Anglicans and Aviators: The First World War and the Forgotten Origins of Royal Air Force Chaplaincy

Rance, Eleanor; Snape, Michael

doi:10.1111/1467-9809.12731

Anglicans and Aviators: The First World War and the Forgotten Origins of Royal Air Force Chaplaincy

Rance, Eleanor; Snape, Michael

Authors

Eleanor Rance

Professor Michael Snape michael.snape@durham.ac.uk
Canon Professor

Abstract

Nineteen-eighteen saw the formation of the world’s first independent air force, and the inauguration of the first independent chaplaincy organisation devoted to military aviation. However, the neglected creation of the Chaplains’ Branch of the Royal Air Force towards the end of the First World War represents far more than just a minor footnote in the institutional history of Britain’s armed forces. The circumstances of its creation, which occurred just as the German sociologist Max Weber was identifying scientific progress as driving the ineluctable ‘disenchantment of the world’, not only belied this famous sociological maxim in the highly technological and supremely modern context of aerial warfare but also demonstrated the competence of Anglican chaplaincy methods and the resilience of British ‘Christendom’ in the context of a war which is widely perceived as having exposed and exacerbated the weaknesses of both.

Citation

Rance, E., & Snape, M. (2021). Anglicans and Aviators: The First World War and the Forgotten Origins of Royal Air Force Chaplaincy. Journal of Religious History, 45(2), 257-279. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.12731

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Nov 2, 2020
Online Publication Date	May 6, 2021
Publication Date	Jun 3, 2021
Deposit Date	Feb 16, 2021
Publicly Available Date	May 20, 2021
Journal	Journal of Religious History
Print ISSN	0022-4227
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	45
Issue	2
Pages	257-279
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.12731

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Advance online version © 2021 The Authors. Journal of Religious History published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Religious History Association.

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