Religious Support of War

◆ In the book War, Communism and World Religions, Dr. Charles S. Braden wrote: “All during World War I, the churches dutifully supported it, sold bonds, recruited soldiers, right in the church, and generally blessed it. There were a few who went to prison as conscientious objectors, but only a few, and they got little sympathy generally from the churches.”

Being removed from that time by half a century, some might question whether clergymen actually took such an unchristian view. But the book Thoughts in War-Time quotes an essay by Canon B. H. Streeter, published during World War I. In the essay, “War, This War and the Sermon on the Mount,” the clergyman concluded:

“If the soldier is convinced that with the cause for which he is fighting is involved the welfare of humanity as a whole, including, therefore, in the long run that of Germany also, he can not only shoot the German in the trenches opposite without any feeling of personal dislike, but he can do so for the love of man. . . . The soldier is before all things a man who is ready to die for his country; and readiness to die for others is essentially a Christian thing.”

How do you think such bloodguilty religious leaders stand before “the One decreed by God to be judge of the living and the dead”?​—Acts 10:42.