World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Young Men's Christian Associations
As one representative chaplain in a most influential position in France
says: "There is the plain fact that the great mass of men are out with
the Christian Church, and do not look to it as being in any vital
relation to life as they know it, either in peace or war. There is the
deeper and sadder fact that to a very large proportion of them God
Himself means little or nothing, or means something that is very
unchristian. Where there is a living presentation of religion men are
responsive--extraordinarily so. Put it how you will, men must be
summoned to a new thought, a new outlook on life, a new attitude towards
the unseen and eternal."
2. An attitude of _separation and alienation_ from the Church. For the
most part the men are largely ignorant of what the Church really is, and
for this the churches are largely responsible. They believe that its
message and presentation of truth are often too feminine and impractical
and that its fellowship is too cold and exclusive. They do not
understand the vocabulary and tone adopted frequently by preachers in
speaking of religious things, and they feel that the churches are almost
complete strangers to the real facts of life with which they have to deal.
It is true that the practical work of the churches in their helpful
ministry through the various organizations working in the camps has
brought many of the men into vital contact with religion for the first
time. But the war has revealed the lack of the churches' hold upon the
men in pre-war times.
3. _Criticism of its worldliness_. The men have an unuttered belief in
God, and they reverence Jesus Christ as the friend and brother and
comrade of man, as the embodiment of the highest ideal they can conceive.
But they feel that somehow the churches do not adequately represent
Christ, that they have become merely the adjunct of the State to second
its schemes and aims. Many feel that the Church has lowered its colors
in the present war, that in some countries it has been little more than a
recruiting station for enlistment and that its message cannot be
reconciled with the Sermon on the Mount.
One sergeant thus states his convictions: "Perhaps it would be well if we
out here could get up a committee of inquiry on 'Civilians and Religion'
and arrive at some decision as to what is the matter with you at home.
Are we to return home where the spiritual fires have been kept burning
brightly, or to the blackened ashes of those great ideals of the early
days of August, 1914, which have burned themselves out? Are we to return
to a country in which, in spite of all the community of suffering and
sorrow, the Christian churches have still their differences simmering
instead of being regiments in one common Army?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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