The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Religion
The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Christian sociology; Christian union; Social change; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
The mass of our parishioners in France, then, was not made up of the
inner circle--we were lucky if we found three or four in a unit--but of
the ill-instructed fringe, and the totally ignorant multitudes. The
horror and boredom of war, the personal insecurity, the difficulty of
understanding the ways of God, made all friendly to the parson with whom
hitherto they had never come into contact; and caused large numbers to
think things out, and to hunger for an understanding of God. Religion
became a common topic of discussion. The padres found themselves in a
larger world, where old labels and divisions simply had no meaning; and
where the first necessity and work was to preach Christ and teach the
meaning of the Faith. They felt also, very quickly, that this interest
in ultimate things did not mean that men became friendly to organised
religion in any form. On the contrary, their hostility and distrust
toward all religious bodies were marked. The chaplains had that common
and dreadful experience of foreign missionaries, of feeling themselves
alone, closed round by thick dark walls of unsympathy and worse. They
longed for the help and support of any genuine friend of Christ,
whatever body he belonged to. I was called upon to preach the National
Mission in a peculiarly hostile and irresponsive camp of motor lorry
drivers, who much resented the use of "their" Y.M.C.A. hut for such
religious purposes. A Wesleyan minister had charge of it, and got far
more of their blunt language than I the visitor did; but he worked
undismayed and unreservedly for all he was worth, for the National
Mission and for me. The alliance was natural, real, inevitable. He and
I, and some five or six men of that camp, were clearly on one side, and
the rest of it on the other, of an exceeding broad gulf. With this as a
daily experience, a man's values changed rapidly; and it became quite
obvious that, even to begin to fight the battle of Christianity in the
modern world, Christians must be united.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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