“God is dead,” proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882.[i] While this is not meant to be taken in a literal sense, it is certainly a provocative observation to come from the reclusive philosopher. Nietzsche’s generation, one that would embrace ideas like Darwinism, Marxism, and Positivism, had revolutionized the intellectual landscape to a point that could not be reversed. Nietzsche was right to create this bold line since, as a result of these ideas, the intellectual community could now stop relying on “The God of the Gaps;” that is, the use of God to fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge. In this order, the foundations of the academic world of the twentieth century were put in place during the nineteenth century: Darwin said we came to exist without divine intervention, Marx claimed that religion prevented the progress of society, and Nietzsche murdered our deities.
It is often thought that Europe became a continent of atheists and agnostics after World War I, and that the spiritual fabric of Europeans resembled, in many ways, the French farmland that had been destroyed by four years of conflict. While this may not be a completely false statement for some, it certainly lacks the ring of absolute truth. Just as the problems of the First World War were not spontaneous but the result of long building tensions between the nations of continental Europe, so was the spread of unbelief in Europe.[ii] It was only coinciding with this period of warfare that the birth of open resistance to traditional religion and spirituality occurred, but not because of it.
The English poet Robert Graves contends that, “hardly one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind.”[iii] Was this a result of the war, or did the question about the existence of god arise before the trenches? For Graves, the irreligion of the home front and training camp was worse than in the trenches. He first encountered irreligion at Charterhouse, his public school, as many of his peers had, encountering the idea of unbelief before the war, but only facing the reality of God’s nonexistence in the trenches.[iv] What was so influential that it changed the faith of many who served?
Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, examined the issue. In 1954, Russell argued that all the troubles of his day originated from the First World War, those troubles being mainly the Nazism and Communism. Russell elaborates on this idea by writing, “The First World War was wholly Christian in origin.[v]” We can be certain that the leaders of each belligerent nation were, in their personal lives, devout Christians. In England, the reigning monarch was not only the leader of the country but also head of the Church. Germany and France were as devout in their faith as they were in their hatred for one another. Russians hailed from a long tradition of Russian Orthodoxy, one of the oldest forms of Christian faith in Europe. Is Russell’s assertion correct? Were those who caused the war Christians? Since this is true, did the Christian position incline world leaders to make war, or was war just as likely if those leaders were more secular?
Joseph McCabe, former Franciscan monk and professed atheist, acknowledges the accusations that if all the warring nations of Europe are Christian it is easy to, collectively, accuse them of collective moral failure.[vi] On the larger scale, Christianity is a multinational faith. There is no difference between the God of Britain and the God of Germany. Why would God allow his children to kill each other? Incidentally, why was this question being raised now, and not during the Franco-Prussian War or the American Civil War? As McCabe put it, “Does God move the insensate stars only, and leave to the less skillful guidance of man those momentous little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?”[vii]
Robert Graves provides evidence that casts doubt on McCabe’s argument. While troops thought the very worst of Kaiser William, the British thought that the Germans were much more devout than they. “We spoke freely,” Graves recalled, “of God and Gott as opposing tribal deities.”[viii] Most of the British Expeditionary Force, who were an irreligious group according to Graves, reduced the idea of morality to the single concept of loyalty to one’s nation. In later years, Graves would write, “God as an all-wise Providence was dead; blind Chance succeeded to the Throne.[ix]” The common soldier of the Other Ranks held little respect for the cloth, but the degree of “blasphemy” committed varied. Graves was guilty of blasphemy according to his superiors when he quoted the verse of scripture, “The bed is too narrow to lie therein and the coverlet too small to wrap myself therewith,” and remarking it was appropriate for the trench.[x] Though he was later in the position to punish a subordinate rather severely, Graves overlooked blasphemy charges since the man defended himself by saying he didn’t take to religion in times of war.[xi]
In fact, the Germans were no more devout than the Englishmen. The two most popular books among Germans serving in the trenches were Faust by Goethe and Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. The German government printed 150,000 copies of Zarathustra, along with the Bible, to be read as inspirational and patriotic literature.[xii] McCabe points out that the English assumption that Germans were being guided by “a known Anti-Christ”—the notation in Nietzsche’s death certificate—was false. Most Germans preferred Faust to Zarathustra, but it would not be fair to deny that Nietzsche had considerable bearing on the intellectual society of Germany. Nietzsche was also clear in his anti-German sentiments and could never bring himself to support any position that would make the individual subordinate to the state. Nietzsche’s Übermensch, the goal of humanity, was not a man let alone a German. “What is great in man,” he wrote, “is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.[xiii]”
It is in the knowledge of the unbelief of the Other Ranks that McCabe withdraws his theory, but Russell still held on. Russell claimed that the only dissenters on the commitment to war were the Socialists, who were also anti-Christian.[xiv] This is the basis for his claim that it was Christian morality that caused the war, making it seem as if Christian morals were flawed and a Christian mind could not be relied on to guide men any longer. Russell, an agnostic, got himself into trouble for being a pacifist during the war. He was convicted and fined when it was found that he was in connection with anti-war protests and swiftly fired from his post at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1916 as a result of his conviction. In 1918, he was convicted again and sentenced to six months in prison.[xv] When Robert Graves met Russell while on leave, he was astonished by his anti-war fervor, as it was uncommon for those who were too old for military service, which Russell was. To Russell, the war was all “wicked nonsense.”[xvi] Does that imply that, in line with his logic, we should dispose of our faith as our religious morals had caused the war in the first place?
Perhaps Earl Russell’s perspectives were biased. After all, he was known for his “ivory tower” wisdom, and tended to shut himself off from the masses. Surely the clergy would redeem themselves in service? This would depend on which denomination of clergymen we were speaking of. The Anglican Church barred their clergy from service, but as chaplains on the field, they would sometimes run against these orders and visit the trenches for a moment before retreating behind the trenches. It is easy to imagine how difficult it would be to respect a priest in such a position, however understandably difficult that position might be. The Roman Catholic priests were not prevented from participating in the service, where they usually served as stretcher-bearers. Most Catholic padres preferred to stay up front at all times so that they might provide last rites to dying soldiers.[xvii] This won the respect of many a member of the British Army, though not their religious conviction.
Joseph McCabe would not let religion off the hook too easily, however. Being an Englishmen, he naturally assigns blame to the Germans. What is surprising about this is that McCabe states because we reject that irreligious morality or the spread of unbelief caused the war, the religious and non-religious are both equally to blame in Germany.[xviii] While it may not be difficult to assign blame completely to the Germans—it was, after all, the Russians and Austrians who mobilized their armies first—it would not be impossible to claim that it was the imperial mindset, disregarding all religious perceptions, was responsible for the war. To support his claim that the spread of unbelief in Europe had nothing to do with causing the war, McCabe submits the fact that war was the result of events that occurred in an earlier and more thoroughly Christian period.[xix]
In the end, the irreligious in Europe still remained an unorganized lot of people from various backgrounds. For example, Robert Graves was an Anglo-Irish poet who was educated in the best public schools of Britain. Bertrand Russell was the grandson of John Russell who served twice as Prime Minister of England. Joseph McCabe was a Franciscan monk who came from poor family. Men who left God at home or in some shell hole on a French battlefield probably came from less than advantageous backgrounds. To assign an absolute cause would be to ignore the great diversity of experiences during the war. To say it is impossible to decide at all would be almost to ignore the issue. A change of faith did occur at this time, but can it be said the war caused this any more than it being a side effect of an end to an era? Just as people believe in God for reasons that vary from personal experience to intellectual revelation, it is a good enough reason to assign that logic to the loss of faith in God.
[iv] Ibid., 45. Graves’ had a friend name Raymond who, to the shock of Graves, boasted about being an atheist. At the time, Graves was a devout Anglican who was approaching confirmation and felt it necessary to argue with his friend. Raymond posed two ideas to Graves which the poet credited to end of his faith. The first was that if one must agree with the Anathasian Creed to be confirmed, which is that whoever will be saved must confess that there is not Three Incomprehensible but One Incomprehensible. Raymond said that was asserting that one must believe something that could not be understood or go to Hell, which he could not bring himself to do since he considered himself a reasonable person. The second statement was the question Graves fought to answer, but utterly failed to, was, “What’s the good of having a soul if you have a mind? What’s the function of a soul? It seems to be a pawn in a mere game.” Graves comments that he was never able to salvage their friendship until 1917, when he had come to be a complete agnostic. After he talking with Raymond while serving with the Irish Guard, Graves learned that Raymond died in Cambria soon after their meeting.
[vii] Ibid., 11. McCabe has a way with words. The full passage reads as follows. “When we survey those horrid stretches of desolation in Belgium and Poland and Serbia, where the mutilated bodies of the innocent, of women and children, lie amidst the ashes of their homes; when we think of those peaceful sailors of our mercantile marine at the bottom of the deep, those unoffending civilians whose flesh was torn by shells, those hundreds of thousands whom patriotic feelings alone has summoned to the vast tombs of Europe, those millions of homes that have been darkened by suspense and loss—how can we repeat the ancient assurance that God does count the hairs of the head and mark the fall of even the sparrows? Does God move the insensate stars only, and leave to the less skilful guidance of man those momentous little atoms which make up the brain of statesmen?”
[xi] Ibid., 158. The case was much more severe than Graves’ scriptural incident. Graves recorded the exchange: “ ’And all this damn nonsense, sir—excuse me, sir—that we read in the papers, sir, about how miraculous it is that the wayside crucifixes are always getting shot at, but the figure of our Lord Jesus somehow don’t get hurt, it fairly makes me sick, sir.’ This was his explanation why, when giving practice fire-orders from the hilltop, he shouted, unaware that I stood behind him: ‘Seven hundred, half left, bloke on the cross, five rounds, concentrate, FIRE!’ And why, for ‘concentrate’, he had humorously substituted ‘consecrate.’ ”
[xii] Robert Wicks, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (March 2010), under “Later-Period Writings: 1883-1887,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/#LatPerWri188188 (accessed March 30, 2010).
[xv] A.D. Irvine, “Bertrand Russell,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (March 2010), under “Russell’s Social and Political Philosophy,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/#RSPP (accessed March 30, 2010).
[xvi] Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That (London, Penguin Classics, 2000), 204. Graves recalls the conversation he and Russell shared: “ ‘Tell me, if a company of your men were brought along to break up a strike of munitions makers, and the munitions makers refused to go back to work, would you order your men to fire?’
‘Yes, if everything else failed. It would be no worse than shooting Germans, really.’
He asked in surprise, “Would your men obey you?”
‘They loathe munitions-workers, and would only be too glad at a chance to shoot a few. They think they’re all skrim-shankers.’
‘But they realize that the war’s all wicked nonsense?’
‘Yes, as well as I do.’
He could not understand my attitude.”
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