The Great and Holy War: How World War I changed religion for ever - Hardcover

Philip Jenkins

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745956726 ISBN 13: 9780745956725

Publisher: Lion Books, 2014

Synopsis

Throughout history, secular disasters have driven religious change. Repeatedly, wars and natural catastrophes have ignited influential new movements in religion - fundamental shifts in religious consciousness, fervent revivalism and awakenings, and apocalyptic expectation. Frequently, such events have spawned wholly new denominations. Rarely, though, in human history have the four horsemen of the Apocalypse - war, famine, plague, and death - rampaged so freely as they did in the years of the First World War, 1914-1918. Although this cataclysm reshaped the world's religious map, no historian has ever drawn together the global impact to make a simple point: the era of the First World War created the world's religious map as we know it today. The war constituted a worldwide spiritual revolution.
This is a tale with many remarkable narrative incidents and characters, from Karl Barth to Carl Jung; one that is all the more powerful because of the interplay of worldly politics and spiritual crisis. The Great and Holy War presents a new theory of religious change. In religion, as in politics and culture, we should see the pace of change not as gradual evolution but as what biologists call punctuated equilibrium - long periods of relative stasis and stability, interrupted by rare but very fast moving moments of revolutionary or cataclysmic change, which then take decades or centuries for the mainstream to absorb fully. Like them or not, revolutions are the key to religious history. And we cannot understand our present religious, political, and cultural climate without understanding the dramatic changes initiated by the First World War.
With 50 b/w images throughout and 5 maps.

About this title

Review:

"A painstaking, densely layered study of the many slippery uses of religion in the making of war... A work of intensely nuanced research." --KIRKUS REVIEW

"An astounding chronicle of intense piety inciting acts of terrible carnage." --BOOKLIST, starred review

"Jenkins is especially instructive on its [WW1's] consequences for the world's - not simply Europe's religions." --WALL STREET JOURNAL

"A historical tour de force... We must know the past in order to understand the present. Jenkins's penetrating study of World War I masterfully underscores that abstract truth." --CHRISTIANITY TODAY

"A fascinating book in which Jenkins convincingly argues that we cannot understand the war without understanding religion... Jenkins summons academic evidence without sacrificing readability. It is hard to read for more than a few pages without being fascinated or surprised. In particular, he does a rigorous job of showing how many of today's disputes are rooted to varying degrees in the First World War." --Third Way

"A work of the highest academic standard... written in such a way as to be highly accessible. It is a book of tremendous range and interest. Fascinating reading. Highly recommended!" --Pobl Dewi, Diocese of St Davids.

About the Author:

Philip Jenkins is the Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe and is a regular on radio shows. He was educated at Cambridge and has written over twenty books including The Lost History of Christianity, Jesus Wars, and The Next Christendom and over a hundred articles and reviews. He has won several book prizes in both the Christian and secular arena.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lion Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0745956726
• ISBN 13: 9780745956725
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448