Church of England 'preparing for war involving UK' with new rules

Daily Mirror

4 hours ago

The church's ruling body is to discuss how it should respond to the threat of serious conflict
The Church of England says it is preparing for 'serious conflict' breaking out involving the UK as the Bishop to the Armed Forces said the Church wants to 'take seriously' potential oncoming threat. The Church's parliament – the General Synod – will hear from a senior military figure when it meets next month.
Brigadier Jaish Mahan, who served in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan, will address the Synod members on the current global climate. A Synod paper reads: '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.'
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Right Reverend Hugh Nelson, Bishop of St Germans and Bishop to the Armed Forces, said he had been hearing from military personnel 'rising concern about the threat of very, very serious conflict, including conflict that involves the UK'. He referenced the Government's national security strategy, published this week, which warns the UK must actively prepare for a 'wartime scenario' on British soil 'for the first time in many years'.
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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 to deploy quickly within the UK. Mr Nelson said 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 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 after Synod.
Across the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, there are almost 200 Church of England chaplains. 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.'