The Death of Christian Britain

— The Death of Christian Britain —
Biblical qualities: ‘From his boyhood, David was a brave and daring soldier,
just like our Commandoes to-day. He realised he was a sinner and needed
to be cleansed. Your earthly father is far away, on Active Service for his
King and Country. You, his son or daughter, want to be the very best you
can be for your Daddy’s sake.’ 93 Christian virtues were found in the most
unlikely places in wartime. An evangelical book of 1944 entitled Men of
Destiny: Christian Messages from Modern Leaders, identified Stalin and
Chiang Kai-shek as not just ‘great men’, but inspirational examples for the
Christian. 94 Equally, though, war brought challenge to the relationship
between masculine sacrifice and piety. In 1917, a story by Annie Swan cast
doubt on the war and the loss of men’s lives: ‘“Sometimes one wonders
whether it is all worth while,” said Gifford, sitting forward, when he was
alone with his host in the library [of the manse]. “This tremendous sacrifice,
I mean.”’ [His elderly clerical host replies:] “We have been taught here
[from the pulpit] that it is worthwhile; that God has accepted and sealed
our sacrifice.”’ 95
World War I introduced considerable reflection on male piety and man’s
culpability in sin. At the outset, war seemed to offer clear-cut guides to gender
roles: ‘We do not want manly women and we do not want womanly
men. True religion tends to make each the best of its kind. ... The primary
duty of your young Christian manhood to-day is to offer yourself for
active service’. 96 Later in the war, more reflective views emerged from
massive church inquiries into God and the soldier. Whilst the Dean of
Durham Cathedral felt that ‘organised Christianity does not come well
out of the world crisis’, 97 it was the nature of male piety that was perceived
as changed by the war, with a ‘trench religion’ of instinctual superstition
towards a greater being deciding men’s fate. 98 ‘The soldier has got religion,
I am not so sure that he has got Christianity’ 99 was a common observation.
But there was conscious self-reflection by many clergy on ‘misrepresentations
of the Christian ideal’ during the Victorian period, previously falsely
regarded as ‘the apex of human goodness’. The ‘good man’ was reassessed
in the light of the Great War: ‘A standard was set up, which, it was alleged,
was too negative, too bloodless, too safe. Respectability in its narrower
aspects was over-worshipped.’ As a result, the Christian life became too
narrowly associated with feminine qualities, and the churches lost the men
during the war. As two churchmen wrote in 1917: ‘One began to understand
why, apart from scriptural grounds, the Church is described as
“she”.’ 100 Yet, the largest interdenominational study of the impact of war
upon the religiosity of male soldiers, published in 1919, brought new
hope. There was a ‘trench religion’, an elemental religious experience, which
introduced ‘fine qualities’. One officer reported: ‘The war has created a new
tenderness between man and man, a new sense of fellowship and social
sympathy, i.e. within a circle embracing the nation and friendly aliens.’ 101
But with this humanity, a new ‘real man’ was anticipated from the war,
104