Anzac and the sacred: Australian religious experience and the Great War: Religious and transcendent language, reference and interest in the representation of Australian experiences of the Great War, and their contribution to the creation of a myth of Anzac, 1914–1918

This history PhD thesis examines how various Australian soldiers and chaplains understood or expressed their experience of the Great War, and early war commemoration, in religious or transcendent terms. The significant breadth and depth of religious or transcendent experience for some Australian Great War servicemen, challenges longstanding historical accounts of AIF soldiers as secular in outlook, or generally unconcerned with, or with no experience of, religion or transcendent experience. The thesis adopts an empirical approach to historical sources (letters, diary entries, poetry), while drawing on insights from comparative studies in myth, religion and phenomenology, and in particular, those of theologian and historian of religion Rudolf Otto and philosopher of religion Caroline Franks Davis.