Sermon/Text: A Sermon on War

Context and Aim

Preached in 1816, soon after the War of 1812 and amid Europe’s post-Napoleonic exhaustion, William Ellery Channing’s sermon confronts the continued acceptance of war within supposedly enlightened, Christian societies. He addresses not only policymakers and soldiers but, above all, the Christian conscience and the public imagination that glorifies battle. His aim is moral reformation: to expose war’s true character, to challenge its supposed necessity, and to summon a sustained, principled movement toward peace.

The Reality of War

Channing strips away romantic images of honor and heroism to reveal war as organized, legalized slaughter. Beyond battlefields, he stresses the diffuse suffering that spreads to families, the poor, and the innocent: bereavement, poverty from taxation and debt, disrupted education and industry, and a coarsening of manners. War’s fruits are not courage or civilization but desolation and vice. The progress of science, he warns, has only magnified destruction, turning human ingenuity into more efficient instruments of death.

Moral and Religious Judgment

Measured against the spirit of Christianity, war is a contradiction. The gospel commands love of neighbor and even enemy; war institutionalizes hatred, retaliation, and collective pride. Channing challenges the notion that national aims can suspend Christian duties. No public authority can absolve individuals from moral law, and no banner can convert cruelty into virtue. He argues that the supposed virtues of war, firmness, sacrifice, discipline, are better cultivated in peaceful callings that heal, educate, and build.

Causes and Illusions

Beneath war’s pageantry lie passions and interests: ambition of rulers, national vanity, commercial jealousy, and the thirst for distinction. Channing indicts the code of honor that exalts military fame and anesthetizes moral judgment. He criticizes standing armies as schools of vice and as temptations to aggression, and he rebukes poets, orators, and educators who adorn conflict with misleading splendor. Public opinion, he insists, is not an innocent spectator but an accomplice whenever it surrenders admiration to conquest.

Justice, Self-Defense, and Restraint

Channing does not build his case on an abstract denial that self-defense can ever be justified. He concedes that extreme cases may exist where defensive force is the last resort. Yet he insists such instances are rare and cannot legitimate the habitual reliance on war, its spirit of revenge, or the standing preparations that breed it. The clear presumption of the Christian ethic falls against war, placing a heavy burden on any who would claim necessity. Even where defense is invoked, he calls for strict restraint, humane conduct, and unfeigned openness to negotiation.

Remedies and Duties

The path away from war, for Channing, begins with the reform of opinion. Christians must withdraw their reverence from military glory, refuse to flatter conquerors, and teach children to honor the peacemaker over the hero of arms. He urges churches, educators, and the press to unveil war’s realities and to nourish the dispositions of patience, justice, and universal benevolence. He advocates substituting adjudication and arbitration for armed contest and looks favorably on plans for international conferences and a law of nations capable of settling disputes without bloodshed. Peace societies and cooperative efforts among states are practical instruments of this moral transformation.

Appeal

The sermon culminates in an earnest appeal to conscience. Channing asks hearers to embrace a Christian identity incompatible with delight in violence, to bear witness against the false splendors of war, and to labor steadily for institutions and habits that make peace habitual. He trusts that as religion deepens and civilization matures, war will be recognized not as an inevitable destiny but as a culpable relic to be outgrown by a more humane and faithful world.