Freedom of Worship and the Armed Forces in Early Twentieth-Century England

During 1930, the British government ordered that special intercessory prayers appointed by leaders of the English Protestant churches were not to be said by naval, army and air force chaplains. This order provoked widespread ecclesiastical and political protests. Ironically, since the intercessions were concerned with religious persecution in Soviet Russia, the government order infringed the principle of freedom of worship. This article considers the reasons for the government ban, and why the controversy did not provoke a crisis in relations between the churches, the military authorities and the state. It is particularly concerned with the attitudes of free church leaders, those most sensitive towards the principle of religious liberty, and especially with their apparently paradoxical acceptance of compulsory attendance at religious services in the armed forces. It connects this episode with a general change in free church attitudes towards the state, the Church of England and national institutions.