Chaplaincy in the Great War: A Model for Effective Ministry Today

Reflections on the Ministry and Practice of Anglican School Chaplaincy

The Very Reverend Dr John Shepherd is one of the great treasures of the Anglican Church in Australia. A man of great wit and keen intellect he has enjoyed a distinguished career in the church. John is a past student of the school where I work as a chaplain so our paths have occasion to cross.

John has been kind enough to share with me some of the articles he has written, and I have always found these thought provoking. Recently he shared an unpublished article about the work of Anglican chaplains in World War One ‘Chaplaincy in the Great War – A Model for Effective Ministry Today.’

I have to confess that the title of the article made me a bit sceptical. I wasn’t initially convinced that what chaplains experienced during a world war more than a hundred years ago could have much bearing on my contemporary chaplaincy ministry in an Anglican school. However, to my surprise, John’s insightful survey of history, with an eye to what it can teach us today, finished up making a convincing case.

John has kindly given permission to reproduce some of his article and it fits well into the blog’s occasional series – Reflections on the Ministry and Practice of Anglican School Chaplaincy.

It’s true to say that World War One sent a shudder through the Anglican Church.  Suddenly, without warning, it was brought face to face with massive challenges for which it had no immediate answers. That the church realised these challenges and corrected as best they could, is to their eternal credit. Anglican chaplains were able to reinvent themselves in such a way that they remain an inspiring example for us in our present ministries.

An initial challenge was the background of the chaplains. Almost without exception, the clergy of the early twentieth century were from a professional background, and most had no experience of an ordinary job before ordination. The Anglican clergyman of the 1910s was commonly thought of as upper-class, naïve, easily able to be shocked and offended, someone who had never done any proper work. A well-meaning, but ineffective and rather comic figure – most comfortable when chairing Mothers’ Union meetings, and completely alienated from any idea of what ministry in the cauldron of death and war entailed.

As well as coming from background that didn’t allow for easy and automatic pastoral connection with the enlisted men, chaplains were massively underprepared for what was to come. Chaplains received no special training or induction into the military. A few had served in previous conflicts such as the Boer War, and some had cadet training in secondary schools. However, most had little or no understanding of military life or its customs. With little explicit instruction, chaplains had to use their own initiative to determine the nature and extent of their duties.

A major challenge chaplains faced was that initially they were prevented from visiting the front line. Frank Barry, a chaplain in France, wrote “When we first went over, the army had no idea what to do with us.  In battle, we were left behind at the base, and we weren’t allowed to go up to the fighting front. “What on earth,” it was asked, “could we do up there?”

According to Barry the chaplain’s job, as viewed by the army, was to take church parades, on such rare occasions as these were practicable, to run entertainments, to help in censoring letters, and in general to act as welfare officers, thereby helping to keep up morale.  But was that what we had been ordained to do?” It soon became evident that the real ministry needs were on the front line and chaplains needed to move into the trenches. But they had to actively lobby the army command for the right to do this.

By 1916, Frank Barry could now write, “The chaplains are now allowed to move freely everywhere, and when the units go up we go with them.  We now give Holy Communion in the dugouts, minister to the wounded and dying, and share, so far as we might, in what the troops endure.  They now don’t regard us as just welfare officers.  In some dim way they discover that they need what the ministry of the Church seeks to offer.”

Another challenge was having the skills and resources to minister effectively to someone in emergencies. The Book of Common Prayer assumed the sedate, ordered well-regulated pattern of parish life.  It took no account of crisis ministry.  Anglican chaplains arrived at the Front with no ‘sacramental shorthand’ with which to communicate swiftly, when minutes, even seconds was all they had.

Chaplains also faced the significant challenge of being theologically unprepared for the unprecedented suffering and misery they encountered. The first day of the battle of the Somme registered 60,000 casualties, the heaviest losses ever suffered in a single day by any army in any war. “If there is a God,” wrote Barry, three days after that terrible day, “he is not the God I thought I knew. In the midst of all this atrocity and suffering, how can the Christian gospel have any meaning? “Oh God, I was so sure of you in my parish church and in my chapel at Oxford.  Where are you now?” So, Barry and other chaplains had to “hammer out a working theology which can stand the test of battle conditions and give men a faith that can overcome the world.”

While working as a chaplain in a contemporary Anglican school can feel on occasion like we are ‘in the trenches’ a quick reflection makes us grateful that we don’t have to go through the horrendous experiences that chaplains in the Great War went through. So, what lessons does John Shepherd think that they can offer to us today as we seek to minister in a radically different context?   

One insight is that a chaplain needs to work with everybody and treat anyone equally. John references a sign that was in one army chaplain’s office ‘Abandon rank all ye that enter here.’ Our ministry in Anglican schools means that we encounter students and staff at some of the most challenging points in their life. It doesn’t matter if they are the Principal, a part time relief teacher, a student who is a the school captain, or one of our students in the junior school – grief, tragedy and suffering impacts us all at various points in our life and we are all rendered equal in the face of tragedy.

As Anglican school chaplains we might be able to relate to the fact that the Anglican hierarchy often has no real understanding of our ministry context and the challenges that we face daily. John recounts the story of one army chaplain, Harry Blackburne, who didn’t think he was getting enough support from the church at home in England. He told an Archbishop on one of his visits to France ‘The bishops are sitting like a lot of old hens on eggs they don’t know how to hatch.’

The Great War necessitated a huge shift in ministry. Chaplains had to find new ways of doing things that was relevant to the context they found themselves in. At first, a number of chaplains simply tried to replicate parish ministry on the front line. Chaplaincy needed to quickly adapt to a context that the chaplains were initially totally unprepared for. Yet adapt and adjust they did. Context clearly impacts ministry. As many a school chaplain has discovered, trying to take the parish model into an Anglican school simply doesn’t work. Schools, like battlefields require new ways of thinking and operating.

Chaplains in Anglican schools’ benefit from specialised training for the unique ministry context that we find ourselves in. We benefit when we have sacramental shorthand that enables the rich insights of our Anglican tradition to be applied to the unchurched context that we find ourselves in. We need to be on the ‘front line’ where real pastoral ministry takes place rather than ‘confined to barracks’ engaged in theological cheer leading trying to boost school morale.

So, we give thanks for those courageous chaplains who found the strength to effectively minister in the appalling circumstances they found themselves in during the great war. And we acknowledge the way in which they provide an inspiring example of how to provide relevant and engaging ministry today.

Photo of Chaplain Ernest Northcroft Merrington conducting a communion service for members of the 3^rd Light Horse Brigade at the ‘Apex.’ For an altar he used two biscuit tins with a cloth spread over the top of them.