The British and German Churches and the Perception of War, 1908–1914

Abstract

This article is presented in the conviction that the religious dimension within the respective political cultures of Great Britain and Imperial Germany has yet to be exhaustively investigated by historians of AngloGerman relations, or for that matter by biographers of I(aiser Wilhelm II. Paul M. I(ennedy in his monumental study, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism 1860-1914 (London 1980), certainly displayed a sensitivity to this aspect. However, curiously, the sum of the latest research, I(aiser Wilhelm II New Interpretations The Corfu Papers, edited by John C.G. Rahl and Nicolaus Sombart (Cambridge 1982), paid no attention at all to the monarch's religious training or convictions. Given that these things have an undeniable influence upon the formation of the individual's 'unspoken assumptions' (James Joll), their neglect by scholars who seek to explain historical phenomena by examining all causative factors is puzzling. No one mentions, for example, that the I(aiser was summus episcopus1 of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia, and as such was a most Christian monarch and presumably an apostle of the Prince of Peace. How Wilhelm II combined this role with his apparently more preferred role of 'supreme war lord' ought to be a subject of some interest to historians as well as theologians. These are some of the questions that would need to be addressed, and they are thrown up repeatedly and sharply in the six crisisladen years before the Great War, especially by the unique and independent peace movement that involved specifically the British and German churches on a completely ecumenical basis. It is well documented that the pre-1914 secular peace movement in Germany was far more opposed or ignored by the vast majority of German clergy, both Evangelical and Roman, than it was supported. In particular, the Evangelical pastors analysed international relations through a historicist-theological paradigm that excluded the possibility, or even desirability, of peace among the nations. Why is it, then, that significant numbers, including outstanding personages of the Germanic theological world, cultivated intense fraternal relations with their English counterparts, expressing the hope for world peace at every possible occasion?