Introduction

The articles collected here were first presented at a one-day symposium held at Florida State University in December 2016. Focused on religious and cultural elements of the First World War, the symposium followed on a fall semester seminar that I, along with my colleague Michael Ruse, taught. Given the lively response to the seminar and symposium, it seemed appropriate to seek publication of some of the work presented, and I am grateful to the editors of Soundings for providing a venue.

The collection begins with Nigel Biggar’s application of the “just war” tradition to the Battle of the Somme. As Biggar notes, the stunning number of casualties resulting from this protracted conflict (fighting raged from July 1 to November 18, 1916) has rendered the Somme “a byword for criminally disproportionate military slaughter.” Since the standard list of just war criteria suggests that proportionality—first in relation to any resort to armed force, and second in relation to the conduct of battle—is an important measure of justice, Biggar takes the occasion to ask just what the tradition requires. How should we think about proportionality in matters of war? Arguing for a complex understanding of the matter in which the number of casualties must be weighed in relation to the threat posed by a particular foe, the likely results of defeat, and other matters, Biggar suggests the standard judgment regarding the Somme may not be right.

Cara Burnidge’s article on Woodrow Wilson’s “Christian internationalism” takes us in a rather different direction. Here, the focus is on the religious roots of Wilson’s ideas about international order. As recent discussions of his legacy at Princeton remind us, Wilson was a complex man, and Burnidge provides an insightful account of the conflicting aspects of a president’s program.

Turning our attention to the implements of war—in this case, the rifle and the hand grenade—Jonathan Ebel shows us how the discourse of and about soldiers treats weapons not only as “things”—that is, tools for inflicting harm—but as “signs,” spoken of in ways that reflect emotional, cultural, and religious values. In the Great War, people spoke about rifles in ways that invoked an idealized American past; by contrast, descriptions of hand grenades connected with baseball and other sports, as well as with ideas about martyrdom.

Returning to some of the ideas at stake in Biggar’s article, James Turner Johnson reminds us of the ways the Great War posed challenges to the development of international law. Building on early modern notions of a “law of nations” designed to govern the conduct of war, scholars and practitioners in the nineteenth century crafted the outlines of a positive law related to armed force. While combatants ultimately violated many if not most of the provisions of this law between 1914 and 1918, such failure inspired renewed efforts to regulate and even to outlaw war. Following on this historical outline, Johnson concludes with some reflections on the role of religion in more contemporary attempts to regulate resort to and conduct of war.

The collection closes with Michael Ruse’s discussion of the relationship between Christian and Darwinian discussions of war, particularly with respect to the Great War. Drawing on Nigel Biggar’s In Defence of War, among other sources, Ruse argues for a version of the Christian tradition in which war is an evil, but probably inevitable or inescapable aspect of human existence. By contrast, evolutionary accounts of war suggest that while conflict “seems to be natural, part of the evolutionary heritage of us all,” it may be possible for human beings to render war a thing of the past. Concluding with an appeal for more in the way of “constructive engagement” between Christians and Darwinians, Ruse’s article, along with the others in this issue of Soundings, suggests the need for continued inquiry into the moral, legal, historical, and cultural aspects of the experience of war.