IS WAR CHRISTIAN?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Jan 10, 1900

IS WAR CHRISTIAN?

Comments of an Unbeliever.

THE worst foes of Christianity are the inconsistent ones within the professed churches of Christ. The strongest written arguments that Christianity has to meet are the inconsistent, erroneous teachings of her leading men, who pervert the doctrine of Christ. Here it is that Christ receives His worst wounds—in the house of His friends.

Happily all do not receive it as Christianity, and even the thoughtful, intelligent unbeliever can see its inconsistency. This is notably marked as regards the much that is said at the present time by the clergy in advocacy and glorification of war. A case in point is a recent poem from the Church of England Bishop of Armagh. His poem has called forth justly-deserved criticism from the well-known caustic, trenchant pen of an unbeliever, Ambrose Bierce, himself a brave soldier in the War of the Rebellion. Among other things Mr. Bierce says:—

The pious bishop does not merely excuse war—he glorifies it. True, war takes life, but that is of no consequence, for— The life He loves is not the life of span, Abbreviated by each passing breath, but an altogether different and better [and vaguer] life invented by the good bishop himself for this controversial emergency. Unfortunately, the holy man has justified not only war but assassination.

That war tends to development of such high qualities as courage, steadfastness, and devotion is not to be denied, but so do piracy on the high seas, burglary, and theft. So do gold-grabbing in Alaska and "blackbirding" in the South Sea. There is no pursuit in which men share a common peril or hardship which does not, in its kind and degree, promote all the virtues that are promoted by war. . . .

The "unbeliever" has a logical right to regard war as refining and ennobling if he can, and to say so if he does, but no professed Christian can hold such a belief and utter it without forfeiting the respect of all who know and love the character of Jesus Christ. I am myself very well satisfied with war as a means of settling disputes among such nations as we have, and feel a compassionate contempt for the dreamers who persuade themselves that it is possible to "abolish" it; but not by the most strenuous effort of the imagination can I conceive Jesus Christ, whether He was a man or a God, urging a resort to arms or heading a charge. If the bishop of Armagh can, he is welcome to the conception, and may it give him joy. If he can not, he should achieve consistency by giving an undivided, spiritual allegiance to the god of gore. I fancy Unitarianism would be tolerably becoming to him.

After the fashion of his kind, this fat patriot and smooth hierarch dates his poem at his "palace"—this disciple of the Prince of Poverty, who had not where to lay His head. And this is Christianity—this corrupted cult within whose wide confines a luxurious clergy may without reproach applaud the anger of nations and the slaughter of their people in the interest of this religion at whose birth the angels are said to have proclaimed "peace on earth, and good-will toward men."

War is not of Christ, it is not of righteousness; it is all things evil. It is strange that it should be glorified by those who occupy the positions of ambassadors of the Prince of Peace.