and political strife that accompanied the war and its aftermath.
“Although some organizations, such as the Society of Friends (often known as the Quakers) condemned the war, most faith groups gave their support, justifying the cause in sermons and organizing services offering prayers for those with the forces. The European armies often had a close relationship to the established church, and also appointed chaplains (including a small number of Jewish rabbis) to serve the spiritual needs of those in

Get Access