With God on our side — The paradox of using religion to justify war
RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – About 1905, the American writer, Mark Twain, wrote The War Prayer, about the ‘myth of redemptive violence’. His publisher rejected it. America was recovering from the effects of two wars, the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War.
The War Prayer started off: “It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism, the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping… and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags, flashed in the sun… nightly the packed mass meetings… while in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener…”
It goes on to describe the preacher begging for God’s help against the enemy. An old man then shuffles to the top of the church as the preacher prays: “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The old man motions him to step aside, which he does, and addressing the congregation claims that he has been sent by God. He said many prayers are actually two prayers! God hears both, the spoken and the unspoken.
“If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbour at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbour’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.”
He said praying for victory in war has other consequences. The ‘second’ prayer would be like this: “O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells. Help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead. Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain. Help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire. Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief.
“Help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unbefriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it…” The old man was later described as ‘a lunatic’.
Those sentiments ring true today in Israel. The Hamas killings on October 7 were outrageous. So is the Israeli/American response. It’s like a race to the bottom of what is repugnant, obscene and horrific. Hostages were taken by both sides, even if some are called ‘prisoners’.
We hear US politicians call on the Israeli Defence Forces for restraint while shipping them tons of ammunition. We have ‘military precision’ yet thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed in Gaza, thanks to the US war machine. Stop supplying ammunition, America, that’s the first step towards peace.
Jewish Israel, Christian America and Muslim Hamas all call on God, whichever version they believe in. We have turned God into a war god. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, we have made God an errand boy to satisfy our wandering desires. Dylan’s ‘With God On Our Side’ (which shares its melody with Dominic Behan’s ‘The Patriot Game’) is like a version of The War Prayer.
He explores how America has ‘God on its side’ when the cavalries charged and Indians died; in World War I where ‘you don’t count the dead when God’s on your side’; how Germans, ‘though they murdered six million’ now have God on their side; in nuclear war where ‘you never ask questions when God’s on your side’; he wonders if Judas Iscariot ‘had God on his side’.
Source: Mayonews