Pearl Harbor, trenches, and conscientious objectors: Christian History announces an issue on Faith in the World Wars
By Jennifer Woodruff Tait
Some decades ago, I was due on an anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. My mother announced her intention to name me Pearl if I arrived on the intended day. The fact that I did not is obvious from the name I got instead, but I’ve always felt a particular interest in the day and its world-changing implications.
This year, we remember the attack’s 75th anniversary on December 7, 2016. It strikes home to me with particular resonance, not just because I was almost named Pearl, but because we’re currently working on an issue of Christian History about faith in the World Wars. (We’ve previously done issues on faith in the Revolutionary War and Civil War. You can get both on our website as full-color reprints.)
The 31-year period from 1914 to 1945 saw not one, but two world-encompassing conflicts, as the “war to end all wars” (World War I) was followed by World War II just two decades later. The death and destruction that resulted and the religious questions that were raised have troubled the modern world ever since.
This special expanded issue of CH is filled with stories both heroic and haunting, both challenging and touching. Sometimes they have even brought the editors to tears working on them. You’ll hear the names you know of—Woodrow Wilson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boom—and also many stories that will be new. From chaplains to conscientious objectors, from U.S. doughboys to Japanese pilots, from Congressmen to philosophers, everyone wrestled with questions of where God was in the midst of war. Their answers continue to relate to our modern world in its own kinds of turmoil.
The words of Bonhoeffer on the eve of World War II have been repeated many times, but they are no less valuable to keep before us today: “Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.”
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