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Eighty years after his death in a Japanese prison camp, this compelling new biography charts the career of a distinguished but hitherto neglected hero of the British army. Major-General Merton Beckwith-Smith DSO, MC commanded the British 18th Division during the catastrophic Fall of Singapore in February 1942. A highly respected and much decorated veteran of the First World War, he was captured along with tens of thousands of other soldiers - British, Indian, Australian, and Malay - who were then held prisoner on Singapore Island. Amidst hunger, disease and widespread despair in Changi, over the next six months he rallied the spirits of his soldiers, created a make - shift university and the...
Drawing on a wealth of new material from military, ecclesiastical and secular civilian archives, Michael Snape presents a study of the experience of the officers and men of Britain’s vast citizen armies, and also of the numerous religious agencies which ministered to them. Historians of the First and Second World Wars have consistently underestimated the importance of religion in Britain during the war years, but this book shows that religion had much greater currency and influence in twentieth-century British society than has previously been realised. Snape argues that religion provided a key component of military morale and national identity in both the First and Second World Wars, and demonstrates that, contrary to accepted wisdom, Britain’s popular religious culture emerged intact and even strengthened as a result of the army’s experiences of war. The book covers such a range of disciplines, that students and scholars of military history, British history and Religion will all benefit from its purchase.
The power of modernity to secularise has been a foundational idea of the western world. Both social science and church history understood that the Christian religion from 1750 was deeply vulnerable to industrial urbanisation and the Enlightenment. But as evidence mounts that countries of the European world experienced secularising forces in different ways at different periods, the timing and causes of de-Christianisation are now widely seen as far from straightforward. Secularisation in the Christian World brings together leading scholars in the social history of religion and the sociology of religion to explore what we know about the decline of organised Christianity in Britain, Europe, the...
This is a study of the relationship between Anglicans and the armed forces, of the military heritage and history of the Anglican Communion, and the changing nature of this relationship between the mid-Victorian period and the 1970s. This era spanned a period of imperial expansion and colonial conflict round the turn of the twentieth century, the two World Wars, the Cold War, wars of decolonisation, and Vietnam. In terms of armed conflict, it was the bloodiest period in the history of humanity and marked the advent of weaponry that had the capacity to extinguish human civilization. This book assesses the contribution of an expansive Anglican Communion to the armed forces of the English-speaking world, examines the ways in which this has been remembered, and explores its challenging legacy for the twenty-first century Church of England.
A survey and reassessment of the role of the army chaplain in its first 150 years. Few military or ecclesiastical figures are as controversial as the military chaplain, routinely attacked by pacifist and anticlerical commentators and too readily dismissed by religious and military historians. This highly revisionist study represents a complete reappraisal of the role of the British army chaplain and of the Royal Army Chaplains' Department in the first century and a half of its existence. Challenging old caricatures and stereotypes and drawing on a wealth of new archival material, it surveys the political, denominational and organisational development of the R.A.Ch.D., analyses the changing role and experience of the British army chaplain across the nineteenth century and the two World Wars, and addresses the wider significance of British army chaplaincy for Britain's military, religious and cultural history over the period c.1800-1950. MICHAEL SNAPE is Senior Lecturer in ModernHistory at the University of Birmingham. The volume has a Foreword by Richard Holmes.
America's armed forces were the products of one of the most diverse and dynamic religious cultures in the western world and were the largest ever to be raised by a professedly religious society. Despite constitutional constraints, a pre-war 'religious depression', and the myriad pitfalls of war, religion played a crucial role in helping more than sixteen million uniformed Americans through the ordeal of World War II, a fact that had profound and far-reaching implications for the religious development of post-war America.--Provided by publisher.
The Death of Christian Britain examines how the nation’s dominant religious culture has been destroyed. Callum Brown challenges the generally held view that secularization was a long and gradual process dating from the industrial revolution. Instead, he argues that it has been a catastrophic and abrupt cultural revolution starting in the 1960s. Using the latest techniques of gender analysis, and by listening to people's voices rather than purely counting heads, the book offers new formulations of religion and secularization. In this expanded second edition, Brown responds to commentary on his ideas, reviews the latest research, and provides new evidence to back his claims.
The fifth volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish Catholicism—covering the period from the Great War, through the Second World War and the Second Vatican Council—surveys the transformed ecclesial landscape between the papacies of Benedict XV and Pope Francis. It explores the efforts of bishops, priests and people in Ireland and Scotland, Wales and England to respond to modern challenges and reintegrate the experiences and expertise of the laity into the ministry of the Church. Alongside the twentieth century's designation as an era of technological innovation, war, peace, globalization, decolonization and liberation, this period has also been designated 'the People's Century'. Vi...
How does religion shape the modern battlefield? Ron E. Hassner proposes that religion acts as a force multiplier, both enabling and constraining military operations. This is true not only for religiously radicalized fighters but also for professional soldiers. In the last century, religion has influenced modern militaries in the timing of attacks, the selection of targets for assault, the zeal with which units execute their mission, and the ability of individual soldiers to face the challenge of war. Religious ideas have not provided the reasons why conventional militaries fight, but religious practices have influenced their ability to do so effectively.In Religion on the Battlefield, Hassne...
How widespread belief in fortune-telling, prophecies, spirits, magic, and protective talismans gripped the battlefields and home fronts of Europe during the First World War.