A Fraternity of the Furnace
The Fires of Moloch: Anglican Clergymen in the Furnace of World War One by Timothy Larsen (Oxford University Press, 2025)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Stice
When the Great War broke out, everyday British civilians joined the fight and became known as “Tommies.” Many of the clergy also joined the fight, as military chaplains. Some of these men were stationed behind front lines, others were close enough to tend the wounded under fire. In 1917, the volume The Church in the Furnace brought to the public the views of seventeen Church of England chaplains. All had thoughts about the state of the church and what its future ought to be, shaped by their own wartime experiences. As Timothy Larsen describes, “the book was unusually frank. The Furnace padres gained a reputation as radicals, unflinching in criticism and impatient for change” (1). In The Fires of Moloch, Larsen offers a group biography of the Furnace contributors, accounting for their individual lives, their war-shaped opinions, and their impact on the Anglican Church. Throughout the text, Larsen brings a helpful understanding of theology and Anglicanism which allows him to relate things well to general readers.
How can we describe the Anglican chaplains who entered the First World War and contributed to The Furnace? They came primarily from upper-class backgrounds and many of them held to liberal theology, which might include things like doubting the Virgin birth or believing that God did not have the power to end the war. Not all were liberal and not all remained liberal, but, as a group, they were more inside the young radical camp than outside of it—though most of them were also Anglo-Catholic rather than evangelical in their Anglicanism. As modernists, most found the theology of the church wanting even before the war. Yet the experience of the war was not like a debate about theology with Greek terms and interpretative traditions, it was a reckoning with mud and blood and gas and grief. In those conditions, many of these chaplains found the practices of their church wanting, too.
Whether they made it to the firing lines or not, British chaplains realized that there was typically a gap between themselves and the Tommies they served. Many British soldiers were unfamiliar with church teachings and practices and the chaplains were socially and culturally distant from the enlisted men. Indeed, “many padres gained a significantly deeper understanding of the lives of the working classes” during the war (204). That energized and inspired the Furnace authors, who adjusted services, crafted new prayers, and tried to bridge the gap with entertainment and refreshment and cigarettes. After the war, these chaplains agitated to revise the prayer book, sought to make services more approachable for everyday people, and worked to extend priesthood outside of the upper classes. Many of the authors also came to believe that their wartime service and perspective entitled them to have their voices heard within the church. Several of the Furnace authors rose to prominence in the church. As Larsen notes, “only three of the seventeen did not gain preferment,” for reasons of death and illness, and nine became bishops (7). One even became friends with King George VI.
The Furnace authors were very interesting men. Studdert Kennedy is well-remembered today and he was known for his poetry as well as his priesthood. His “habit of giving anything he owned to any needy person he met was much remarked upon. He eventually gave away almost every respectable item of clothing that he possessed and just walked around wearing a cassock all the time to hide the fact that he could no longer put together a decent outfit” (39). Neville Stuart Talbot founded Talbot House in Poperinghe, “a sort of retreat centre or club for physical, mental, social, and spiritual refreshment—which became legendary” (50). Many readers will know it from the many war memoirs and letters it appears in. Though they did not fight, these priests were sometimes very brave. For example, Talbot courageously retrieved the body of his brother Gilbert from an open area between trenches (52).
Reading through the biographies, even the shorter ones in “Minor Prophets” is interesting. Many of the men had large personalities. Eric Milner-White adored stained glass and left behind a significant art collection. One, Frederick William Worsley, was a scoundrel. James Geoffrey Gordon was happy to be remembered for entertaining the troops. Larsen quotes Gordon on the importance of all kinds of service: “‘Daddy, what did you do in the great war?’ ‘Dressed up as a girl to amuse the troops when they came out of the line’—may be a true and perfectly legitimate answer to that famous question—a real contribution to the national purpose” (160). A couple of the priests also had prior service in the Boer War, making the Great War a second contribution to the national purpose.
The Great War is a bit of an enigma when it comes to religious faith. It has been blamed for the loss of faith and considered one of the most disillusioning moments of the twentieth century. That was certainly true for many men and women and we have the texts to prove it. Yet we also know that faith flourished in the trenches, albeit sometimes alongside superstition. Rather than lose all belief, soldiers believed in many things, including the Angels of Mons, who allegedly saved British soldiers from the Germans at Mons. Chaplains seemed to find the paradox, as well. Many Tommies were uninterested in traditional services and unfamiliar with the prayer book. Some seemed shockingly religiously illiterate. Yet Tommies did pray and many demonstrated Christ-like sacrifice. Many chaplains found this to be validation for their conviction that the traditional church and its traditional beliefs were not equipped for the modern age. Yet when Tommies did discuss their beliefs more systematically, they often held very conservative beliefs—to the surprise and sometimes dismay of the padres.
The Fires of Moloch contributes to a small, but growing body of work on chaplains and wartime religion in the Great War, with some notable recent books. God on the Western Front: Soldiers and Religion in World War I by Joseph Byrnes (2023), looks at soldier religion also points to the energy and influence of the younger theologians who saw frontline service. Jason Crouthamel’s Trauma, Religion, and Spirituality in Germany during the First World War (2021) is very good and helps readers see the ways that religious experiences were “lived” in the trenches. The Fires of Moloch stands out for its emphases on chaplains, the effects of the war on the church in the postwar years, and for its attention to modernist theology.
Larsen writes that this book “uses the Furnace authors as a way into telling the story of their generation, a generation which went from the Victorian age to the atomic age; a generation which endured two world wars” (3). As Larsen highlights, many of these clergymen “would raise sons to fight in the next world war” (224). Reverend Bernard William Keymer died in 1925. All four of his sons fought in the Second World War and two died in action. A particularly moving example is that of Neville Talbot. Despite his age, Talbot used his connections to secure an appointment to be a chaplain in World War II, but died of a heart attack in 1943 before he could serve. His son, Gilbert, was killed in France in 1944. He was “twenty-two years old when he died—one year younger than his namesake uncle who had fallen during the First World War” (61). There were other similar cases.
All the Furnace authors were changed by their war experience. Some were physically weakened in ways that shortened their lives, others (Conran) appear to have been very psychologically scarred. All had new perspectives. As Larsen observes in the closing chapters, the church was also changed by the war. During the war, priests saw the rising popularity of prayers for the dead and confession and the entire country was moved by the imagery of the cross, which was central to understanding the conflict. During and after the war, the Furnace authors helped lead the way in advancing prayer and reforming the prayer book, making communion more welcoming, and embracing ecumenicalism.
By documenting the effects of the war on these padres and the church, The Fires of Moloch reminds readers that the Great War reached into all of society. Combatants and non-combatants were all touched by the conflict. All these men lost friends or family the conflict and would have been changed in some way even without having served. Their service gave them a voice in the interwar years that reflected the significant role that the war played in the cultural landscape. What Larsen writes of the padres in the concluding sentence is true of British culture as a whole: “The experience of the Great War was ever with them to the very end” (232).
Elizabeth Stice is a professor of history and assistant director of the honors program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. She is the author of Empire Between the Lines: Imperial Culture in British and French Trench Newspapers of the Great War (2023) and she is a contributing editor and associate books editor at Front Porch Republic.
