Our third and final session of the day featured Phil Arthur on the Great War. Phil Artthur is a trained historian and a great raconteur and he was able to give us a fascinating and nuanced state of the art summary of the Great War of 1914-1918. He warned us against drawing our notions of the war from Balckadder or the war poets studied at GCSE level. He also touched on several other issues such as Israel, the end of African colonialism adn the rise of Christianity there, liberalism and the Downgrade, the doctrine of hell, Darwin, higher critcism, etc.
This all led to the question of whether, as is often asserted, the Great War proved fatal to Christianity in Britain. This was shown to be a myth, the faith of many being strengthened and even ignited during the war as often as it was extinguishhed. The real culprits are Darwinism, higher criticism and the flight from the doctrine of hell. This view was reflected in the discussion although some wanted to suggest that the war did have an adverse affect on the church - in the colossal loss of men for example that the war, together with the Spanish flu epidemic, brought about.
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