Church Brigades and Battlefields: Militarizing British Boys Prior to World War I

Abstract

Abstract: When World War I began in 1914, Britain had neither a conscript army nor any bureaucratic mechanism for implementing conscription. By 1916, however, it had the largest volunteer army in the history of the world. Such an astounding achievement was credited to patriotism and the efforts of Field Marshall Kitchener. In reflecting on this development, contemporaries and historians largely overlooked the religious culture of militarism that dominated the pre-war years as well as the impact of the church brigade movement. The brigades fused military discipline and training with religious teaching and spiritual formation, and they ensured that well over 50 percent of British boys received a form of military training in the decades prior to the conflict, popularizing the ideas of military organization, drill, and serving in the armed forces.