The Royal Army Chaplains' Department, 1796-1953 Clergy under Fire [Hardcover]

Few military or ecclesiastical figures are as controversial as the military chaplain, routinely attacked by pacifist and anticlerical commentators and too readily dismissed by religious and military historians. This highly revisionist study represents a complete reappraisal of the role of the British army chaplain and of the Royal Army Chaplains' Department in the first century and a half of its existence. Challenging old caricatures and stereotypes and drawing on a wealth of new archival material, it surveys the political, denominational and organisational development of the R.A.Ch.D., analyses the changing role and experience of the British army chaplain across the nineteenth century and the two World Wars, and addresses the wider significance of British army chaplaincy for Britain's military, religious and cultural history over the period c.1800-1950. MICHAEL SNAPE is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham. The volume has a Foreword by Richard Holmes.A survey and reassessment of the role of the army chaplain in its first 150 years.IntroductionThe Origins and Early Years of the Army Chaplains' DepartmentThe Army Chaplains' Department from Waterloo to the CrimeaThe Army Chaplains' Department from the Crimea to South AfricaThe Army Chaplains' Department and the First World WarThe Royal Army Chaplains' Department and the Second World WarEpilogueRetrospectBibliographyIndex