The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780062105097)

The Great and Holy War offers the first look at how religion created and prolonged the First World War. At the one-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, historian Philip Jenkins reveals the powerful religious dimensions of this modern-day crusade, a period that marked a traumatic crisis for Western civilization, with effects that echoed throughout the rest of the twentieth century.

The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who presented the conflict as a holy war. Thanks to the emergence of modern media, a steady stream of patriotic and militaristic rhetoric was given to an unprecedented audience, using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda. Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels and apparitions, visions and the supernatural was a driving force throughout the war and shaped all three of the major religions--Christianity, Judaism and Islam--paving the way for modern views of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism.

Connecting numerous remarkable incidents and characters--from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, the Christmas Truce to the Armenian Genocide--Jenkins creates a powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global politics, history, and spiritual crisis as never before and shows how religion informed and motivated circumstances on all sides of the war.

Author: Philip Jenkins
ISBN-10: 0062105094
ISBN-13: 9780062105097
Publisher: HarperOne
Language: English
Published: 04/29/2014
Pages: 448
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.70d
Award: Christianity Today Book Award - Award of Merit

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2014
Library Journal 04/15/2014 pg. 100
Books & Culture 05/01/2014 pg. 5
Booklist 05/01/2014 pg. 75
Shelf Awareness 05/09/2014
Christianity Today 06/01/2014 pg. 67
Christian Century 06/25/2014 pg. 36