World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Australian
In regard to the Church as an institution, there is a feeling among the
men, more or less articulate, that it has humbugged them. It has
denounced the sins it does not often commit, but has been too silent
about the sins which are common to its own membership. The Church, in
time of peace, has built up a vast superstructure of respectability. The
sins of the flesh and drunkenness and swearing were not respectable; but
it has not turned the white burning light of truth against the sins of
the spirit—covetousness, selfishness, lying, fraud, greed, and
injustice. The soldier has many things to put up with, but for the time
he is freed from the soul-destroying influence of an industrial system
built upon the basis of competition. He is not afraid of losing his job,
and he need not toady to any one to secure the chance of his
bread-and-butter. Under the pressure of campaigning he begins to exalt
comradeship and self-sacrifice to the first place in the list of
virtues. Battle forges a new and strong bond of brotherhood.
He does not possess this at first. He comes out of a world of
self-seeking, but he gradually discovers that men depend on each other.
In a word, the shells that fly, knocking the parapets about, and the
rough and tumble of campaigning knock a man's creed about fearfully. He
has to re-sort his ideas of religion and the Church, and when he puts
them together again, he finds that they fit his complex needs better
when they are built up the other way. Perhaps an arrangement of topics
which I have found to be dead topics as far as work amongst soldiers is
concerned, and others which seem to be _live_ topics, will help to show
what I mean.
DEAD TOPICS LIVE TOPICS.
Future punishment Personal salvation
Baptismal regeneration Prayer and providence
Apostolic succession Comradeship and Communion
Claims of the Church Christ as Friend and Lord
Sabbath observance Righteousness
Observance of Holy Days and God as a Ruler
Church ordinances
Sectarianism and all Church Here, hereafter, and the
shibboleths soul's destiny
The soldier is particularly interested in spiritual biography, and very
glad to hear about what God did for Paul, Peter, Moses, Joshua, and
David. There are vestiges of superstition lingering in many men, and it
is hard to see where superstition ends and faith begins. I have known
men sample all sorts of religion during the campaign, trying to find out
perhaps what different chaplains have to say about things.
There is a species of fatalism; they value luck, and would sympathize
with the Prayer-Book phrase, 'Good luck in the name of the Lord.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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