ABSTRACT
The Anglican church has come, over the last 100 years, to see its role as trying to restrain the foreign and security policy of British governments because of a whole range of factors including the growing strength of governments in contrast to the weakening position of the church, competition to gain the attention of the media, the changing social composition of the clergy, increasing knowledge about warfare and the mounting destructiveness of many types of conflict. It is the last factor, which many commentators stress, because they see the First World War (1914-1918) as the turning point in attitudes towards warfare and it did, indeed, have a revolutionary impact, not only on the churches, but on the Western view of warfare in general. However, the change in church attitudes had been occurring earlier and it was by no means completed in the decade after the war.
