[Reprinted from THE ROCK, June 2004 by kind permission]

The image of the Christian as a Soldier of Christ is an important one, hallowed both by Scripture and long tradition. It has also deeply influenced Christian hymn-writers over many years. Wesley’s Soldiers of Christ arise, Baring-Gould’s Onward Christian Soldiers, Bode’s Once pledged by the Cross, Duffield’s Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Montgomery’s Lift up your heads ye gates of brass and Monsell’s Fight the good fight spring immediately to mind alongside the well-known passages from St Paul in Ephesians and his epistles to Timothy.

So the other day, when a party of us went to Ypres in Belgium on a conducted tour of the battlefields of the First World War I was struck by the many things which we learnt about military strategy during that tour, and in particular their relevance to the Christian life which we find ourselves living in these present turbulent times.

One of the lessons we learnt was the importance of holding onto the "high ground" in any battle. What happened on the Ypres Salient and the adjoining hills (the Messines & Paschendaele Ridges for example) bear this out.

The Low Countries, where much of the fighting took place really are, for the most part, low and flat. However, there are occasional hillocks or ridges rising above the surrounding terrain. Occupying such a hill gave its captor a disproportionate advantage over their opponents below.

For one thing they could see further as the following table shows:

The viewer’s visual advantage increases the higher he gets: significantly so at first, though becoming gradually less so.

Second, from their vantage point, those on the hilltop can see "four-ways"; whereas those on the plain have no idea what's happening on the other side of the hill.

Last but not least the superior position means that when the attack came they found themselves going down- rather than uphill like their opponents.

However, being on top of a hill has one serious drawback – the risk of being "undermined". Both sides detonated enormous charges of explosive which literally "blew away" the advantage which their opponents enjoyed.

What struck me at Ypres was how accurately this mirrors the difficulty which orthodox Christians have had to face in defending the High Ground of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith against the persistent attempt by others (including fellow-christians) either to capture that High Ground for themselves or, when that fails, to undermine it.

There are two distinct High Grounds which Christians find themselves bidden to defend: the Moral and the Theological.

Both are equally important. To lose one of them results at the very least in loosening our hold on the other. But the fact that most Christians are better educated in Moral than in Theological matters means that the Theological foundations of their faith can be gradually but systematically undermined long before any attack takes place on the Moral Front.

Unfortunately the Moral redoubt cannot remain standing on its own. There is an extensive "tunnel network" running between it and its Theological counterpart, possession of which makes an enemy's job of undermining it that much easier. It's only when the whole moral edifice comes crashing down about their ears that churchgoers begin to realise that what once seemed to be of so little importance – sacraments, preaching, teaching, bible-study and prayer – have, by neglect, become the very means whereby the present moral denouement came about.

Of course false moral teaching can undermine theological outposts – but to be successful it must proceed stealthily. A full-scale attack on an entrenched moral position is likely to fail because the defenders are accustomed to being on the moral alert.

In attacking the Moral High Ground it’s a costly mistake to begin by attacking the Family, or Chastity, or advocating Abortion-on-Demand. To succeed on any of these fronts it’s best to begin by undermining people’s confidence in Virtues like Truth, Faith, Hope and Charity and replacing them with Values like Tolerance, Compassion, Liberty, Caring and Self-esteem.

Once that strategy has succeeded in catching on, it’s easy to portray the defenders of Moral Hill as beings who are typical of the precise opposite of what these virtues stand for: they are to be shown up to be the bigoted, narrow-minded, unforgiving, intolerant busybodies that Any Reasonable Person has always known them to be! The complete moral collapse follows as night succeeds day!

But how did the loss of the Theological High Ground come about?

Well, there was a fashionable theory in the 1960s that Theology was something wholly beyond the wits of the average man-in-the-pew. It was something best left to the Generals. As a result most people have never been taught enough theology even to defend the most easily defended theological propositions. Lay people were taught to "Trust and Obey" but never to think for themselves.

Not much different from World War One where the average private was reckoned by his superior officers to be capable of learning to pull a trigger and not much else. Much of the carnage of Ypres and the Somme was due to regarding privates as so much bone-and-muscle who could, by sheer weight of numbers capture any objective they were told to. 50,000 British troops perished on Day One of the Battle of the Somme as a result.

The truth is different. Even the simplest soul can be taught some elementary defensive and offensive strategies in warfare and the same is true in the Christian Warfare on which we are presently engaged. Such knowledge won’t turn them into Field Marshal (or Bishops or Canon Theologians) but it will enable Private and Layman alike to provide a degree of leadership which NCOs habitually display.

Lack of Theological understanding is one reason why so little progress has been made over the years. But lack of progress leads on to another weakness – Boredom.

Trench warfare in WWI was plagued by just such boredom and loss of morale. Heavy losses, accompanied by little or no advantage, caused many combatants to ask themselves "What’s the point?" and wonder how it had come about that an endeavour, which sounded so promising when they joined up, had managed to go sour on them in such a short space of time.

Boredom and its consequent loss of morale is a problem which faces us today. How often have we heard people say that "Church is boring!"

Of course it's bound to be boring once the objective gets lost sight of – being a member of the Church will then only appeal to people who "rather like doing that sort of thing". Attempts to appeal to a wider clientele by introducing novelties like Women Priests and a Go-as-you-Please Moral Code only end up by alienating these aficionados, and, once that novelty has worn thin, those whom it attracted in the first place.

One of the early casualties of boredom is always discipline. Living day after day in conditions which are far from comfortable, alongside people who are less than congenial is an invitation for many of us to ignore the discipline under which we should be conducting our lives. In military terms this takes many forms: failing to maintain equipment and plant, participating in morale-lowering backbiting and gossip, and tolerating standards of workmanship well below those we know ourselves to be capable of achieving. The corresponding fault-lines in our ministry will be readily recognizable by those familiar with Church life!

Of these, the lowering of morale is by far the most contagious, insidious and damaging. It’s not unusual to find a local church whose plant is well-maintained, whose services and liturgy are outstandingly good, but whose atmosphere is poisoned by the sort of things which its members say and think about each other. Nowhere is this more evident than in the destructive criticism which clergy indulge in towards a colleague in his absence – with criticism by laity of their own clergy and vice versa coming a close second – followed not far behind by the dismissive attitude which Catholics and Evangelicals are in the habit of displaying towards each other.

World War I was bedevilled by much the same problems. Each Commander in Chief wanted to believe that he, and he alone, was qualified to direct the way a particular campaign should be conducted. Worse than this, as well as the traditional rivalry between France and England, was another example which was particularly true of the Belgian forces. The antipathy which existed, and still does, between the French-speaking Walloons and Flemish-speakers, and the mutual contempt in which they held one another, resulted in the Flemings doing most of the fighting and the Walloons claiming most of the credit for what the former achieved. Add to this the complication that since most of the officers, by a remarkable coincidence, were Walloons all orders were given in French, (a language which many Flemings could neither speak nor understand) and you have the perfect recipe for chaos, confusion and consequent defeat.

Another related problem concerns the usefulness or otherwise of those who are basically sympathetic to the Cause but who, for whatever reason, are not prepared to "sign-up" and join a particular regiment whose orders they must obey. How often has one heard people say "of course, I’m right behind you on the issue of [say] homosexuality but I do feel that it’s every woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, or become a priest if she wishes to."

The difficulty about this attitude is two-fold. Like private armies, co-belligerents tend to persist in standing well behind the front-line, only entering the fray when the outcome looks pretty certain; second, one can never be certain how secure their opposition is. It takes very little to turn someone standing miles back from the front-line into someone who thinks that the principle for which they are standing "perhaps doesn’t matter so much after all".

There are indeed circumstances when the sheer weight of public opinion, like the number of soldiers on a battlefield, can tip the balance in the right direction. We should never discount the possible advantage which numbers may afford us in such a situation.

But, and it is a big BUT, the Faith which we have been commissioned by our Lord to safeguard for future generations cannot be a matter of picking and choosing to defend only those bits which personally appeal to us, or about which we feel most strongly. The serious fighting must be done by the professionals who have committed themselves, soul and body, to remain Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants to their lives’ end. An army peppered with individuals, each of whom is "fighting his own little corner" is heading for disaster. Doctrine, Morality, Ecology, Evangelism, Liturgy, Scripture and Political Issues all have to be addressed in the course of the War in which we are engaged, but each and every one of these, however important, costly or estimable, is only one part of a much greater whole. Winning a Moral War, for instance, (or more probably one small moral battle in it) whilst losing one’s handle on Scripture or Doctrine is bound to yield a Pyrrhic Victory – that is, one which costs more than it gains. Remember what Pyrrhus, King of Epirus said after the Battle of Asculum in 279BC "One more victory like this and we are lost!"

At Ypres we learnt that the slaughter which took place in the early months of the war was due to the fact that the British Expeditionary Force was largely composed of young volunteers who enlisted "for the fun of it" and who saw themselves following in the footsteps of Captain Scott, whose race to the South Pole in 1912 had come to be seen as typifying the sort of courage and heroism which they had been taught at school to admire and to emulate. "All over by Christmas" was their battle-cry!

Mention of heroism suggests the whole subject of morale-raising. It is of the utmost importance that morale should be kept as high as possible at all times, otherwise the boredom, mentioned earlier, will as surely undermine it as the sappers undermined the High Ground on which so much depended.

Morale-raising events have their part to play both in Military and Christian Warfare. All of us know, do we not, how enormously encouraging taking part in a large-scale religious event or rally can be. This is no different from what a military parade, inspection or tattoo may be expected to achieve. It will boost the spirits of those taking part in it as they proudly behold the sheer majesty of the army of which they are themselves but one individual and insignificant member; additionally it will impress those bystanders who have hesitated to sign up hitherto, to have serious second-thoughts in the direction of doing so.

So Big Events are an admirable thing – but those participating in and beholding them have to remember that they are not the same thing as engaging the enemy in mortal battle. The memory of them may well inspire battalions and individuals to fight better when it comes to it – but it can be counter-productive when they become an end in themselves rather than a means of achieving it. The event is mistaken for its objective, which is, and must always be, victory.

Everyone must know that World War One – the War to End Wars, which cost so much in human life and misery – turned out, as someone predicted in 1919 at Versailles, to be no more than a twenty-year armistice. The Peace Process, as it was called, turned into a long and bitter recrimination between victors and vanquished, paving the way for the rise of Hitler and World War Two.

The lesson is almost too obvious to state. We Christians are involved in a warfare against World, Flesh and Devil which will last till the end of our earthly lives – to the death in other words.

Benefits may indeed result from such wars especially in the longer term. In WWI these included the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations Organisation, the tiniest beginnings of the idea of the Welfare State which came to fruition in 1947, and the beginning of the demise of the belief that one nation, be it Germany, Britain, Russia, France or the USA had a divine right to rule the world as its empire.

In the Spiritual Warfare, the benefits have also been apparent. The triumphalist attitude which some Christians embraced in the past, which led them to suppose that their way, and their way alone, of doing things enjoyed God’s approval has been consigned to the graveyard of historical ideas which are past their sell-by date. The identification of Christianity with Middle-England or Mid-America’s social mores, so fashionable in the late 19^th / early 20^th Century, has been exposed for the falsehood that it always was. The word ‘Catholic’ has been rehabilitated to mean Universal, rather than a particular way of celebrating the Liturgy. All these and many other things besides must be counted as permanent gains of this costly warfare.

It was at the very end of our visit that the climax came. Ypres in 1919 was a smouldering ruin, not one house left standing. Thousands upon thousands of people had died fighting for what they believed. The Cloth Hall, which had stretched from one end of the Town Square to the other and had been the largest mediaeval secular building in Europe was a heap of rubble.

Today it has been painstakingly rebuilt and restored to its former glory. It hosts two permanent exhibitions – one about the War itself entitled In Flanders Fields, and the other, which first opened its doors on the very day of our visit, centres on the plight of Refugees. So there is something there of interest both to those who want to find out about the war itself, and those whose interest lies more in humanitarian issues. Both exhibitions may rightly be said to be about the War, and each is of a quality seldom equalled in the world of Museums.

The lessons that these two displays hold for us as Christians are two-fold.

First they remind us, in the words of Bishop Lightfoot, that there is no better cure for the dispirited Christian than to read a chapter of Church History. We can learn from so doing that, so far from being the first people who have had to fight for their faith by holding the High Ground, we stand in a long line of martyrs, confessors, doctors, evangelists and just plain ordinary Christians who have confessed Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, regardless of the consequences to themselves, and that, despite the ravages of war, the Catholic Church and the faith which we profess continue unvanquished by the forces who have made it their business to destroy them both.

Like the Cloth Hall they have risen from the ashes whilst the false ideologies which attacked them now lie in ruins: evidence, if such were needed, that in the end the Kingdom of God will prevail.

Second, the Refugee Museum serves to remind us that in a sense we too are Refugees. Here we have no continuing city, no abiding stay. Our homeland lies beyond the borders of this earth.

Meanwhile we have the inescapable mission to strengthen the weak-hearted, to arouse the careless, to recover the fallen, to restore the penitent, to remove all barriers to the advancement of God’s Kingdom and ensure that the journey of our fellow-pilgrims and combatants is not made any more difficult than it already is through our own negligence, weakness or deliberate fault.