The story and development of the Remembrance Sunday service in the Church of England

David McEvoy, Reader. 7 November St Alfege Church 

On Sunday we will of course be commemorating 100 years since the Armistice, the ending of the First World War. 

Partly with this in mind I wrote a paper for a liturgical conference in the Summer on the form and development of the Service for Remembrance Sunday in the Church of England. I looked in detail at the service that we use at the moment but also compared it to the first service written for use in churches on the Sunday preceding Armistice Day, a service first used in 1920. My focus was on the different functions of the remembrance service. I used ritual studies to help with this. All rituals can carry a pastoral function (helping the emotional needs of those in attendance), a political function (reinforcing or challenging the existing political status quo, and a religious function (worship). That is very true of the Remembrance Day service. I looked at the prayers, readings and hymns in each service to get a sense of the balance between each of the functions. 

I will refer to that aspect but tonight I will be mainly focusing on the development and history of the Remembrance Day service.

Early Days and Armistice Day

The years after the First World War were characterised by what one writer called a frenzy of memorialisation. In the private, personal sphere, this took the form of the phenomenon of spiritualism. Thousands of people used spiritualism to try to make contact with their departed loved ones. In the public sphere it took on two forms. There was an explosion of monument building, with every city, town or village erecting its own war memorial. The Cenotaph on Whitehall is the most notable example.  Also in the public sphere, there was also a search for forms of ritual to commemorate and remember those who have died.  

In 1919 there was a huge demand for some form of national service to commemorate and honour the dead.  The government decided to hold a ceremony on 11 November, one year since the Armistice that ended the war. Lord Curzon, originally in charge of the event wanted a Victory parade. He was reined in by the King and Prime Minister who wanted the focus to be a tribute to the dead. Lutyens was commissioned to design what became known as the Cenotaph (which means empty tomb). On 11 November 1919 a huge parade filed passed the Cenotaph (which was then in its temporary wood and plaster form) and the leading generals and admirals saluted their dead colleagues. The ceremony in Whitehall also included a two minutes silence followed by singing of the hymn ‘O God our help in ages past’ and the Last Post.  The two minutes silence was observed throughout the country and wreaths were laid at local war memorials. The ceremony was designed as a one-off but there was huge demand for it to be repeated as annual event. The 1920 event was notable for a parallel ceremony, the return of the body of the Unknown Warrior and his burial in Westminster Abbey. 
The ceremony has been repeated every year and, though there have been changes such as the laying of wreaths of poppies (introduced in 1924), the structure of the service has remained essentially the same since. 

The Armistice Day ceremonies were secular rituals, albeit with the singing of a hymn. It was only when Armistice Day first fell on a Sunday that the Bishop of London gave a prayer at the Cenotaph. The local ceremonies may have taken place near churches, if the war memorials were in a churchyard, but the services were secular. 

The Church Service from the 1920s

Though we have been commemorating the fallen of the Great War in ceremonies since 1919, the remembrance church services came later. 
When it became clear that the Armistice Day ceremonies were going to be repeated, the Church of England prepared a religious framework for the commemorations. The church produced an order of service for the Sunday preceding Armistice Day in 1920, 7th November. This order of service is the direct ancestor of our Remembrance Services to this day.  This was ‘A Service of Thanksgiving and Memorial for those who were killed in Action or Died of Wounds or Sickness during the Great War’
The 1920 service was essentially a service of Matins. The themes, expressed in the prayers, hymns and readings were: comfort for those who had lost loved ones and thanksgiving to God for Victory (for after all God was on our side). The service drew parallels between those who had died for their country and those (saints) who have died in God’s service. There are no prayers for peace and the confession is a general confession, with no acknowledgement of a share in the responsibility for the recent war. You could say that the service had two main functions: pastoral (care for the bereaved) and a conservative political function (reinforcing the status-quo, not seeking a way to transform the world). 
The church service on the Sunday before Armistice Day continued to run in parallel with the Armistice Day ceremonies. The British Legion supported the Sunday service, partly because the collections were taken for the Poppy Appeal and partly because it was easier for ex-servicemen began to assemble on a Sunday than to take time off work to attend the Armistice Day ceremonies on working days.
This state of affairs – secular Armistice Day commemorations on 11 November and a parallel church service on the preceding Sunday continued until the Second World War broke out.

The Second World War and after

The Armistice Day commemorations were suspended once war broke out again in 1939.  The Sunday remembrance services continued and they were then the only focus for remembrance. People began to get used to commemoration on a Sunday.  11 November 1945 fell on a Sunday so the Armistice Day ceremonies resumed on that Sunday, merging the two commemorations. 

There had been a debate in government about how to commemorate the dead of the Second World War. When it came to stone memorials, the names of the dead from this war were largely added to the memorials for the dead of the first war. With the ceremony, November was retained as the time for commemoration but the ceremony was moved from 11 November, to the Sunday preceding that date and the ceremony incorporated commemoration of the dead of the recent war. So Armistice Day transmuted into Remembrance Day or Remembrance Sunday. The ceremonies of Remembrance took place on that Sunday and were incorporated into the church service for that day. 
The first form of church service for Remembrance Day was produced in 1946: A Form of Divine Service …  for general use on the Day of Remembrance for those who died in the wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45. 

This service has essentially the same structure as the service we use today. It incorporates for the first time in a church service, the Act of Remembrance, the Thanksgiving, and the Dedication. The Act of Remembrance includes the two minutes silence, prayers and the Last Post and Reveille (where appropriate). It also included (for the first time in a church service) the words of Laurence Binyon ‘They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old’ with the response ‘We will remember them’.

So, this service now incorporated the familiar elements of the Act of Remembrance.  The prayers, hymns and readings shared the theme from 1920 of thanksgiving for deliverance and comfort for those who have lost loved ones. It also shared the linking the suffering and death of the war with those of the saints. However the 1946 service was very different in tone. It did not give thanks for victory and it contained a confession that acknowledges a shared responsibility for the war: ‘Let us confess our forgetfulness of God, and our share of the sin that brought catastrophe to the world’.  It also looked beyond this country and the time, asking for a healing of the whole world.  There was still, of course, a strong pastoral function, offering comfort to the grieving, but the political function was more transformative, looking to a peaceful future, rather than reinforcing the existing political status quo. 

The later twentieth century

The form of the 1946 service was retained right through to 1968 when a new service was introduced. This service was slightly amended in 1984 and 1991. Not surprisingly, given the increasing distance not only from the First but also the Second World War, the emphasis changed, moving away from specific remembrance of the dead of these wars, to a general remembrance of all who have died in war. 

The main form of the service did not include Binyon’s words ‘They shall grow not old’ nor did it include any reference to the dead of the two world wars.  These elements are incorporated in the alternative or optional forms offered. The national anthem and prayers for the Queen and armed forces are also relegated to the supplementary texts. 
Again, not surprisingly, there was little emphasis on comfort for those who lost loved ones in the world wars. Though there was a strong emphasis on prayer for those suffering or who have suffered from war including the bereaved. The strongest emphasis is on working for harmony between peoples, relief of suffering and world peace. The confession acknowledges ‘our share in what is wrong [in the world] and our failure to establish that peace which God wills for his children’. In terms of the functions, the emphasis has moved away from pastoral to political, but a transformatory political function, focusing on peace and justice. 

Changes

The last few decades of the twentieth century saw a decline in interest in Remembrance Day, and a fall in attendance at services. The world wars seemed to fall into irrelevance, to many remembrance seemed to be mainly for old men, and the focus was much more on the future than the past. It was widely predicted that interest in the world wars would fade and the Remembrance services with it. 
However, in the last twenty years or so, interest has grown again. This may be due to a range of factors: the last of the few surviving veterans of the First World War were dying and the 90th anniversary of the Armistice gave focus to this. It was noticed that increasingly people were beginning to observe the two minutes’ silence on 11th November as well as on Remembrance Day.  The Second World War was beginning to move from living memory to history as the veterans of that war aged and died. This gave a new impetus to remembrance.  And significantly, the United Kingdom was caught up in warfare in Afghanistan and then Iraq, following the attacks of 11th September 2001. Remembrance began to take on a fresh meaning as bodies of British soldiers were repatriated from Afghanistan and Iraq. On Remembrance Sunday we were no longer looking back to distant wars, but were responding to the sacrifices made by our contemporaries. 

The current Remembrance Day Service

And this brings us to the Remembrance Day Service that we use today. It was drawn up by a group representing most of the churches in Britain and Ireland, working in partnership with the British Legion. It was published in Common Worship: Times and Seasons and replaces the service used since 1968. An Order of Service for Remembrance Sunday. We draw on this service for our own Remembrance Day service here in St Alfege church but we do not use the full form. 

The structure of the service is similar to the 1968 service. The focus on peace continues particularly in the prayers and the act of commitment in which the congregation replies ‘We will’ to the questions ‘Will you strive for peace?’, ‘Will you seek to heal the wounds of war?’ and ‘Will you work for a just future for all humanity’? The readings also reflect peace rather than (as in 1920) comfort for the bereaved: ‘Peace I leave you’ (John 14.27); The Beatitudes including ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ (Matthew 5. 1-12). 
The service reflects the contemporary political situation and the UK’s involvement in armed conflict, the prayers in the main service include prayers for members of the armed forces in danger today and for all whose lives are ‘disfigured by war or terror’.

Like the 1968 service, the emphasis is no longer on comforting those who have lost loved ones in war. While there are families who are grieving loved ones lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, their numbers are small in comparison with the bereaved of the two world wars, and are not likely to be present at any one Remembrance Sunday service. 
The emphasis, like the 1968 service, is on peace and the future, rather than looking back at the world wars. However there is still reference to those who have lost their lives ‘in world wars and conflicts past and present. 

There is still a pastoral element in the service and anyone affected by recent warfare can find comfort in the prayers and hymns but the emphasis is now strongly on commitment to peace and the future.

Conclusion

In the church, it is always tempting to say, ‘But we have always done things this way’. When it comes to the Remembrance Sunday service the response to this is ‘no, we haven’t’. The service we have today is different to the services of 1968, 1946 and 1920 and reflects our times as well as those services reflected theirs. Each service contains a balance of the pastoral, political and religious functions appropriate to their times. The service has evolved from being a response to immediate and overwhelming grief to a more general remembrance of those who have died and suffered as a result of war. 
The anniversary of the Armistice means that the focus of many services this year will be on the sacrifices made in the First World War. We may look back next year to the first Armistice Day ceremony in 1919 including the first two-minute silence. We may also look back in 1920 to the burial of the Unknown Warrior. Beyond that, I am not sure what the focus of Remembrance Sunday service will be.

The Remembrance Sunday Service will continue. It is an opportunity to reflect on  the broken world in which we live, in which violence and warfare still flare up, an opportunity to seek amends for our role in this, and an opportunity to determine, with God’s grace, to make a better world. It may eventually lose the direct link with the Armistice and the First World War. The focus may move to the Second World War as the 80th, 90th and 100th anniversaries of that war approach, as well as continuing to address the dead of more recent and current conflicts.  

The service has evolved in the past to meet people’s need to come together to remember. I am sure that it will continue to do that.