The Peace Movement and the Religious Community in Germany, 1900–1914

1969 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-311
Author(s):  
Roger Philip Chickering
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
First World War ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
International Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Christian Institutions ◽  
First World

The prominence of American and European clergymen in recent demonstrations in favor of international peace has been a source of encouragement to those who believe that war contradicts the most fundamental tenets of Christianity. However, it is a well known fact that Christian institutions have historically found it possible not only to tolerate the use of violence to settle international disputes, but even to advocate it with enthusiasm. The tendency of clergymen to view war as a necessary or desirable component of international relations was particularly pronounced in the decades immediately preceding the outbreak of the first world war, when churchmen found themselves caught up in the nationalistic frenzy that poisoned relations among the major European powers. The religious community in Germany was especially susceptible to this kind of belligerent nationalism and indeed ranked as one of the most patriotic sectors of Wilhelmine society. Perhaps nowhere was this orientation more evident than in the relations between the religious community and the organized peace movement in Germany.

Sun Yat-sen and the Japanese: 1914–16

1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert A. Altman ◽  
Harold Z. Schiffrin
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Fair Share ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
World War ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Grand Prize ◽  
First World

The First World War changed the pattern of international relations in East Asia. What had previously been another arena for the European power struggle became the cockpit for two regional forces, Japanese expansionism and incipient Chinese nationalism. The confrontation between the two, which was to last for a quarter of a century, began as a most unequal contest. Great power rivalry had enabled China to balance off her enemies and to maintain her status as a sovereign entity. But with Europe distracted, China was helpless, and Japan had a unique opportunity to pursue an independent expansionist policy. Instead of cooperating with England and the other powers in order to get a fair share of the China spoils, after 1914 Japan could make her bid for the grand prize, exclusive access to China's resources. Thus the European powers’ pre-occupation with mutual slaughter exposed China to extreme danger, greater than that which she had faced during the heyday of classical imperialism.1 But Japan was not alone in welcoming the European retreat. Japan’s opportunity was also Sun Yat-sen's opportunity.

scholarly journals Изменение мировоззрения российских меннонитов и разрушение их сообщества

2021 ◽  
pp. 72-80
Author(s):  
Елена Евгеньевна Ходченко
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
First World War ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
World War ◽  
Short Period ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

The article raises the problems of the Mennonite community's reflection on the reforms in Russian Empire as well as the modernization of social, political and economic environment in 1861–1914, during the First World War, the recurring power changes and political anarchy in Ukraine during the Civil War. The author examines the Mennonites' attempts to adjust the changes in reality, the cause-and-effect relationships of arising social crisis which ultimately led to the destruction of the ethnoreligious community's canonical foundations. The research bases on the testimonies of the eyewitnesses (given in their diaries), memoirs and other published materials. The author examines the gradual deviation processes among the Mennonite society that were transforming the fundamental statements of the congregations’ doctrine and their moral norms and traditions. It is analyzed whether the Russian-Ukrainian Mennonites remained an ethno-religious conglomerate or lost their inherent values. As a result it has been proved the following: the Mennonites in Russia in a short period from the beginning of the reforms of the 1860s – 1870s to the beginning of the 20th century, went from a close-knit religious community to an opened and spiritually weakened unification. During the period of “challenges and reactions” of the First World War and the Civil War, the leaders of the community were unable to maintain the unity and cohesion, a complex of moral and ethical markers, pacifist views, social institutions, which led to a deformation of values and disorientation in further actions. Only a small part of the Mennonites society was able to organize itself and, thanks to the support of the Canadian Mennonites communities, it emigrated in 1923–1926 and thus avoided the Bolshevik regime repressions. Key words: the Mennonites, World War I, Civil War, Makhno, identity.

scholarly journals Neutral Spectators from a Distance? American Jews and the Outbreak of the First World War

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Sarah Panter
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Nation State ◽  
American Jews ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
American Jewry ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

As the First World War broke out in 1914, American Jews seemed far away from the upheaval in Europe. Yet their role as neutral spectators from the distance was questioned right from the outset because of their diverse transcultural entanglements with Europe. Seen from a specific Jewish perspective, the war bore the potential of becoming a fratricidal war. In particular at the Eastern front it was a likely scenario that Jewish soldiers fighting on either side would have to face each other in battle. For Jews, depending on how one defined Jewishness, could be regarded as citizens of a particular nation-state or multi-ethnic empire, as members of a transnational religious community or as members of an ethnic-national diaspora community. Against this background, this article attempts to shed fresh light on the still under-researched topic of American Jewish responses to the outbreak of the First World War. Although American Jewry in 1914 was made up of Jews with different socio-cultural backgrounds, they were often regarded as being pro-German. The war’s impact and the pressures of conformity associated with these contested loyalties for American Jews did therefore not just unfold in and after 1917, but, as this article emphasizes, already in 1914.

“If God be for you, who can be against you?”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore Kornweibel,
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
First World War ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Church Of God ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
In Christ ◽  
First World ◽  
The Church

This chapter explains how during the First World War the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI’s official name at the time) targeted the Church of God in Christ, one of the nation's largest Pentecostal denominations. The author Theodore Kornweibel, who has written extensively on the Federal government’s campaigns against black militancy in the period during and following World War I, examines the nature and consequences of this episode that marked the Bureau's first formal engagement with an American religious community.

scholarly journals The English school and the classical approach: Between modernism and interpretivism

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Bevir ◽  
Ian Hall
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
First World War ◽  
English School ◽  
Classical Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Committee ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
First World

This article analyses the evolution of the English school’s approach to international relations from the work of the early British Committee in the late 1950s and early 1960s to its revival in the 1990s and afterwards. It argues that the school’s so-called ‘classical approach’ was shaped by the crisis of developmental historicism brought on by the First World War and by the reactions of historians like Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight to the rise of modernist social science in the twentieth century. It characterises the classical approach, as advanced by Hedley Bull, as a form of ‘reluctant modernism’ with underlying interpretivist commitments and unresolved tensions with modernist approaches. It argues that to resolve some of the confusion concerning its preferred approach to the study of international relations, the English school should return to the interpretivist commitments of its early thinkers.

French War Aims and the American Challenge, 1914–1918

1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 877-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
First World War ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
World War ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Aims ◽  
First World

Between 1917 and 1919 the United States made its first, spectacular intrusion into European power politics. For President Wilson, entry into the First World War was a chance not only to eliminate an immediate threat to American interests but also to transform international relations. The time had come to weld the industrialized countries into a community of interest, based on a shared loyalty to representative government and the market economy, expressed by membership of a League of Nations, and in which economic and territorial causes of tension would have been removed. But hardly had the German obstacle to this programme been overcome before, at the peace conference of 1919, Wilson ran up against almost equally determined obstruction from his former allies. This article examines one source of that antagonism, in the latent conflict before the armistice between American war aims and those of France. It argues that French policy was moulded by a tension between the Paris leaders' own desires for the settlement with Germany and their need to preserve a system of alliances deemed essential for French security in the future as well as for the war itself. By 1917 French governments were already confronted with dilemmas which were to harass them for the succeeding twenty years.

Repairing the entente cordiale And The New Diplomacy

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Cassels
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The One ◽  
First World

At the close of World War I two schools of thought about the future conduct of international relations emerged into plain view. On the one hand, the traditionalists presumed that the principles and practices of pre-1914 diplomacy could and should be sustained. This implied a routine of continual competition among the sovereign nation states, the anarchy of which was mitigated only by the collective fear of hegemony by one state (the mechanism of the balance of power) and by a sense of belonging to a common civilization (the old Concert of Europe). Tacitly accepted as the final arbiter of vital questions was the instrument of war. On the other hand, the First World War had provided ample grounds for a swingeing critique of Realpolitik when practised in an age of mass armies and technological warfare.

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