Local Catholicism as Transnational War Experience: Everyday Religious Practice in Occupied Northern France, 1914–1918.

The Great War is not a historical episode that easily lends itself to studying the subtleties of religious belief systems. Believers on opposite sides claimed that they were engaged in a just war of defense against aggression. They argued that God was on their side, and they prayed for victory of their nation—even if that meant the destruction of their fellow believers who were now considered the enemy. Despite Catholic claims to internationalism and universalism, the overwhelming majority of Catholic bishops and prominent clerics in the public sphere devoted themselves to national causes. Clerical nationalism seemed to overwhelm Christian fellowship, and the clerical nationalist paradigm often served as scholarly shorthand for the experience of religion during the war, especially for long-term studies of Christianity and war. The implacable hostility between French and German Catholic bishops became a convenient symbol of European national enmity in an age of total war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]