World War I: A Call to Serve

WORLD WAR I: A CALL TO SERVE

Middle Ground

As chairman of the Federal Council of Churches' General War-Time Commission, Robert Speer represented the middle ground between the extremes of militarism and pacifism. Like much of the population, Speer and his colleagues in the council felt a profound sense of duty to their country and committed themselves to furthering the war effort in whatever ways they could. As the controversy over Speer's YMCA speech illustrates, however, many were perfectly able to perform this service without engaging in German-bashing. They had pledged their loyalty to their country and acknowledged the United States as the last great hope in what seemed to be a war "to save civilization itself." The result was, in effect, a temporary suspension of the separation of church and state. Religious bodies became virtual subsidiaries of the War Department, providing a variety of services that the military was not equipped to handle as the nation faced a war the likes of which it had never even imagined before.

Commissions and Councils

The wartime service of America's religious bodies was overseen by impressive administrative structures, which were either founded or reorganized specifically for this purpose. The Federal Council of Churches, which in 1916 represented more than two-thirds of all Protestants in the United States, with 103,113 affiliated ministers serving nearly eighteen million communicants, sought to coordinate the efforts not only of various denominational bodies but also of the many interdenominational agencies that had undertaken various social services in this, the era of the Social Gospel. At a special meeting in Washington, D,C, on 8 and 9 May 1917, the council conferred with representatives from more than thirty organizations, including the YMCA, YWCA, the American Bible Society, and numerous mission boards. This meeting resulted in the formation of the General War-Time Commission, a body of one hundred members representing the full scope of these organizations' war work, which met for the first time on 20 September of the same year. Roman Catholics, for their part, created a new administrative body to help facilitate the efforts of many lay social service organizations. The brainchild of a Paulist priest, Father John Burke, who served as the editor of Catholic World, the National Catholic War Council came into being in 1917 but foundered until a reorganization in January 1918 placed it under the authority of the nation's archbishops. In a similar fashion, sixteen smaller groups joined together as the Jewish Welfare Board. From these administrative bodies, smaller committees and commissions proliferated at an astonishing rate, addressing every aspect they could think of relating to war conditions at home and abroad. Most of the men and women who worked in these organizations expressed temperate views about the enemy and the war but focused on doing all they could to help the members of their congregations (and their families) who were doing the fighting.

Chaplains

One of the most visible avenues for religious service in the military was in the office of chaplain in the armed services. But as the United States prepared to enter World War I, the army and the navy were both woefully short on staff and supplies to fulfill that function. In May 1917 Charles MacFarland, secretary of the Federal Council of Churches, had convened a General Committee on Army and Navy Chaplains. The committee, which later became part of the General War-Time Commission, focused on recruiting men to serve in that capacity. Aside from recruiting, however, there was the issue of supplies. Most denominations had independent agencies to equip their chaplains with books, Bibles, tracts, and any materials needed for the celebration of religious services in the soldiers' camps. After June 1918 the War-Time Commission acted as the central store for many of these denominations. For Catholic chaplains, the Chaplain's Aid Association, formerly a local organization overseen by Father Burke in New York City, became national and supplied each Catholic chaplain with a kit containing sacramental supplies and money. But the actual service of chaplains from all religious bodies faced obstacles in the governmental appropriations process. In May 1917, when Congress passed a military budget, the president was able to assign one chaplain to each regiment of twelve hundred men. But within a year the army had restructured its regimental system along the French model, so that a regiment now contained thirty-six hundred men whose needs were still to be met by a single chaplain. Protestants and Catholics joined together to submit a legislative petition to restore the former ratio of ministers to troops, and Congress increased the appropriation to two chaplains for every regiment. Religious leaders also banded together to establish training schools to prepare their ministers for military service. Theological schools in the Cambridge and Boston area allowed themselves to be used for this service, and on 1 March 1918 the first government-run school for chaplains opened at Fort Monroe in Virginia. In order to address the continuing personnel shortage, however, the churches began to encourage the service of voluntary, nonenlisted "camp pastors." But just as the General War-Time Commission was preparing a handbook to guide the conduct of these volunteers, the War Department issued an order calling a halt to this form of civilian service, arguing that the recent increase in the number of chaplains made the camp pastors' work superfluous. Thus, the efforts of religious bodies to ensure that soldiers would have enough ministers in their camps met with mixed results during the war. But it was largely because of the churches' persistence on this issue that, when the army was reorganized in 1920, a chief of chaplains was appointed, marking the first step on the way to the establishment of an official chaplains' corps—although that goal would have to wait until another world war had ended for its attainment.

"RUSSELLITES GUILTY OF HINDERING DRAFT"

"Charged with spreading doctrines calculated to promote unrest and disloyalty among the men of the army and navy, six leaders of the International Bible Students' Association, which was founded by the late 'Pastor' Charles T. Russell, were arrested yesterday afternoon in Brooklyn," reported The New York Times on 9 May 1918. Although stationed well off the Protestant mainstream, the Russellites (later to be called Jehovah's Witnesses) did have a premillennial vision that caused them to be branded as disloyal and unpatriotic, as were many other premillennialists. And perhaps because they were a marginal group to begin with, the Bible Students faced a more serious attack during the war than premillennialists in established denominations. Joseph Rutherford, Russell's successor, and seven other men ultimately faced charges of "unlawfully and willfully conspiring to cause insubordination, disloyalty, and refusal of duty of the military and naval forces of the United States." Part of the evidence brought against them was a posthumous collection of Russell's writings, published as The Finished Mystery, which "reeked with passages condemning war and referring to patriotism as a delusion which caused men to kill each other." Another piece of the prosecution's case was a letter from Rutherford to a conscientious objector, supporting his protest and commenting, "We know that the present order is Babylon, and that the day has come for it to go down in a great tide of revolution and anarchy which shall follow the war." The jury found the eight Russellites guilty on four counts of conspiring to subvert the purpose of the Selective Service Act of 1917, and the presiding judge, H. B. Howe, sentenced seven of the men to four terms of twenty years, to be served concurrently in a federal prison in Atlanta. The eighth defendant received a sentence of ten years. Editorializing from the bench, Judge Howe commented that the Bible Students were "worse than traitors." "If they had taken guns and swords and joined the German Army, the harm they could have done would have been insignificant compared with the results of their propaganda," he said.

Sources:

Ray H. Abrams, Preachers Present Arms (Scottsdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1969);

"Arrest Russellites on Sedition Charges," New York Times, 9 May 1918, p. 22;

"Letter to Russellite Favors Opposing War," New York Times, 7 June 1918, p. 13;

"Russellites Guilty of Hindering Draft," New York Times, 21 June 1918, p. 7;

"20 Years in Prison for 7 Russellites," New York Times, 22 June 1918, p. 18.

Huts in Hell

Chaplains were not the only individuals providing service to the soldiers in the camps. In fact, a far more extensive wartime ministry came in the form of lay religious organizations working to provide recreational activities for military personnel. Acknowledging that the conditions of war made the camps potential hotbeds of vice, the YMCA and YWCA launched a massive effort to operate canteens and recreational facilities in camps here and abroad. Four days after the declaration of war on Germany, John Mott convened a YMCA Conference on Army Work in Garden City, New York. The conference created the National War Work Council to carry out their aims, which they defined as "to promote the physical, mental and social and spiritual welfare of the more than one million men of the military forces of the United States, to strengthen the hands of the Chaplain's Corps and to serve the Churches." The alacrity with which the YMCA had responded to the declaration of war so impressed government officials that the War Department ultimately put the organization officially in charge of all camp recreational activities, and President Wilson recognized it as "a valuable adjunct and asset to the service." But the YMCA's priority in this regard did not go uncontested, as the major Catholic lay organization, the Knights of Columbus, also submitted a bid to be officially recognized for camp service. On 14 April (just a few days after the YMCA meeting), the Supreme Board of Directors of the Knights of Columbus met in Washington to pledge its support and its volunteers for recreational and religious activities in the camps. The Knights had experience in this line of duty, which they had gained in military camps during the border campaign against Mexico in the previous year. The Knights had to fight anti-Catholic bias in seeking to be officially sanctioned for war work, as well as the YMCA's disapproval of the well-funded campaign by the Knights to give things away for free in the camps, instead of selling them as the YMCA workers did. Eventually, the Knights dropped the "everything free" campaign and were admitted to the camps. They were followed by the YWCA, the Jewish Welfare Board, the American Library Association, the War Camp Community Service, and the Salvation Army, as well as, ultimately, Catholic women's groups, who established "Visitors' Houses" in France on the model of those operated by the YWCA. Some religious leaders spoke disparagingly of the activities of these groups, using as a symbol the time they spent "selling cigarettes" in their canteens. These efforts were, after all, carried out by lay men and women who could not perform many religious services. But they clearly devoted large amounts of their own time and energy to seeing that the troops did not stray into sin.

Fund-Raising

Outside the camps, there were still many arenas for service for the religious civilian population. One of the more-extraordinary achievements of the various wartime councils was the raising of large sums of money to finance their own activities, as well as the general national war effort. "Liberty Loan Sundays" were proclaimed, days on which pastors used their pulpits to exhort their congregations to buy government Liberty Bonds. Liberty Bonds were also advertised in religious periodicals, with slogans such as "Kill the Hun—Kill His Hope" calling to mind the more salacious propaganda of the day. But the sums these organizations raised in their own behalf were truly staggering. The Christian Scientists alone raised $2 million for their War Relief Committee, and in New York City alone, a Catholic War Fund drive launched in March 1918 by Archbishop Cardinal Farley generated more than twice its $2.5 million goal. The crowning achievement of wartime fund-raising was the United War Work Campaign, a joint effort by the General War-Time Commission, the National Catholic War Council, and the Jewish Welfare Board. As had happened when the Knights of Columbus tried to enter the camps, anti-Catholic prejudice initially stonewalled the attempts to organize such a campaign. But after months of ironing out the details, on 5 September 1918 President Wilson announced the United War Work Campaign. The overall goal was $170 million, to be divided between Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish agencies. Although the public effort to secure contributions did not begin until 11 November—Armistice Day—by 20 November pledges totaling $205 million had been received. Of the amount pledged, a total of $188 million was ultimately collected from this effort and continued to be distributed after the war. Members of congregations across the country seemed to share their leaders' devotion to service in the nation's time of need.

The Preservation of the Social Gospel

With all that was happening, the religious bodies did not lose sight of the goals they had been pursuing for the betterment of American society prior to the war, They endeavored to maintain the message of the Social Gospel that had been a central component of liberal Christianity since the turn of the century. As the country geared up for a massive military effort, some Social Gospelers feared that the gains that had been made in labor conditions would be sacrificed in the interest of victory. The General War-Time Commission created a Committee on Industrial Conditions to make sure that wartime was not engendering labor abuses. The increasing militancy of labor organizations, especially the burgeoning Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), spurred their efforts to discover what could "make men discontented and so ready to be misled by self-interested or lawless agitators." They also turned their attentions to newly formed centers of industrial production, makeshift communities with few or no facilities outside the factories and housing projects. The General War-Time Commission, in response to this situation, created a Joint Committee on War Production Communities, which, with financial support from the Home Missions Council, set about building at least one church—a "Liberty Church"—in every such settlement. Though these efforts did not produce substantial results, they did represent an attempt to make sure that peacetime values were maintained even in the frenetic conditions of wartime production. This drive for continuity in service continued even after the war's end. The General War-Time Commission disbanded at its final meeting on 29 April 1919, but the Federal Council of Churches remained intact and continued to work for the ideals expressed in the Social Creed of the Churches it had adopted at its formation in 1908. The National Catholic War Council was transformed into the National Catholic Welfare Council (later Conference), the first nonlay, national Catholic organization for social service. Its policy statement was written by Father John A. Ryan of Catholic University, whose A Living Wage, published in 1906, had earned him a place as perhaps the leading Catholic spokesman for the Social Gospel. When the bishops signed Ryan's statement, they agreed to his call for a minimum wage; unemployment, health, and old-age insurance; child labor laws; public housing; and legal support for organized labor. Catholic social activism had attained a new maturity with the council. The Jewish Welfare Board underwent a similar transformation after the war, staying in existence but turning its attention to the establishment of Jewish community centers in major cities. While the specific circumstances of war were complicated with moral questions, in general World War I served to galvanize the spirit of service that had taken shape earlier in the Social Gospel movement. Within the major religious bodies, social action had been worked into organizational structures by the war's end, and it was there to stay.

Sources:

Ray H. Abrams, Preachers Present Arms (Scottsdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1969);

Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972);

Marvin B. Endy Jr., "War and Peace," in Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience, edited by Charles H. Lippy and Peter Williams (New York: Scribners, 1988);

John A. Mayer, "Social Reform After the Civil War to the Great Depression," in Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience, edited by Charles H. Lippy and Peter Williams (New York: Scribners, 1988);

John F. Piper Jr., The American Churches in World War I (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985).