Hidden Religious Messages in WWI; The Moral Brain, and More

This week on Interfaith Voices:

The Great and Holy War

World War One was soaked in religion. As the war dragged on, soldiers reported seeing angels, ghosts and figures of the Virgin Mary on the battlefield. Talk about the coming apocalypse exploded, and the enemies were transformed from political foes into evil forces, aligned with Satan. On this 100 year anniversary of the start of the war, historian Philip Jenkins explains why WWI was a kind of religious crusade, and says it sowed the seeds for future religious conflicts around the world.

Explaining the ‘Us vs. Them’ Problem

Why do we mourn the death of someone in our neighborhood, but find it hard to muster the same feelings for thousands of suffering people halfway across the world?  The director of Harvard’s Moral Cognition Lab says our brains are wired to care most about the people in our own “tribe”–our home, our town, our country. Lucky for us, he has some tricks for how to expand our circle of who counts as a fellow tribe member.

Featured speakers/guests:

Philip Jenkins, author of The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade.

Joshua Greene, author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them


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