Faith in Conflict by Stuart Bell, Helion and Co, £25
The most shocking thing about the First World War is that it was a war among Christians. Catholic Frenchmen fought Catholic Germans; quietist English low churchmen were in mortal combat with pious Bavarian Lutherans. Chaplains on both sides celebrated Mass not far behind the front line. Soldiers prayed the Paternoster and then spent the rest of the day trying to slaughter as many of the enemy as possible. If there were a motto for the Great War, it would be, “Praise God and pass the ammunition.” The perennial claim made by all combatants was, “God on our side”.
Of course there were pacifists, conscientious objectors and many Christians expressing qualms. Corporal Ronald Skirth in the Royal Field Artillery complained that his superiors, “had authorised me to break the Sixth Commandment in the name of patriotism”. But this was a common misunderstanding, for the original Commandment should not be translated, “Thou shalt not kill” but “Thou shalt do no murder” – that is, wrongful killing. The Church had held the doctrine of just war since the days of Augustine and Aquinas. Another NCO was reduced to the ranks when he refused to fire a shell at a church.
Should this four years’ slaughter among the Christian nations of Europe lead us to conclude that such Christianity as existed was pretty negligible? No, the truth is that few of the combatants on either side were committed, doctrinal Christians or regular churchgoers. Most, though, said they believed in God and the afterlife and in that vague presence which goes along with “decency and respect for things that matter” – a faint afterglow to the vanished age of faith.
Stuart Bell, a Methodist minister, tells us: “The language of a holy war was employed from the first Sunday in the war” – and by both sides. Llewellyn Gwynne, chaplain general, declared: “Chaplains are part and parcel of this fighting machine … which may overthrow the spiritual foes of humanity and allow the Kingdom of God to operate on earth.”
Priests, parsons and ministers preached militant sermons which went down well with congregations at home. That’s something to think about when you consider that 60 per cent of those sitting in the pews were women.
Bell has done his research, crunched the numbers and found that the war did not appear to make much difference to the spiritual character of the participants as only between one and four per cent confessed either to have lost their faith or found it. British attitudes hardened following reports – mostly unreliable – of German atrocities, such as the bayonetting of babies in “poor little Belgium”. And there were notable belligerents among the senior clergy. For instance, the Bishop of Salisbury, preaching to 5,000 in his cathedral, said: “This is a righteous war and, if carried out in the spirit of our Christianity, it is a holy war.” Fiercest of them all was the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, whose conviction that right was on his side led him so far as to proclaim: “I look upon it as a war for purity. I look upon everyone who dies in it as a martyr.” He meant on our side, of course.
One of the most outstanding churchmen of the time, and by far the most famous chaplain of the whole conflict, was Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, “Woodbine Willie”. He was certainly one of the bravest, forever present among the men in the very thick of battle. Studdert Kennedy articulated the most pressing theological question of the war: where is God in all this? His answer was both heartfelt and heretical: “God suffers now and is crucified afresh in every man that suffers. God is no far-off God of power but the comrade God of love.”
Studdert Kennedy’s heresy was to say that God is susceptible to suffering, something which the theologians had always denied: for to suffer is to be subject to change, and orthodox teaching claims that God is immutable and so suffered only in Christ, whose Incarnation rendered him subject to mutability. Studdert Kennedy wrote many volumes of war poetry and expressed his tender belief with something approaching ferocity.
We turn aside for light relief and, thank goodness, there is some to be found. I like the tales of soldiers in the line singing mucky words to well-known hymns such as What a Friend We Have in Jesus (I won’t repeat them here). And I enjoyed the remark that not many religious books were published during the conflict, so that even a hell on earth such as the Great War was not without its blessings, as a report showed that “There was a particular dearth of new German theology.”
Faith in Conflict is Stuart Bell’s PhD thesis turned into a book and here and there, as with Ernie Wise’s wig, you can see the join. But it’s well worth reading for the directness with which the events of that terrible time are presented in so many rich, moving and striking anecdotes and recollections.
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