Onward, Christian Soldiers - Later History

Later History

When Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in 1941 on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to agree the Atlantic Charter, a church service was held for which Prime Minister Churchill chose the hymns. He chose "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and afterwards made a radio broadcast explaining this choice:

We sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers" indeed, and I felt that this was no vain presumption, but that we had the right to feel that we serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet has sounded from on high. When I looked upon that densely packed congregation of fighting men of the same language, of the same faith, of the same fundamental laws, of the same ideals ... it swept across me that here was the only hope, but also the sure hope, of saving the world from measureless degradation. —Winston Churchill

The song has been sung at many funerals, including at the funeral of American president Dwight D. Eisenhower at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., March 1969. Apart from its obvious martial associations, the song has been associated with protest against the established order, particularly in the case of the civil rights movement.

An attempt was made in the 1980s to strip "Onward, Christian Soldiers" from the United Methodist Hymnal and the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 due to perceived militarism. Outrage among church goers caused both committees to back down. However, the hymn was omitted from the 1990 hymnal of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Australian Hymn Book, published in 1977, and its successor, Together in Song, published in 1999. The Spiritualists' National Union hymnbook has a variation on the hymn, entitled "Onward, Comrades, Onward".

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