The
Canadian churches and war
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Useful links (This isn't on war, but it became available recently and we wanted to get your attention. It's a virtual exhibition from the Presbyterian Church on William King, a Presbyterian who founded a settlement for fugitive U.S. slaves in 1849)
Print bibliography Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church and the War (1940) Alan Davies and Marilyn F. Nefsky, How Silent Were the Churches? Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish Plight during the Nazi Era (1997) M.F. McCutcheon et al., The Christian and War: An Appeal (1926) Tom Socknat, Witness against War: Pacifism in Canada, 1900-1945 (1987) Charles Thompson Sinclair Faulkner, " 'For Christian Civilization': The Churches and Canada's War Effort, 1939-42," Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago (1975) Cdn chaplains issue JCCHS vol. 35 Oct 1993 [75 united church ministers,] "A Witness against the War," United Church Observer, October 15, 1931 Gordon L. Heath, "Sin in the Camp: The day of humple supplication in the Church of England in Canada in the Early Months of the south African War", JCCHS 44 (2002) 207-226 Duff Crerar, Padres in No Man's Land (Montreal
and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995 David B. Marshall, "Methodism Embattled: A Reconsideration of the Methodist Church and World War I", Canadian Historical Review, March 1985, p. 48-64.
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Wars in the 20th century In Flanders fields the poppies grow ...
Yet, it wasn't supposed to be that way .... The vision at the beginning of the 20th century was of humanity The world of July 1914 is difficult for us to imagine. The names of some of the countries seem strange. Every one of these European powers, with the exception of France, was ruled by a monarch or an emperor (the Tsar in Russia). All that changed. World War I The crisis which sparked the outbreak of World
War I was a minor incident, an assassination
of a minor noble in the Balkans. Yet, this crisis threw all of Europe,
and soon the rest of the world, into a war unlike any seen in history.
Emperors fell as a result of World War I. The Bolsheviks succeeded in overthrowing the Tsar in Russia, and founding a communist state although peace on the Western front in 1918 did not affect Russia, where a civil war raged through 1919. The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires collapsed and new nations, such as Turkey, Austria, and Poland, were created. But the brunt of the blame for the war fell on Germany. The Kaiser abdicated and a Republic was established. Germany was made to pay reparations, or financial payments, to their former enemies . The German economy and new democracy, were no match for the crises which followed the war. The result was the coming to power of a strong-man, the dictator Adolf Hitler. His dream was to build a glorious new kingdom, a third Reich, for the German people which would be purged of all "inferior races", such as Slavs and Jews. World War II Where Europe stumbled to war in 1914, every attempt was made to avoid
war in the final years of the 1930's despite the ever increasing ambition
and expansion of the German Reich under Hitler and the Nazis. The invasion
of Poland in 1939 finally forced the France and Great Britain to declare
war against Germany and Italy. World
War II eventually spread around the world, including Japan and the
United States. By the time it was over, the The Cold War The end of World War II brought another major political change. Former allies, the United States and the Soviet Union, emerged as rival superpowers. In the so-called "Cold War" which followed, nuclear weapons were stock-piled and wars were fought throughout the developing world, as each super-power attempted to limit the expansion of the other. Korea. Angola. Indochina/Vietnam. Malaya. Cuba. Nicaragua. Mozambique. Ethiopia. Many of these wars are now forgotten, yet each had a dramatic effect on the countries in which they were waged and on the broader world. The Korean War
The Persian Gulf The collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact has
not ushered in peace. Canada went to war
in 1991, in the Persian Gulf in order to stem the expansion of Iraq
into Kuwait. Each of these wars had, in a different way, a dramatic impact on Canada and on each of the Protestant denominations. Some wars unified the population, at least in English Canada. Others led to division within congregations and the national church, as Christians with differing opinions struggled to know what was faithful. Many members of Christian churches in Canada have first hand experience of war, making the Sunday closest to Remembrance Day a time of remembering and mixed emotions. Here from Library and Archives Canada is a picture of a church parade (compulsory church service) on board the S.S. Franconia in World War I.
Our class will look at the topic of War and how it has affected Protestant churches, specifically the United Church of Canada (and its antecedent denominations), the Anglican church, and the continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada. Our readings include several primary sources:
A few notes:
Questions to consider What were the various responses of Christians in Protestant denominations to war in the 20th century? How did these positions change over time? Why might they have changed? Is there evidence, as Macdonald suggests, of crusader imagery in Eakin's sermon? What are the forces which might lead someone who philosophically opposed war in 1913 to such a position four years later? "Just war" seems to be the dominant ethical position held by most Protestant churches. How have particular wars and historical events (World War I, World War II, Vietnam, September 11, 2001) affected those positions? Do you see evidence of this in the Niebuhr/Roberts debate?
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