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A review by beejai
The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade by Philip Jenkins
4.0
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.