God, Britain, and Hitler in World War II: The View of the British Clergy, 1939-1945

(Hardback)

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Many Britons had distinct religious or theological interpretations of World War II. They viewed fascism, especially the German national socialism, as a form of modern paganism, a repulsive worship of leader, race and state - a form of idolatry. However, for the most part, British clerics did not defend the war as a simple matter of Christian Britain versus pagan Germany, because they saw only too well the pagan elements in British culture. Instead, the clergy defended the war as a defence of "Christian civilization", a particular religious culture that had grown up under the aegis of the Christian faith. Fascism had, in the opinion of many, family similarities to liberal humanism. Nazism was abusing the Scripture because everyone had allowed a liberal hermeneutic to slip into their thinking theologically. Naturally, the clerics view of the war as "just" meant that pacifism was wrong-headed, but they refused to demonize pacifists or to hound them into arrest. The clergymen did maintain that liberal humanism issued logically in pacifism and pacifism had weakened the national will, allowing it to make shameful concessions to the fascist dictators throughout the 1930s. This study will also help explain the surprising Labour party victory in the summer of 1945.

Reviews

Based on the scores of books and pamphlets published by Church leaders between 1939 and 1945, God, Britian, and Hitler, is a good introduction to the important cluster of complex and enduring theological, political, denominational, and moral issues raised by the Second World War. In its breadth of coverage and clarity of presentation, Hoover's work will repay the careful attention of students or war aims, church/state relations, and the role of the church in late twentieth-century Britian.-Albion
Hoover has brought to light a large body of hitherto unexamined writings which attempt to account for a wide variety of denominational views....a good general scholarly work, -Journal of Church and State
Hoover has painstakingly compiled the utterances of a wide range of (primarily English) theorlogical commentators, and this will undoubtedly make the book a useful resource for students of the period.-Anglican and Episcopal History
"Hoover has brought to light a large body of hitherto unexamined writings which attempt to account for a wide variety of denominational views....a good general scholarly work,"-Journal of Church and State
"Hoover has painstakingly compiled the utterances of a wide range of (primarily English) theorlogical commentators, and this will undoubtedly make the book a useful resource for students of the period."-Anglican and Episcopal History
"Based on the scores of books and pamphlets published by Church leaders between 1939 and 1945, God, Britian, and Hitler, is a good introduction to the important cluster of complex and enduring theological, political, denominational, and moral issues raised by the Second World War. In its breadth of coverage and clarity of presentation, Hoover's work will repay the careful attention of students or war aims, church/state relations, and the role of the church in late twentieth-century Britian."-Albion

Author Bio

A. J. HOOVER has been a professor of History for 34 years and has taught at Pepperdine University and Abilene Christian University./e He has written about several wars and patriotic preaching in both Britain and Germany, and his research has taken him to university libraries in Berlin, Marburg, Heidelberg, Oxford, and Cambridge. This is his third book on clerical nationalism.