ABSTRACT
The Great War of 1914-1918 offered a great role forChristian religion in Britain. It was important to the times that God be on the side of Britain and her allies, and it was judged that victory would only be assured through the higher moral status of the British people. The honourable state that Britons had to attain in war was defined by Victorian and Edwardian religious sensibilities – of sexual virtue, abstinence from alcohol, curbing of pleasures and attendance on church ordinances. But as the war wore on, the confidence of the churches waned in the face of trench warfare at the front and social problems at home. ‘The soldier has got religion,’ concluded the compiler of an interchurch report on the war, ‘I am not sure that he has got Christianity.’1
