ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way churches integrated nationalism into their theology and describes how the churches acted upon the problems they thus encountered. It explores the way the French Catholic Church, the Church of England and the German Protestant felt themselves connected to the nation and how the connection was made. The threat is that against the authority of the Bible – for Protestants more problematic than for Catholics, who emphasised church dogma and tradition. As seen, the churches based their nationalism on a combination of church history and biblical prophesies. Indeed, the position of the churches in society and their relation with the state had worsened in the decennia preceding the outbreak of the war. The Church of England and the German Evangelische Kirche were official state churches or established churches in 1914, although the German Protestants would lose this privileged position at the end of the war.
