CHRISTIANITY AND WAR

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 5, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 18.

“CHRISTIANITY AND WAR.”

The following is an editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle of April 16. Coming as it does from a purely secular paper, it is all the more suggestive. We present it without comment. It is worthy of a careful reading:—

Christianity and War.

“The statement of the Kaiser that ‘he who is no brave Christian is no brave man and no brave soldier either, and can under no circumstances fulfil the duty required of a soldier in the Prussian army,’ not only invited caricature by means of which a Berlin humorist went to jail for lese majeste, but called the notice of cynics to the curious tendency of the German emperor to associate the spirit of Christianity with organized slaughter. To the sane and non-imperial mind Christianity is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, not in the oath of a Prussian soldier to smash people who get in his way, nor in the summons of the militant camp preacher to redress human wrongs by destroying human life. The Founder of Christianity said, ‘Whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also;’ and added: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.’ There is small room here for the Prussian soldier to cut a figure or a throat, or for the physically brave man to show the qualities that commend him to a modern war lord. Probably if one of the Kaiser’s Uhlans should turn the other cheek, he would be shot at sunrise, and if an officer did it instead of running his persecutor through, he would have to commit suicide to escape disgrace.

“‘Of all the cant ever canted in this canting world’ that of acclaiming war or the pursuit of arms as Christianity is the most detestable. The Berlin humorist ridiculed the idea that the religion of the Prince of Peace is instrumental in making a man fulfil the duty of a soldier by picturing the Kaiser’s infidel but conquering ancestor, Frederick the Great, and those irreligious but militant worthies, Alexander Leonidas, and Napoleon, jeering the Kaiser’s dictum in the light of their own experience. But he might have gone farther and flouted the assumption that a man can fulfil the duty of a soldier and still illustrate any of the crucial virtues of the Gospel.

“We hear much from the yellow pulpits at this crisis, about it being Christian duty to avenge throat-cutting in one place by more throat-cutting in another. Strident pulpiteers like C. O. Brown summon law-abiding men to ‘rise’ and sharpen the edge of murderous tools, assuring their amazed hearers that the author of the Sermon on the Mount ‘leads on’ to achieve the unprepared-for death of multitudes. Was there ever a more ghastly anachronism?”

“War may be at times needful in the present state of human nature; war in self-defense is not to be avoided. But let us have a truce from Kaisers or clergy alike when it comes to their saying that war is or can be Christian. It is Hebraic or Mohammedan or pagan, but it is as far removed in all its manifestations from the Gospel of the New Testament as are murder, robbery, and incendiarism. Indeed, the final triumph of Christianity is predicated on a reformed world, where there will be neither wars nor rumors of wars. In that millennial age the Prussian soldier or any other kind of soldier will be unknown.”