Religion and the WarYale University. Divinity School
Religion
Religion and the War
Yale University. Divinity School
World War, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
If they will realize this primacy of life, the Christian churches
stand in the presence of a great opportunity. The experiences of these
years have shown us how much more of Christian living there is in the
world than bears the label. Religion is being tested, stripped of sham
and embroidery, and reduced to reality. And there are being revealed
breadths and depths of real religion that we had not understood. There
is a vast amount of inarticulate religion actually moving the lives of
men which the churches may lift to the level of intelligent and
articulate belief if they will but approach it with understanding and
a willingness to be taught as well as to teach.
In Jesus' story of the last judgment, there is surprise all around.
Both those on the right hand and those on the left stand fully
revealed to themselves for the first time, it seems. "Lord, when saw
we thee ..." they cry on both sides. This war has constituted such a
judgment day. A great moral issue has stood out, sharp, clean-cut and
clear. It has set men on the right hand and on the left. It brooks no
moral hyphenates; it permits no half-allegiance, either to country or
to God. Beneath all pretense and profession, it lays bare the real
man. It reveals the hidden qualities of nations. There have been many
surprises. It has shown far more of evil in the world that we had
deemed possible; but it has shown, too, far more of goodness and
courage and true religion than we had thought was there.
Evil is here--real, powerful, poignant, and more unutterably bad than
the farthest stretch of imagination had hitherto conceived that evil
could be. Since the world began it was never so full of pain and
suffering in body and mind, of needless death and of mothers brave but
broken-hearted. And most of this is the result of supreme moral evil,
the work of a power deliberately seeking world-domination and
exploitation of the rest of mankind, even though it involve the
extermination of other peoples, determined to use any methods that bid
fair to bring about this result, and organizing deceit and lust and
murder as the instruments of _Schrecklichkeit_.
But goodness is here too--strong, calm, cheerful, brave, self-devoting
goodness. These years of war have revealed to us the supreme power of
the human spirit to endure pain, to resist evil, and to count all else
naught for sake of the right in which it believes and the good upon
which its heart is set.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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