the_great_and_holy_war epitome of incomprehensibility Book by Philip Jenkins about the role of religion in World War 1. I was pleasantly surprised by its nuance and breadth because I remember him being associated with Christianity Today, the conservative magazine my mom gets. Maybe I'm mixing up names again. Anyway, I worried he'd be reticent to criticize Christians. He wasn't, though this isn't really a callout sort of book. More of an exploration. But both the religious and non might see the futility of equating God's will with a country's political goals when confronted with this example from the past, where there wasn't really a clear "good guy" or "bad guy". And where the rhetoric on both sides sometimes literally demonized the other. I don't know whether Jenkins aimed at making deliberate parallels with Islam-associated terrorists and Bush-supporting evangelicals. Just that 9/ll and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were more in the foreground in the early 2010s. As for the 1910s, trust young Karl Barth to say, from a small town in Switzerland, "You're both wrong! And I'm right!" (not like I did that recently here or elsewhere *looks the other way*). He was socialist and pacifist at the time, but with rhetoric as grandiose and apocalyptic as anyone's - Dr_K called his book about Barth "A Unique Time of God" after one of Karl B's statements about the war. Apocalypse must have been in the air; L.M. Montgomery in Rilla of Ingleside was all about "Armageddon." Interestingly, there WAS a 1918 battle in the place Revelation's Armageddon was named for: Megiddo, in what's now Israel. Or rather, the British commander Allenby stressed this parallel because of its Biblical resonance. Everyone was making connections like that, Jenkins claimed: the Arab tribes fighting against the Ottomans noted how Allenby had "Allah" in his name. Side note, because this would give me a belated answer to a Grade 9 disagreement I had with someone from the Christian private school: she said the Arab/Israeli conflict was a carryover from the Ishmael/Isaac conflict in the Bible and that this had something to do with Bush and Afghanistan. Well, meet WW1, where the fighting in that region had Muslims on two different sides: supporters of the Ottoman Empire and supporters of the Arab Revolt. And - this is oversimplified - but the British seem to be at least partly responsible for setting up the conflict there by promising the same land to different nations at once. Yeah, religion messes things up, but it at least aims at more transcendent things than colonialism. "Imagine there's no colonialism, it's easy if you mess up the syllable count..." But I wasn't there 100 years ago. I wasn't even there 3,000 years ago. Elrond was! (re The_Lord_of_the_Rings). 220403 ... past it's easy, when secular, to overlook religion as a motivating factor or to see those expressing strong religious devotion as more than cynical. (there's a bit of daniel abraham's dagger and coin series, which otherwise has a main theme of banking and power in a fantasy world, where the cynicism vs true belief is confronted in character's motivations that my mind often jumps too. the shock of the cynic as they're forced to acknowledge the shallowness of that worldview...even if every worldview is shallow in its own depths, being but a single perspective after all.) it speaks to the messyness of history and narratives and trying to tie things together. the historical discourse out of russia about ukraine seems ridiculous and crass from the outside, but perhaps third rome seeing itself as the descendant both of constantinople kievan rus' and the desire to "fix" what genghis's heirs and their armies broke nearly 800 years ago has appeal in a country barely more than a century and three decades from two cataclysmic political and narratological breaks. at least seeing narratives one doesn't accept can help understand the motivations of those who do accept them. all this to say, as a cynical secular, i am deeply sympathetic to the ideas apparent in the title of this book and your posts about it, eoi, even if i have not read it. religion (and civic religion adjacent beliefs) are important, even if we don't share the same beliefs because others do, because we're all in this world together. 220404 ... e_o_i A belated thanks for putting down these thoughts! I like the connections you make. I feel rather...uneducated...talking about history to someone who presumably teaches this field (at least, that's my literal interpretation of your blathernym), but you wrote "one hundred years and three decades" and I'm stumped on what happened in Russia 190 years ago. Maybe I'm taking that too literally? I can think of two historical references - one after and one way before - that Russia's government alludes to in justifying the war in Ukraine: 1) World War 2. It was Russia's (well, the Soviet Union's) latest big military victory - at the cost of millions of lives - so some of that probably goes into Putin's comparison-making. It's part of national myth, national pain and pride. Plus there's the cynical "let's call Ukranians Nazis to justify our invasion" and maybe a bit of "hey, the 'West' was on our side that time, so we may be able to win some countries over if they buy our framing." 2) A mythical past about a thousand years ago when Russia and Ukraine were one. Linguistically, they WERE: the eastern branch of the Balto-Slavic family broke off into Russian and Ukranian and Belarussian fairly late (yay historical_linguistics, teaching me actual history sometimes). But it's silly for Putin to say "this means Ukraine is actually Russia!" because you might as well say "this means Russia is actually Ukraine!" (Or maybe it's all Belarus, if you're looking_for_Belarus.) ... Speaking of misrepresenting things, I have my ACTUAL diary entry about the Iraq War typed up. I was 14 when I wrote it. Some takeaways: I was still a fairly doctrinaire Christian at that point, so prepare for a regurgitation of received ideas; the governments of United States and Iraq? both "dumb"; and it's boring to watch a classmate play Nintendo if he's always winning! ... March 24, 2003 United States is at war with Iraq. Again. They were looking for “weapons of mass destruction”, and since they didn’t find any, they decided to fight anyway because Mr. Saddam Hussein is a bad guy and he didn’t schoosh out of the government of Iraq. That was also dumb. I talked some to Katisha and Theoma at lunch time, but they wouldn’t really listen. Apparently, they heard a sermon from a pastor who said that United States was at war with Iraq because of the whole Isaac-Ishmael thing. I was eating lunch and watching P.G. play Nintendo (it was boring, he was always winning) so I didn’t hear all of what they said. Anyway, I heard them saying that Iraq vs. U.S. is going on because the separate ethnic groups that were the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac are against each other. Ishmael is favoured in the Koran, and Isaac in the New Testament [Old Testament?] as the founder of Israel. Aha. Israel. (Of course, God’s chosen people and the Muslims are both equal in God’s eyes ‘cause of the New Covenant in Jesus.) I merely remarked that the prophecies in the Bible concerning Ishmael and Isaac referred to the present ongoing conflict between Israel and the Arabs and that United States had nothing to do with it. Obviously, I didn’t say it like that, though. Theoma and Katisha laughed at me a little and said I didn’t understand. Well, maybe I did misunderstand them, because I have a different accent, but I was a little annoyed. ... Okay. I don't know exactly where I heard that the Bible predicted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of all things, but not every Christian says that. E.g. the author Jenkins - as well as Hank Green from Crash Course - are pretty explicit in noting how World War 1 contributed. Now, you could say that doesn't rule out them believing in some sort of prophecy, but I think it's pretty clear the seeds of THAT war don't go back hundreds of years - just one hundred and a bit - maybe longer if you point to how previous colonialism influenced Israel's - and you could say past religious wars like the ill-advised Crusades contributed, even if "the Bible predicted this" is a silly take... ...Okay, so maybe nothing is clear. People are searching_for_storylines that are too straightforward when things have multiple causes. 220519 ... past (in brief) the 100 and the 30 poorly phrased. so the collapse of the czars and the collapse of the soviets, both shattering and definitional moments (i can only imagine). 220520 ... e_o_i Thanks! Now I get it: The revolution in 1917 and then the fall of the Soviet Union...1991? (yay! got it without looking). Okay, not a pop quiz. But yes, also forgot to say I agree with your last point. I wouldn't say religion has nothing to do with wars - or be like Christopher Hitchens and blame it for everything - but it's a part of the mix of life, for both good and ill. And I'm pretty sure for as long as people last, there will be both those who do and don't believe in what we might call religion. Even then, it's not such a clear divide. I'm conflicted on whether to call myself agnostic, because for me it's more a personality trait than a conscious choice, or whether to call myself Christian in recognition of where I come from, even though I find it hard to believe (or strictly disbelieve) in things I don't know about. But to go back to specific events and their interpretations, I'll put some thoughts about authoritarian governments under the word "ideology." 220521 ... e_o_i Done! Except that veered off into the_case_of_Ezra_Pound and history_department. (The Curious Case of the History Department in the Nighttime.) 220521 what's it to you? who go blather from