Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 1/2 (June 2017)

Review of John Carter Wood, ed., Christianity and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Europe. Conflict, Community, and the Social Order (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 211 pages, ISBN 9783525101490.

By Sarah Thieme, University of Münster

John Carter Wood has edited a volume which considers religion and its impact on politics, more precisely, the relationship between Christianity and “national identity” and the discourses about this interaction in the “long” twentieth century in Europe. In his introductory essay, the editor stresses the volumes’ focus on the intertwining between national and Christian identities. Rather than having an adversarial relationship, churches and nations often engaged in various partnerships in the twentieth century, Wood argues. Beginning with the changed conditions which shaped their relationship, he claims that the biggest challenges for Christianity were the growing state power—in particular, totalitarianism—and secularisation, which he describes as subjective secularisation. Theses common themes connect the following essays.

The inclusion of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox perspectives is commendable, as it highlights not only conflicts about national identity within one confession, but also points to conflicts between various denominations and allows comparisons. Continue reading →