Churches Patriotic But Cautious During Wwii
Throughout the human experience, religion and war have been sometimes cautious, often riotous, allies.
Mark Twain knew that all too well.
Gerald Sittser does, too. As Sittser wrote in his book “A Cautious Patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War” (from which he will read on Monday, see below), “In the name of God armies have marauded rival cities, invaded rival nations and fought against rival empires. That has been true for a religion like Islam. It has been no less true for Christianity.”
But Sittser, a professor of religion and philosophy at Whitworth College, sees an exception. During World War II, he wrote, American churches as a whole resisted the jingoistic call to arms.
“For perhaps the first time in history of America at war, they lived in the tension of a ‘cautious patriotism,”’ Sittser wrote. “They were devoted to the nation but not without ambivalence and reservations. Church leaders in particular did not want to let the war undermine their greater loyalty to God, justice, humanitarianism and peace. However severe the crisis, they tried to resist being overcome by patriotic fervor.”
This did not mean that they refused to play an active role, Sittser wrote. American churches sent their young men to become soldiers, sailors and fliers. They raised money through rummage sales. They aided with bond drives.
“They strived for victory, as most Americans did,” Sittser wrote.
But they did so with an eye to the future.
“They tried to be prophetic even as they were pastoral,” he wrote. “They maintained an international perspective even as they addressed national concerns. They wanted to be faithful to Christian convictions even as they functioned as good citizens in a nation of crisis.”
They call it synchronicity
Spokane resident William J. Lambert passes along this accounting of what he calls “a local bit of ‘Truth is Stranger Than Fiction’.”
Seems Lambert’s 1981 novel “Riders of the Dragon,” which was published under the pseudonym Christopher Dane, “eerily presaged many aspects of the Heaven’s Gate/Hale-Bop visitors-from-outer-space tragedy.”
His evidence: On page 159 Lambert wrote about “a group of people, searching for ‘reasons why,’ (who) supplant traditional religious beliefs with answers supplied by alien life-forms ‘riding’ a newly discovered comet.”
On page 45: “This selected group of humans is chosen by aliens, on the incoming comet, to transport up to the comet and to ‘a higher state’ and to ‘a better world.”’
On page 147: “A spacecraft, from the newly appeared comet, is sent to transport the selected group to the comet…”
And on page 140: “As preparation for transport the selected group must rid themselves of their encumbering bodies.”
Lambert stresses that “Riders of the Dragon” is out of print, so he is not trying to work up publicity on the “genuine tragedy that was the Hale-Bop-related Heaven’s Gate.”
His purpose then? “I’m making the following (information) available free of charge and obligation only because, before I spot it exploitatively distorted-beyond-belief in The Globe or The Star, in my local supermarket check-out line or one of the more ‘kooky’ chat lines of the Internet, I’d like to give a member of the legitimate press… the opportunity to give it the half-column-inch, or possibly less, that it deserves.”
The reader board
Gerald Sittser, author of “A Cautious Patriotism” will read from his book at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington.
Poet Tess Gallagher will read from her book of short stories “At the Owl Woman Saloon,” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Auntie’s.
Stephanie Coontz, author of “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap,” will read from her book at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Auntie’s.
David James Duncan, author of “The River Why” and “The Brothers K,” will read from recent work Friday at 8 p.m. at the Whitworth College Campus Center.
Vanessa Suquet, author of “Fighting to Live - Too Young to Die,” will read from her memoir of battling cancer at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Auntie’s.
, DataTimes