Church of England praying for peace but preparing for war
The Bishop to the Armed Forces has said the Church wants to 'take seriously' the potential challenges ahead, warning that it does not want to be caught short in a similar way to the lack of preparedness there was for the pandemic.
The Church's parliament – officially known as the General Synod – will hear from a senior military figure when it meets next month.
Brigadier Jaish Mahan, a Christian who served in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan, will address Synod members on the current global climate and the challenges for the UK, as well as speaking of his own experience in the military.
A Synod paper states: 'While a conflict directly involving the UK is not an immediate risk, given the very serious impact such a conflict would have on every person in the country, we must be prepared.'
Reverend Hugh Nelson, Bishop of St Germans and Bishop to the Armed Forces, said he had been hearing from military personnel for the past two years 'rising concern about the threat of very, very serious conflict, including conflict that involves the UK'.
During a briefing with reporters on Thursday, he referenced the Government's national security strategy, published earlier this week, which warned the UK must actively prepare for a 'wartime scenario' on British soil 'for the first time in many years'.
Ministers said the UK now finds itself in 'an era in which we face confrontation with those who are threatening our security'.
Mr Nelson said: 'As a Church, we want to take seriously those challenges, both to do everything that we can to pray for and work for and advocate for peace, because the kingdom of God is a kingdom of justice and peace, and to face the reality and to put in place, or at least to begin to have conversations towards plans about how the Church might need to respond and to be if there were to be a serious conflict.
'We do not want to be in the situation that we were all in – Church and wider society – pre-pandemic, when those that knew things said there will one day be a pandemic, and none of us had done anything in preparation for that. So we want to take that seriously.'
Legislative changes are due to be brought before Synod, which would allow Armed Forces chaplains, when operating in their roles, to minister under an Archbishops' licence without also having to hold diocesan PTO (permission to officiate).
The current rules add a serious administrative burden and make it more difficult for chaplains to deploy within the UK at the pace required by their roles, a Synod paper states.
Mr Nelson described this as a 'tidying up exercise to enable chaplains to get on and to do what they need to do without having to go through quite a lot of administrative and bureaucratic steps in order to have permission to do that in any particular place'.
While he declined to go so far as to say the work was putting the Church on a war footing, he noted that consideration is being given to how religious leaders acted in previous wartime scenarios.
He said: 'We're encouraging the Church to pray for peace and to prepare for, or to begin to do some thinking and some work around, what it might mean for us to be a Church in a time of conflict.
'We have looked back at some of the ways in which senior Church leadership – archbishops and bishops – led, the things that they said, particularly in the Second World War.'
Resources, including around working with schools on issues of peace, war and conflict, and practical suggestions for making churches hospitable and welcoming to Armed Forces personnel and their families, are expected to be published shortly after Synod.
Across the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, there are almost 200 Church of England chaplains, serving as both regulars and reservists.
The Church said its chaplains 'have provided spiritual, moral and pastoral care to military personnel and their families for more than 150 years and remain a highly valued part of the Armed Forces, often witnessing to Jesus Christ in complex and difficult contexts.'
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