Canon Professor Michael Snape is the inaugural Michael Ramsey Professor of Anglican Studies at Durham University.
My first role in the Ecclesiastical History Society was as Conference Secretary from 1999 to 2002 and I am delighted to be back as Vice President (and President elect) for 2023–4. It is a great honour to fill this role, and I am very much aware that I am sitting on the shoulders of scholarly giants of many periods and diverse interests, scholars whose research has transformed the historiography of Christianity and the Christian Church.
I became involved in the Ecclesiastical History Society after being awarded my PhD in 1994, the subject of my dissertation being the Church of England and religious life in the North of England in the eighteenth century– the focus being my home parish of Whalley, in Lancashire. With the support of my former supervisor, Professor Hugh McLeod, as a new (and apprehensive) academic I was welcomed into a friendly but rigorous circle of emerging and well-established scholars through some memorable EHS conferences at Cambridge, Lampeter, Chester and Leeds. It is wonderful to see that, with the advance of technology and the advent of the virtual world, the Society is now able to extend its welcome and support on a global scale through its online Winter conferences in particular.
Inevitably, over a career of thirty years, my research has moved in new directions, as previous papers at successive EHS conferences have reflected. From my original interest in eighteenth-century English church life (a subject to which I’d like to return), the focus of my research has moved to the much broader theme of Christianity and conflict in the modern era, especially in the English-speaking world from c.1700 to the present. Sadly, I am conscious that this work has become ever more relevant since I was invited by Hugh to write a book on religion and war in modern Britain back in 1997. Though the post-Cold War decade of the 1990s had its own horrors, especially in the Balkans and Rwanda, since then we have seen 9/11, the global ‘War on Terror’, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and recurrent conflict in the Middle East– to name but a few of the many conflicts that have ravaged the twenty-first century. In addition, there has been a lengthy period of international reflection –both popular and academic– on the centenary of the First World War and its manifold legacies.
In my own research on Christianity and conflict, I have been drawn to the interrogation of old myths and tropes, to consideration of neglected currents and dynamics in religious life, and to the study of organisations that have sat at the margins of academic interest in the history of modern Christianity. Consequently, I have questioned the assumption that war has been a driver of secularisation in modern Britain; I have contended that a strong Anglican ethno-cultural identity played a major global role in both World Wars; and I have argued that the experience of the Second World War –and especially that of 16 million GIs– constitutes a critical chapter in the religious history of the United States.
Naturally, my choice of the theme for the Society’s 2024-5 Summer and Winter conferences reflects these interests, inviting a broad reappraisal of ‘The Church and the Military’ from a multi-period, inter-disciplinary, and international perspective. I hope that many colleagues from across the world will join us to discuss the manifold corollaries and significance of this perennially important subject.
Ecclesiastical History Society 