Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old harnesses all the power of Middle Earth to celebrate the men who fought the Great War

World War I profoundly affected American churches and Christian thought. Recalling that impact offers counsel for the future.

The First World War was a clash that forever changed the world. The heroes of 1918 answered the call 100 years ago. Will we likewise do our part in fighting the good fight and fear not the darkness? 

A century ago, the Great War ended. Remembrance Day is an opportunity to recall those who fought, the fallen, and the costs and sometimes necessity of war.

For Nicholas Kristof to say that Americans “are willing to starve Yemeni schoolchildren” because “we dislike Iran’s ayatollahs” is so simplistic as to be immoral in itself.

We have memorials to Pearl Harbor and Auschwitz, Oklahoma City and Shanksville, PA, not merely because we want to remember those we lost, but because we do not want to forget the lessons we learned about ourselves in those moments. Each tragedy speaks to the depth of our collective depravity and the glory of God’s image in every victim and hero.

Operation Finale isn’t technically about killing Holocaust logistician Adolf Eichmann but about Israel’s 1960 abduction of him from Argentina. But there’s no doubt among any of the involved parties, including Eichmann, that the ultimate goal is his execution.

The attack on Hiroshima was a moral horror but not a moral wrong. As such, it reveals important committments that ought to guide Christian moral reasoning.

American Christians should advocate for exhaustive attempts at diplomacy before endorsing US policies that produce further conflict and chaos.