In preparing tonight's lecture on the churches in World War One, I've come across some startling pronouncements by Australian church leaders on the significance of the conflict.
The Melbourne Anglican Henry Lowther Clark led a service of intercession on the first Sunday of the war, preaching on the text ‘be still and know that I am God.’ He emphasised that God was in control and that the believer should not be unduly concerned. ‘These days will bring their own blessing,’ he said, optimistically. ‘They will teach very many, better than they know it now, the value of religion.’
Henry Howard, an Adelaide Methodist, announced that ‘any discipline, whether of war or pestilence, of famine or fire, or drought or flood, that can break down our trust in the material and strengthen our faith in the spiritual ... is a discipline that should be welcomed and acquiesced in rather than deplored.’ He also spoke of the ‘intemperance, uncleanness, mutual distrust, commercial dishonesty, political chicanery’ that war would help reform.
A Presbyterian from Victoria, W. H. Cooper, wrote in early 1915: ‘if in this awful sacrifice of the nations we emerge unchastened, having made only pecuniary sacrifice, there is danger of over-weening pride and boastfulness, but if with the brave fighters from the British Isles and Canada and India our soldiers mingle their blood ... then sacrifice will hallow all our Australian life.’
Disturbing examples of the dangers of looking to the state and its activities as a source of moral and spiritual renewal. And sad examples, i think, of declaring to quickly and confidently what God's purposes are, when he acts in post-biblical history.
Source: Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War ch2
3 comments:
There's a lot that could be said about the confidence in their understanding of God's purposes, but the first two quotes don't seem to me to be looking particularly to the state's activities for anything. The state doesn't really seem to be the issue at all.
except that the war was entered into by the state - the british state, with Australia dutifully in tow.
Without the context, it seems to me that the first two are lumping the war in with other fearful situations, emphasising God's action regardless of whether the state is involved. In many contexts, and until we get to the guesses of what God purposes, I don't see the problem.
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