One common theme from the primary and the secondary sources this week is that many felt that they needed to learn from the mistakes of the first world war and its aftermath. Sittser claims that one of the mistakes made in the first war was to "declare it a holy war” and states, “It is clear that church leaders did not declare [WWII] a holy war. The evidence is overwhelming at this point” (Sittser, 81) Many, like Fosdick, were quick to point this out when he states, “I can never use my Christian ministry in the support and sanction of war” although he did previously in WWI (Fosdick, 115). Sittser continues stating “the bitter memory of World War I and Versailles, as well as the lingering influence of pacifism from the 1930’s, kept many Christians from jingoism” (Sittser, 250).
FDR states that “we are striving to be true to our divine heritage. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are created equal in the sight of God.” (295) “But we of the United Nations are not making all this sacrifice of human effort and human lives to return to the kind of world we had after the last world war.” (295)
Niebuhr stated, “We cannot, of course, be certain that a defeat of the Nazis will usher in a new world order of international justice in Europe and the world. We do know what a Nazi victory would mean; and our first task must therefore be to prevent it. It cannot be our only task...The task of building a new world, as well as the tragic duty of saving the present world from tyranny, will require resources of understanding and resolution which are inherent in the Christian faith.” (6)
Given the fact that the previous war had a profound impact on how one viewed the approaching war and its aftermath, has anyone performed a statistical analysis on church demographics (attendance, giving, baptisms, etc) during the period to gauge how a church body reacts to war over a given time (say leading up to WWI, through the interwar period, to 1950)? If not, would this type of information be helpful to historians in seeing how a church body reacts to the events leading up to, during, and after the war? For example, did certain denomination of churches see a spike leading up to the war in monthly attendance, but see a decline after the war, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment