The brief, unlabeled forward to Michael Snape and Edward Madigan's edited collection, The Clergy in Khaki: New Perspectives on British Chaplains in the First World War, contains a critical piece of information for readers. “British army chaplains,” it states, “have not fared well in the mythology of the First World War.” The foreword goes on to compare the treatment of chaplains to that of British generals, the men actually professionally accountable for the weeks and months of carnage on the Somme, at Ypres, and Passchendaele. There is one difference: scholarship surrounding British generals has been revised. British army chaplains of the Great War have long deserved an extended and sympathetic reexamination, and Snape and Madigan have compiled a deeply sympathetic volume. Their collection paints a composite picture of British chaplains as hard working, earnest men whose aim was to serve the soldier faithful, and whose sense of duty led them into circumstances more challenging than most can imagine. A century removed from the conflict itself and its human cost, this revisionist stance is certainly professionally appropriate. Equally appropriate is the volume's commitment to writing into the historiography the stories of non-conforming chaplains and chaplains based at the periphery of the Empire. The Clergy in Khaki offers these as “new perspectives” and, in the process, points the way toward future research on a topic relevant far beyond the British sectors of the battle line.

Three essays in particular demonstrate the strengths of this collection and the promise of its animating spirit: J.H. Thompson's on non-conformist chaplains, Neil Alison's on revivalism among the British troops, and Michael Snape's on the wartime activities of chaplains serving the Empire in British India. These are not only excellent and satisfying pieces of scholarship on their own; they also offer useful points of comparison for future studies of Great War chaplaincies. Michael Snape's essay, “The First World War and the Chaplains of British India,” describes the struggles of the chaplains of the Indian Ecclesiastical Establishment (IEE) to integrate effectively with the England-based Army Chaplains Department, and the hardships of their service, largely in Mesopotamia. In pointing up the fact that British chaplains came from across the Empire and served on many fronts, Snape also demonstrates that while chaplaincy was for most an embodied expression of devotion to ministry, for some it also required interaction with a daunting colonial bureaucracy. One's ability to serve as a chaplain was determined in part by willingness and fitness but also by the dynamics of empire. More generally, Snape's essay brings to the forefront the easily ignored fact that the Great War was waged by colonial powers and encourages further reflection on the effect of empire on religious life. How and to what extent did the metropole and the margins shape the religious lives of the warring armies? Did chaplains serving at the margins or among colonial subjects of other empires face similar obstacles to pastoral care and the maintenance of morale?

Neil Alison's study of “revival-like phenomena” (9) in the British Expeditionary Force provides convincing evidence that the Welsh Revival of 1904-1905 reached forward into the Great War, bringing together chaplains schooled in the arts of revivalism and revival-minded soldiers pressed up against their own mortality. The result was a series of “[l]ocalized revivals . . . between 1914 and 1916 when Kitchener's volunteers brought their religious habits and susceptibilities with them into the army” (55). Alison's chapter adds a new layer to understandings of the religious dynamics of the Great War and raises comparative possibilities as intriguing as they are distinct from those raised by Snape. The salient comparative issue here is not one of division within armies, but one of shared religious cultures across armies. The Welsh revival influenced religious life far beyond Wales. Did the revivals described by Alison effect soldiers beyond the B.E.F.? Were revivals part of the religious life of ANZAC or American forces? If not (and I have seen little evidence to indicate that American troops engaged revivalists positively), why not? Whether or not one can point to large-scale revivals, it would be fruitful to ask how revivalistic piety shaped soldiers’ approach to war and vice versa.

J.H. Thompson's essay on non-conformist chaplains in the British Army chronicles the efforts of those outside the Church of England to provide spiritual succor for their faithful and to ensure that non-conformist interests were fairly represented within the army and on the home front. Narratives of religion in the Great War tend to emphasize cooperation in spite of difference, and Thompson describes this well. It was also true, though, that the Church of England was at least first among equals and, as Thompson writes, enjoyed not just privileged treatment and a separate chaplaincy command, but also the benefit of being understood as the most patriotic of the churches. Thompson's essay reminds us that war is characterized by both rupture and continuity with the social conditions of peace. Comparisons of the British experience with that of other warring nations with religious establishments may well yield additional valuable insights about the equation between religious identity and national fidelity in the midst of war.

The focus of The Clergy in Khaki on British chaplains is its great strength. Chaplains provide an accessible way into the many questions surrounding religion and war and are often compelling, illuminating figures on their own. The essays are nicely balanced between those that focus on the chaplaincy and those that look closely at particular chaplains. Still, attention to chaplains and the chaplaincy leaves open questions about soldiers’ religious lives, questions that are important both for understanding the larger religious culture of an army or a war and for building connections between the study of religion and war, and the study of religion more broadly. This collection will appeal most to those already versed in the history of British involvement in the Great War and with some sense of the pre-war religious landscape of British society. At the same time, the volume demonstrates that ownership of the history of Great War chaplains is broad and growing. The contributors are all skilled researchers, but many come to the subject from civilian pulpits or the military chaplaincy, perhaps bringing a level of professional sympathy that, though by no means necessary to sound scholarship, helps to round out the historiography. Their collective contribution, twelve essays (including the thorough introduction), ably tell stories of clergy working within and against structures of power to represent Christianity to young men confronting unimaginable destruction. And though chaplains and chaplaincy certainly was more complex and, at times, less laudable, The Clergy in Khaki is a necessary and welcome corrective.