Special liturgy atones for outbreak of ‘The Great War’
Kimberly Winston
(RNS) Half a world away from Europe, where World War I erupted 100 years ago next week (July 28), Washington National Cathedral will mark the occasion with a liturgy created especially for the anniversary.
But the service is about more than remembrance. It is about atonement — atonement for the 16 million killed in the conflict and the more than 20 million wounded, many of them horribly disfigured in trench warfare that kept much of the four-year conflict at a stalemate.
“I was struggling with praying for the beginning of a war,” said the Rev. Gina Campbell, the cathedral’s canon precentor and the author of the World War I liturgy. “I was trying to put my mind around how one prays for the beginning of a war. I thought it would need to be profoundly penitential, that the way one would approach the disaster that is World War I would have to be in deep penitence.”
The result is an entire service — music, litany and prayers — that acknowledge the horrors of war and the distance war takes people of faith from God. The service will be said this Sunday (July 27) at the Washington, D.C cathedral.
http://www.religionnews.com/2014/07/23/world-war-i-liturgy/