Charles Spurgeon: On War and Christians
"Long Have I Held That War Is an
Enormous Crime"
The Forgotten Voice of Spurgeon Against the Unrighteousness of War
Charles Haddon Spurgeon — the "Prince of Preachers," whose sermons filled the Metropolitan Tabernacle week after week with thousands of listeners and whose printed words reached millions across the Victorian world — held a view on war and Christians that modern conservative, fundamentalist, and evangelical readers would find startling. He was, in the most direct and unambiguous terms, opposed to war. Not cautiously skeptical of it. Not quietly troubled by it. Opposed to it — on Christian grounds, from the pulpit, in print, again and again across the breadth of his ministry.
Laurence M. Vance, who has studied Spurgeon's writings on the subject at length, has noted that "Spurgeon considered the spirit of war to be absolutely foreign to the spirit of Christianity" and that "modern conservative, fundamentalist, and evangelical Christians, all of whom might claim him as one of their own, have much to learn from Spurgeon, not only for his example of an uncompromising and successful Christian minister, but also for his consistent opposition to war and Christian war fever."
The following is a gathering of Spurgeon's own words — drawn from his sermons, conference addresses, and published writings — alongside the voices of other heroes of the faith who stood in the same tradition. They speak clearly. Let them speak.
I. On the Nature of War Itself
Spurgeon did not traffic in vague moral unease about conflict. He named it plainly for what he believed it to be:
Long have I held that war is an enormous crime; long have I regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale.
C. H. Spurgeon — "India's Ills and England's Sorrows," September 6, 1857
He did not exempt patriotic sentiment from this judgment. If anything, he found the glorification of a nation's military prowess particularly repellent:
And on the costs concealed by the pageantry and music of war, Spurgeon was equally unflinching:
He was equally clear about what warfare looks like up close — stripped of its banners and brass:
II. On Christians and the Sword
If Spurgeon's words on war's nature are striking, his words on Christians' relationship to war are more striking still. He preached from the sermon "Christ our Peace":
I always rejoice to find a soldier a Christian, but I always mourn to find a Christian a soldier, for it seems to me that when I take up Christ Jesus, I hear one of His Laws, "I say unto you, resist not evil. Put up your sword into its sheath; he that takes the sword shall perish by the sword." The followers of Christ in these days seem to me to have forgotten a great part of Christianity.
C. H. Spurgeon — Sermon: "Christ our Peace"
He was equally clear about the nature of the Christian's warfare — and what it emphatically is not:
From his sermon on "A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ," Spurgeon offered perhaps his clearest summary of the distinction between the church's warfare and the world's:
III. On the Church and National Arms
Spurgeon was particularly forceful in separating the mission of the church from the ambitions of nations — and in refusing the comfortable equation of Christian expansion with military conquest. He addressed this in "Independence of Christianity" (August 31, 1857):
Now don't be fooled again, if you hear of the English conquering in China, don't go down on your knees and thank God for it, and say it's such a heavenly thing for the spread of the gospel — it just is not…. Hush thy trump, O war; put away thy gaudy trappings and thy bloodstained drapery, if thou thinkest that the cannon with the cross upon it is really sanctified, and if thou imaginest that thy banner hath become holy, thou dreamest of a lie. God wanteth not thee to help his cause. "It is not by armies, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord."
C. H. Spurgeon — "Independence of Christianity," 1857
He stated plainly that the church cannot be served by the sword:
And he drew the sharpest possible line between Christ's kingdom and the kingdoms of this world:
IV. A Call to Renewal
Spurgeon's fullest summary of his position came at the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Pastors' College, in the spring of 1880. It is worth reading in full as his definitive statement:
We are up to the hilt advocates for peace, and we earnestly war against war. I wish that Christian men would insist more and more on the unrighteousness of war, believing that Christianity means no sword, no cannon, no bloodshed, and that, if a nation is driven to fight in its own defence, Christianity stands by to weep and to intervene as soon as possible, and not to join in the cruel shouts which celebrate an enemy's slaughter. . . . Today, then, my brethren, I beg you to join with me in seeking renewal.
C. H. Spurgeon — "A New Departure," Annual Conference Address, Spring 1880
He understood why nations fall into war — and found the answer not in geopolitics, but in Scripture's account of the human heart:
A Final Word: Vengeance and the Kingdom
Spurgeon's anti-war convictions were grounded in something deeper than humanitarianism. They grew from his understanding of the kingdom of God, the teaching of Jesus, and the character of Christian witness in the world. He wrote in one of his devotions:
That is the ground of Christian peace: not a naive optimism about human nature, but a settled confidence in the kingdom that does not depend on cannons, soldiers, or the flag of any nation. Spurgeon was under no illusions about the darkness of the world. He simply did not believe that darkness could be cured by adding to it.
He said it plainly. He said it often. He deserves to be heard.
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