The Royal Army Chaplains' Department, 1796–1953: Clergy under Fire. By Michael Snape. Studies in Modern British Religious History 18. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xviii + 447 pp. $95.00 cloth.

摘要

It is not especially hard to understand why the historiography of religion andnwar has begun to blossom. Studies on the intersection of these two globalnforces are topical today in ways that all can feel. Less widely perceived isnthe crying need for such studies. Despite the large and rapidly expanding bodies of writing on religion and on war as separate topics, very few scholarsnhave considered the many spaces where they intersect. The range of potentialntopics is vast indeed. Religion and war propaganda; the religious lives ofnsoldiers; the effects of war on religious movements; moral histories of war;nand religion, nationalism, and memories of war are but a few. Two relativelynrecent books, Doris Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplainsnfrom the First to the Twenty-First Century (Notre Dame, Ind.: University ofnNotre Dame Press, 2004), and Richard Budd, Serving Two Masters: ThenDevelopment of American Military Chaplaincy, 1860–1920 (Lincoln:nUniversity of Nebraska Press, 2002), have approached the question ofnreligion’s role in war by focusing on the military chaplain, easily the leastnunderstood fulltime clergy in the Western world. Military chaplains havenbeen poorly understood in history and in our current moment because theyndo not fit easily into any one category. They are professional ministers withndenominational affiliations, but they often do not serve churches per se andnare plagued by questions of whom they ultimately serve. They wearnuniforms and work in the military, but they are not soldiers and they havenlong been dogged by charges of military irrelevance. Scholars and students,ncontemporaries and comrades have often commented on the betwixt andnbetween status of the military chaplain, speculating as to which of the manyninterests weighing on her or him is primary.