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Mark Twain's War Prayer
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In this episode, we talk about Mark Twain's "War Prayer," a powerful exposition on the intersection of war, patriotism, and religion in U.S. culture.
Host: Ray Haberski
Guests: Jordan Hansen and Jennifer Manning
Audio Engineers: Jason M. Kelly and Kelly Kerr
- Twain, Mark. "The War Prayer" (ca.1904-5). The American Yawp Reader. https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/19-american-empire/mark-twain-the-war-prayer-ca-1904-5/
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Transcript
Intro: War, Identity, and Debate
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Justice and War in American History podcast. I'm Jason Kelly. And I'm Ray Habersky. War has long been an indelible part of America's story, shaping national identity, values and principles. The experience of war has transformed the lives of each generation. And because of this, it has historically elicited impassioned debates and conflicting perspectives.
Diverse Voices on War and Justice
00:00:28
Speaker
This podcast aims to explore this history by bringing together a diverse range of voices, veterans, active service members, citizens and scholars. Through our conversations, we will consider the ways in which war has shaped and reshaped notions of justice. In the process, we will engage with broad themes such as duty, heroism, suffering, loyalty and patriotism.
Season Focus & Funding
00:00:50
Speaker
Our broad framework during this season is to compare and contrast the histories of the Spanish-American
00:00:56
Speaker
Philippine-American and Vietnam wars, wars that had a profound effect on the people of the United States. The National Endowment for the Humanities has generously provided funding for this project, making it possible to have conversations about the effects of war on American veterans, their families, and the generations who bear witness to conflict.
00:01:17
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of the Justice and War in American History podcast.
Mark Twain's 'War Prayer' and Critique
00:01:21
Speaker
Today, we're talking about Mark Twain's war prayer and other critiques of the Spanish American and Philippine American wars.
00:01:28
Speaker
Right. In this episode, I had a chance to talk to some recurring guests on the podcast. And what we did was a little bit different than in some of the other episodes. This one really focused in on how Americans in the time of war critique the war that
00:01:48
Speaker
People were fighting in, killing in, and dying in. And we focused primarily on Mark Twain's war prayer, which was an essay that he wrote but didn't publish until after his death because he thought it would be too dangerous in many ways for his family and for his own livelihood.
00:02:04
Speaker
But that gives you an indication of how important war and war narratives have been, especially in a time of war to the American public. And Twain was really concerned, in this case especially, because his war prayer, as it sounds, mixed religion, patriotism, and war. And so I think the podcast is really quite interesting for sort of like a touchstone for many of the other debates and discussions Americans have had.
00:02:32
Speaker
Really going back to the very beginning of American wars right up through the present Yeah, and if you want to read the war prayer We have this on our website at justice and war seminar org Or you can link to it through the information associated with this podcast in your podcast app
00:02:50
Speaker
All right, welcome listeners to an episode that I'm really looking forward to. It's on critiques of America's involvement in wars, and more specifically, the morality and the language of war.
Guests' Military Backgrounds
00:03:06
Speaker
And we're going to launch into a discussion about that through Mark Twain's very famous, somewhat notorious essay called The War Prayer.
00:03:15
Speaker
But before we get to that, I want our guests to introduce themselves. So Jordan, how would you go first?
Analyzing 'War Prayer'
00:03:21
Speaker
Sure. My name is Jordan Hanson. I'm currently a student here at IUPUI studying history and secondary education, hoping to get into academia in some capacity.
00:03:30
Speaker
I served in the Army for five years as a 31 Bravo military police officer. I was a member of a riot team, did search and rescue, a few different things. And then I moved over to the Air National Guard, where I served similar capacities as a security forces officer. So same job, just different title. Very good.
00:03:49
Speaker
Okay, Jennifer, how about you? What's up? I'm Jennifer Manning. I am currently also a senior here at IUPUI doing secondary social studies education. I am a 10-year veteran of the Army, also a 31 Bravo military police officer, so we represent today. I have done combat deployment to Afghanistan during 2009-2010. I've also held most jobs in capacity in the military all the way up to drill sergeant. So yeah, great to be here.
00:04:16
Speaker
All right, good. So one of the things that is kind of nice about the fact that both of you want to be teachers is that the thing that we're using today, the device, the war prayer for Mark Twain is something that I use as a teacher here at IUPUI.
00:04:28
Speaker
And it's really effective because I think we all think we know who Mark Twain is. He's one of the great satirists of the 19th century. But he was also a writer who had a particular political position on war. And during the Spanish-American War, there was a good deal of opposition early on to American involvement in it. It grew over time, especially as the United States expanded the war to the Philippines.
00:04:55
Speaker
Twain became one of the members of an anti-war league that was based primarily in the Northeast and Midwest.
00:05:02
Speaker
And he penned this essay called The War Prayer, that, and listeners can look this up and read much more about it because it's been a lot of good stuff written about it. The War Prayer was not published during Twain's lifetime. He was so worried about the tone and the way that he sort of melded together, wove together religion, a critique of religion and the role religion plays
00:05:28
Speaker
in patriotism and war mongering that he was worried it might actually affect his financial status and thereby affect his family. In any case, so the war prayer itself was not something that Twain had to respond to during his lifetime.
00:05:44
Speaker
but has become this sort of touchstone for many people who want to look back at a certain sort of anti-war tradition, a certain type of critique about American involvement and war, but especially the language of pro-war America.
00:06:00
Speaker
So with that little introduction, right, I'd like to give both of you a chance to tell me what you thought of the essay itself.
Religion's Dual Role in War
00:06:09
Speaker
Now, you can tell listeners sort of generally what his Twain sort of pitch is, you know, sort of the storyline, or you can riff off of it, whatever you want to do.
00:06:21
Speaker
Okay, well I guess I'll start it off then. Well, in the war prayer, Twain starts off with, you know, these sons being marched off to war and this minister giving this prayer, you know, protect our soldiers, let them victory and, you know, all this other stuff and then this
00:06:40
Speaker
guy comes and says, let me take over. And then he says, now there are two different ways. There's the said prayer, which you guys have just said. And then there's the unsaid one, which is while you're saying victory and all this other stuff, you're saying, kill these people and demolish their lands and take control of them and everything else. And at the very end, it says, this guy's a lunatic because he said he made no sense. But in a sense, it does make sense because I mean,
00:07:10
Speaker
what's war and victory on one side is chaos and destruction on the other. That's just the way war is. Right, absolutely. Okay, Jordan? Yeah, and completely echoing that. I think it's powerful because we see in the beginning that kind of use of religion, of
00:07:28
Speaker
Uh, we talked about it before the, um, I guess what is said and why it's said, um, to kind of lift these people up because they are getting ready to go off to the unknown and off to battle and, you know, stuff, but there's this other truth that's there that we don't often talk about. That's kind of underlying that.
00:07:47
Speaker
by winning that means killing by winning that means that you know you survive over somebody else and This this quote-unquote crazy man right comes in speaking the truth right and you know it's it's powerful Okay, so yeah at the beginning of it. They talked like they kept emphasizing patriotism flag and country there was so much like Americanism and like that first part of it, and then that guy just comes up and just tears it
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, so in some ways it's a very simple story, right? It's simply a preacher giving sort of a benediction, right? Blessing soldiers before they go off to fight. And these soldiers, as you said, Jenny, right? They are the sons of the people of the congregation, you know? That's the point, you know? And of course, if you have soldiers in your community, you want them to stay alive.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's not wrong by any means. Right. The hope and prayer for these people to do well. But it's also you do have to think about that other piece of it. So just simply unpacking the simplicity of the story is sort of interesting, right? Yeah. OK. Well, how do Americans deal with the stress or the concern that they have for the soldiers in their community? They're going off to potentially die.
00:09:07
Speaker
they go to church and they pray for the safety of their boys. That, again, makes perfect sense in many ways. And it's a great American tradition of invoking God's name in almost any capacity. We do it in presidential elections. We do it for the beginning of Congress, congressional sessions. We do it when we go off to war. Certainly George W. Bush, after 9-11,
00:09:35
Speaker
he went to the National Cathedral to give the address about what was going to happen next, right? I mean, it's a fascinating moment to go to the National Cathedral to do this, right? To, again, to sort of invoke God's name or the blessing of some deity for the country with the intention, of course, that what is coming next is going to be pretty violent, right? So let me ask you this. When the two of you were thinking about being shipped off
00:10:06
Speaker
Was there some sort of, I don't know, praying that you were involved in at all? Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, you have that saying, there's no atheist in foxholes. Right. No matter if you don't believe in something or not, the men bullets start flying. You believe in something.
00:10:25
Speaker
So do you know who that, who said that? Where that comes from? Oh, it is. Um, you know what? I actually looked it up the other day and I completely forget. I think it's Eisenhower. Okay. Yeah. That timeline that makes sense. And I agree. Like I'm pretty agnostic, but the, um, I think the moment that something is happening, you're kind of questioning your beliefs and where you stand in the grand scheme of things and the cosmos. So there definitely is that kind of religious bed, but also I think part of that,
00:10:55
Speaker
It's not dehumanizing, but I think when you get in the moment, you do have a little bit more of a humanizing feeling just to tell a story. I had a friend that he, I don't know the truth of this story to the whole truth, but he was in a conflict one-on-one with another person who was about the same age as him. He ended up taking his life. And then after doing their report afterwards, they're looking over
00:11:20
Speaker
checking what they had on them in their vehicle and he found a picture in his pocket that was his kids and his kids were the same age as this guy's kids and so it was just a very much like a
00:11:31
Speaker
There is a right and wrong, but when you can't say that when you're on the other side, you want to be doing the exact same thing. And this guy had a spouse, assuming, and then kids the same age. And it was almost exactly like this, my friend. Yeah, I mean, so one of the things that Twain tries to dredge up is that the other side is probably doing the same thing in some sort of religious institution that you are doing at this moment, praying for the same sort of outcome.
00:12:01
Speaker
It's what Lincoln tried to say in his second inaugural, that both sides were praying to the same God. Both could not be right at the same time, and one had to be wrong in order to work out in some way. So what was God's role exactly in any of this?
00:12:22
Speaker
It wasn't actually to decide the outcome, but it was to provide some sort of comfort. So tell me, what is that comfort?
Military Chaplains and Religion's Influence
00:12:33
Speaker
What is the role that religion plays in going off to war, thinking about war, or how a community frays when there's war?
00:12:45
Speaker
when you're going off to war, you know, there's that possibility that you're not going to come back. Um, so kind of having some form of religion or something to comfort you makes you, you know, if I die, at least I'll be going somewhere kind of thing I'll be taken care of because, you know, uh, blessed are the peacemakers for they are, you know, the whole, you know, Bible reference there, you know, we're, you know, considering ourselves peacemakers, you know, we're trying to,
00:13:15
Speaker
fight to create peace, which is, you know, the weirdest oxymoron, no demand kind of thing. I mean, Twain puts that into the essay too, right? But it is truth, sadly. So, you know, it's just having that religion kind of provides that, you know, if I do die, I'm going somewhere where I'll be taking care of the rest of my life kind of thing. Yeah. So I, because
00:13:36
Speaker
For me, I've always had this, you know, it's kind of weird as I was in a military and deployed and stuff like that. I have this weird fear of death. It's just the weirdest thing, but I welcomed it if it came kind of thing. So because I knew that I was, you know, I'm a believer of Jesus and all this other stuff. And I'm sure people with the same kind of different religions, their beliefs, right? I would assume probably something similar.
00:13:56
Speaker
I want to say I'm amazed by the uniqueness, but it's not too unique. You see, I guess organized religion for the United States and the role that organized religion plays in just every aspect of our existence.
Media's Role in War Perception
00:14:12
Speaker
Because on the home front there is that praying for our sons and our daughters and praying for our warriors. But then I think the military has done a really good job of
00:14:21
Speaker
we have a pretty good history of like chaplains in the battlefield that are there with you that are kind of that guiding compass for you. And really, I mean, I can't say that I've ever been anywhere where we didn't have the opportunity to have that like chaplain with us or a person to turn to regardless of what our belief was. Yeah, no, for sure. We definitely always had a chaplain in the area during our deployment, that's for sure.
00:14:49
Speaker
In so many television series, movies, if you want to evoke some sort of sympathy for the warrior and prepare the viewers for what is coming next, which is going to be bad,
00:15:09
Speaker
you cut to a scene where somebody is leading a prayer. There's some service being held with a few soldiers. I mean, you can see it again and again and again in war movies. It's a trope, it's a theme. Why? What does that do? Again, it's not for you who are fighting, right? It's for us who are watching. What is its signal, do you think, for us?
00:15:34
Speaker
like we're fighting for the right thing. Or even then, like, you know, just that aura of protection, like that guardian angel behind us, hey, keep us safe in battle, you know, like some St. Michael, you know, defend us in battle. So it's kind of like providing the viewer, the person seeing us that, you know, we've got God on our side, so they must not. I was going to say, it's that underlying justification that we're doing, that we're in the right and
00:16:00
Speaker
it kind of goes back to that like history is written by the winner. Like when we're looking back at it, we can see like, all right, you know, God is on our side or however you want to phrase it, it's by depicting that it almost is like, hey, our troops were doing the right thing. So you probably remember a little bit from Fog of War about Mackinac, Robert Mackinac, right? So he worked in the sort of strategic air command during World War II, strategic bombing, things like that.
00:16:29
Speaker
And he makes that really, I would say, pretty amazing statement in the documentary that if the United States had lost World War II, that he and others who had been tried as war criminals.
00:16:44
Speaker
I can't imagine in that documentary and the film about McNamara cutting to a scene where McNamara is praying about what decisions to make about which cities to bomb or how many bombs to drop in a city. It's a different sort of, that kind of disjunction I think is important because McNamara did play a role in the killing of thousands, probably tens of thousands of Japanese and Germans, but mostly Japanese at that point.
00:17:12
Speaker
So what is it like the personalization? I think this is where Twain thought he would get into real trouble, right? Was that in his essay, his crazy guy intervenes in a very personal ceremony between a preacher, a congregation and the soldiers, right? So I mean, I don't know how you guys want to handle this, but we,
00:17:39
Speaker
as a society, I think, elevate, deify a little bit, soldiering, the soldier. We do,
Motivations for Military Service
00:17:47
Speaker
and there's, I mean, not comparing that, but going to McNamara, there is this removal of, it's a difference if we're chastising or if we're looking at where he stands religiously versus if we're looking at the soldier and where they stand religiously because they are so far removed, he is making the decisions to do these things, but he's not,
00:18:07
Speaker
doing like on the ground doing them. That's right. So there there is that distinction. It's it's powerful, the the role that it can play in the individual. Did you feel this at all, though, Jordan? Do you guys I mean, did you Jennifer Jordan, did you feel any of this when you were.
00:18:25
Speaker
Soldiers that you felt that I mean I listen is it is absolutely a theme in American popular culture There have been you know books written about this idea of Sort of like that the glorified soldier the sort of angelic soldier the the moral force of the country
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, we talked we talked about that the episode on basically the declaration of war like the this I guess lifting up through that through the announcement of war and like our guys and giving them that kind of boost it's the same it's the same thing here where we're Lifting them up individually and like making them something greater than okay through that and I mean I for for me
00:19:12
Speaker
when I decided to serve it was very much like I know a lot of people serve because of you know some of the benefits or whatever but like my stepdad was in the army for 22 years and seeing him it was like I'm gonna go do that I'm gonna serve and it was this powerful thing for me that I like
00:19:30
Speaker
I wanted to just give that sacrifice, whatever that looked like. And I think that relates back to what I talked about guilt before is that I felt like there was more that I could have done, but at the same time, I'm older now. And looking back on some of it, I think is... I'm going to hold on to the idea of sacrificing guilt for a second. Jenny, what about you?
00:19:49
Speaker
Well, I mean, going back to when I joined, I mean, my grandfather was a Marine, my step-grandfather was a Marine, my step-dad was a Marine, his father was an Army guy, and you know, so it was just kind of like that long line on one side of military. That's a lot of tradition. Yeah, and I was a junior in high school, had no idea what I was going to do, saw a recruiter at a 4-H fair, and he's like, hey, you know what you're going to do when you graduate high school? I was like, I have no idea. And he's like, come join the Army.
00:20:16
Speaker
that sounds good but I mean as far as like almost glorifying I mean I can see that because I mean when we came home from R&R from Afghanistan we came first through Atlanta Airport because you either stop at Atlanta or Dallas Fort Worth I stopped at Atlanta and there were a bunch of USO people there and everything they're like yeah you guys are great and amazing yeah
00:20:39
Speaker
I mean, even now, I talk on the phone to somebody and they, you know, like, you know, a company or something like you. So you're a veteran, right? And I'm like, yes, you know, because for something. And what do they say? Thank you for your service. That's right. Always. And I'm like, OK, thank you. This has been a real topic of study, believe it or not, by scholars right now.
00:20:58
Speaker
is taking a look at where that comes from, how often it's said, who says it, what they get out of it. I think it mostly comes from Vietnam. Because if you look at all the soldiers who came back from Vietnam, they got no recognition. They got hated on. They got called baby killers. Some. Well, you know, I'm not saying over. I'm saying like, there are these instances. I don't know any of my friends who went to Afghanistan with me who came home and got called baby killers and got spit on.
00:21:22
Speaker
OK, you know, it's it's kind of like that kind of thing. So I guess maybe that's where that thank you for your service might come from is they felt bad for treating Vietnam. I think that's why people are studying it. They're trying to figure out where it comes from. And yeah, so why why do we keep saying it right now? The other part of it is the.
00:21:39
Speaker
It's also a volunteer service now. And the... It's all professional. I don't want to say how far removed the general public is, but when somebody says, like, I'm a veteran, what are you supposed to say? What is the natural thing to say to that? And you're like, if you have nothing else, that's an easy lob to throw in there.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think, of course, there are a couple of other undercurrents in this, right? So the idea that it's also an easy pass for the rest of us who have never done anything like that to say thank you for your service. And that gives me a pass, then I don't have to ask, so how are you feeling these days? You know, does the VA provide what it's supposed to? Do you have a well-paying job? Do you have a future that you feel good about anything like that?
Racial Injustice in Military History
00:22:25
Speaker
And, you know, there were a couple other things that you all read for this particular episode, but there were groups of people who have fought, you know, like over time in American wars, right? African American, the history of African Americans fighting in American wars that got almost nothing out of it, except, you know, death. As I say, it was brought up in one of our readings, protest, protest, protest, where it talked about African Americans going over because, you know, they're diminishing rights that even they don't have over here kind of thing.
00:22:54
Speaker
I mean, the Spanish-American War, the irony of that era is that it is one of the spikes in lynchings in US history at the same time that Americans are killing people in Cuba and the Philippines and black troops are over there doing that for a country that will not pass an anti-lynching law, right?
00:23:16
Speaker
And the echoes continue because one of the other things that we watched was Vietnam soldiers coming home dealing with the civil rights issue.
Religion's Justification of War
00:23:23
Speaker
Why is it continuing to happen in the echo scene throughout these conflicts in the U.S.? I mean, World War II, people coming home and not having the same B.A. rights, not having the same... I think Twain was one of those guys who had
00:23:42
Speaker
used his work as a mirror on all of the assumptions that Americans don't test and seem to pass over. Obviously, he wrote a lot about race, but he also, particularly in the war prayer, wrote about religion and the ability of religion to sort of
00:24:02
Speaker
not just gloss over the problems of the United States, but actually rationalize them in a lot of ways. And then other people have to pay the cost, whatever is being justified or rationalized by religion. It then allows governments to send soldiers out to do things that
00:24:22
Speaker
if you had maybe a different kind of conversation, or you were forced to rationalize or justify it in another way, might not have happened. Well, and then even the, I mean, some of the most religious were the ones that getting exemptions not to go or not to carry. Absolutely. Right. Right. Religion does cut different ways, but not in, not when you're praying for your soldiers to go out to win. They always say war is fought by poor men, not rich sons. So, I mean,
00:24:49
Speaker
If you look a lot of it, the very elite and very religious were able to get those exemptions. It was always the middle to lower class that got sent in. Even in Vietnam, a lot of African Americans got drafted and thrown in.
00:25:04
Speaker
the role that sort of the warts of American society, they don't get removed right through the experience of war or whatever heroism is attributed to the soldiers. Again, the idea of elevating soldiers, I love the story of Pat Tillman because of
Soldiers as Martyrs and Symbols
00:25:25
Speaker
this. I mean, they really tried hard to make him into a saint after he was killed and his family wanted nothing to do with it.
00:25:33
Speaker
They're like, he wasn't religious. Do not use him as somebody who you can justify either the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq. He wasn't somebody that believed that he was heaven-sent or godly or whatever.
00:25:49
Speaker
You know that that grasping for that it's so it's so easy, right? I mean you want that you want that combination, you know Yeah, there's some really sort of famous Tropes that come out of World War two, you know the the three chaplains who go down on
00:26:08
Speaker
I think it was a cruiser or a destroyer in World War II. They went down with the ship where they gave up their seats on lifeboats for soldiers and they go down together. The idea that clearly this is sacrifice.
00:26:26
Speaker
If they had taken the seats, they would have felt tremendous guilt because they weren't soldiers. Even some of the stuff you're saying, Jordan, a lot of that sounds religious. Theology is rife with the idea of what guilt means throughout different types of faiths and things like that and what sacrifice looks like and why is there sacrifice. If there's anything that a soldier does that's
00:26:54
Speaker
echoes a sort of Christian identity with Jesus. It's giving your life for other people, right? So they don't have to die. Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating. And I imagine that you guys don't sit around talking about it in camp. I was going to say, we normally don't talk about our own mortality and our own deaths when we...
00:27:23
Speaker
It's crazy cuz there is this like stoic movement of like thinking about death and thinking about it just from a more I Saw this last deployment overseas or there's a lot more like pagan ideal like and then like stoicism agnostic belief like just like remember you will die and this whole whole idea of
00:27:44
Speaker
It's not for some grander thing. I mean, some of my buddies that are really into Vikings were all about going to Valhalla. So there's similarities there. That's still a thing. That's in the military. It's till Valhalla, because that's where all the most great warriors go. So I mean, that's still a thing.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah and you know it's hard for us to relate to that so then we have to bring it back down you know all of us civilians who are God-fearing have to try to figure out where to put you guys in our Christology or our theology of the nation prayer yeah right exactly to figure out how to pray for you effectively that to help ourselves right because whatever guilt you might have felt collectively that's what the nation has right
00:28:29
Speaker
And the idea of sacrifice, whatever you think you were doing over there, you multiply it by a lot. That's often how it's filtered through a popular mind in the United States. All these people who we don't know, potentially sacrificing for things that we'll never do. It's fascinating.
00:28:55
Speaker
All
Conclusion and Veteran Support
00:28:56
Speaker
right. Anything else from the Twain essay that you guys want to talk about? All right. Okay. That's good. All right. Well, yeah. Thanks again for being part of this one and we'll catch you at another episode. Thanks for listening to justice and war in American history. Please stay tuned for our next episode, which you can find on Apple podcasts, Spotify, overcast, or through any of your favorite podcast providers.
00:29:25
Speaker
Please be sure to rate the podcast and to be in touch with us if you have any questions or feedback. You can find more information about this podcast and the broader justice and war project at justiceandwarseminar.org.
00:29:36
Speaker
If you are a veteran or concerned about a veteran who has experienced a mental health crisis, there is 24-hour support through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dial 988 and press 1 or text at 838255. For more information on support from the VA, visit mentalhealth.va.gov. And, as always, special thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities for making this project possible.