Historian Thomas Kidd talks to historian Philip Jenkins about his new book The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade
At the highest levels of the respective regimes, both Germany and Russia were deeply motivated by national visions that were messianic and millenarian, and framed in thoroughly Christian terms. Each nation saw itself as playing a predestined role that was divinely inspired, and those self-concepts contributed mightily to the outbreak of war. Religious visions also helped explain why people remained at war through the hellish conditions. We also have to understand the highly supernatural world in which all participants found themselves, and not just at the level of elite propaganda. The language of crusade and holy war must be taken very seriously – on all sides. When they entered the war in 1917, Americans, interestingly, were among the most passionate in presenting the war in crusading terms.
Also, the sense of having failed in a holy war enterprise goes far to explaining the secularized millenarianism that prevailed throughout the 1920s and 1930s, in the totalitarian movements. As in 1914, Germany and Russia were the storm centers.
They go on to talk about religious imagery and the idea that WWI did not disenchant the world of faith. Rather it re-enchanted it with new forms of old myths.
For a great book on this theme from a purely American perspective, check out “The War for Righteousness,” by Richard Gamble of Hillsdale College. Gamble makes a point that postmillenial eschatology drove a lot of the imagery–Wilson was postmill in a big way. The only theologian Gamble quotes who made any sense back then was J. Gresham Machen.
America only fights holy wars. It’s a point Michael Walzer made at some length in Just and Unjust Wars. His concept is that holy wars are, in general, the least just kind.
Unless, of course, they are really holy. But he doesn’t consider that at the same length.