November 9th, 2025
Remembrance Day Service
We are here, commemorating a day that is filled with complex thoughts and emotions. Grief, for all those who have died in combat and their families who have suffered immeasurable losses. Anger that we as humans could let it get to this point. Hope for a future with no more violence. While our building was constructed after WWII, almost every church that was built before the 1940s has a list of all the men and women on their rolls who served in the military during these wars, and those who died in combat. Many more have plaques, scrolls, or books with the names of those who served (and sometimes died) in combat in Korea, Afghanistan, and in peacekeeping missions globally. During WWII Canada had roughly 1400 military chaplains serving in their forces, deployed to offer the sacraments, prayers, and pastoral care to service members regardless of their own religious background. At least 20 would be killed over the course of the war.
In the UCC we serve a big tent. It is one of the things we pride ourselves on; we can be in this room and have differing opinions and arguments that together forge a church that is filled with critical thinking. No one simply swallows the doctrine of one person, we all question and doubt. Now take this practice we have, and turn it into wartime. These are not hypotheticals. Do we support a war that is going to leave many of the sons, husbands, friends, and neighbours of people in our congregation, dead on a battlefield an ocean away? Or do we condemn the violence, and risk the escalation of a military power that appears content to swallow countries whole, stripping away the liberties and freedoms that we in Canada believe everyone deserves?
Looking at the Methodist ancestors, we can see that they were in conversation with Anglican and Mennonite churches about the role of churches in a modern war era. In 1918
The Methodist Church published “The Church, the war and patriotism” , a report about the missionary work done on and off the battlefield. It established the Army and Navy Board. That board would commission ordained ministers to be military chaplains, establish wartime programs for congregations, and accumulate the first set of military service records for Methodist servicemen and women. It would coordinate with other denominations a unified front to serve the people on the front lines and the home pews.
The very nature of war itself was changing. Everyone knew someone in a trench. Everyone knew someone who died. The scale was so inconceivable that it would echo armageddon and end-times, “The War To End All Wars”. One of the first goals of the newly formed Army and Navy Board was to squash rumours that the mainline churches were not sending their fair share of soldiers overseas. That image, that idea that it is your Christian duty to be willing to go across the ocean and kill and die alongside your fellow Canadians became embedded in the ethos of Christian patriotism. Fight, because God is on your side. And if you die, God is on your side as well.
Fast forward to the Second World War. The scars of the first war were not yet healed and yet, here we are. The patriotic slogans are passed around again, with a reminder that the Nazis will never stop until they are stopped. That no appeasement can quell Hitler’s hunger to conquer, and that Canadians can be the bravest troops on the front lines. It had become almost a cliche that the Canadians would be willing to get into the hardest ground and to the dirty work. It was here, 14 years after the UCC was inaugurated, that we saw dissent. October 1939, 65 UCC ministers formed a “witness against war” group, pacifists who pray and protest for peace. These were not naive men, many of them either served in WWI themselves, or had family who did. Even though they are clear they are not speaking for the UCC, the Attorney General wanted to see if the letter published in the National Observer violated the War Measures Act.
This was not the majority vote- there was a strong voice of support for the war throughout the UCC, for many of the reasons we have covered. War is indeed sinful, but the cause of defence against a tyrannical power was considered just. There was also an underlying current of Christians saving other Christians, a hallmark of western imperialism that was still pervasive throughout the Commonwealth. And of course, millions of UCC members contributed to the war effort with money, materials, labour, and morale.
Victory Bonds and War Bonds
West Oxford UC, $700 war bond, roughly $2600 today
War Bonds became a way to proclaim your support for the troops, and after the war, the return on those bonds would be used to expand church properties and remove debt accumulated during the depression era.
This just war mindset is one we keep with our peacekeeping missions, our military campaigns in Korea and Afghanistan, and up to today. That ultimately, there are times where the only way to stop an enemy is with force.
Now, in 2025, our military is one of science fiction. Countries all over the world use powerful drones, bombs triggered nations apart from each other, missiles that can cross time zones, and digital warfare as tools of the trade. But the most powerful tool is the one that dehumanizes the enemy. Stephen has talked about in previous sermons how humans are not natural killers. We have to be put into environments that make us kill in self-defence, or condition us over time to see killing as a natural. It is a part of why so many soldiers, such as my great-grandfather and my grandfather, had PTSD from their services in both world wars.
Convincing a soldier to kill another soldier is an ancient problem. But today you do not need to see the enemy’s face. We can humanize ourselves and dehumanize others so incredibly easily. It is here that the church, filled with veterans who served in wars of all kinds, has stood up and resisted. Our job is not to be a naysayer because of lack of patriotism or caring. It is because we know how easy it is to let voices of war push out all others. When governments censor voices of peace, just as they silence certain stories and storytellers, it is all too easy to insist that there is full-throated support for violence, which turns to hatred and bigotry. It is a runaway train.
The church, the United Church among others, serves now as brakes on that train. We serve as a small but persistent voice of conscience, the reminder that God’s image is in the Enemy, not just us. That the kingdom of heaven is one of peace, not of war. So pause, really discern, and let war be the absolute last resort, done with the utmost restraint.
The UCC in its origins would claim to be the Church with the Soul of a Nation. It would be the voice of conscience. It is also the church filled with people who were and are willing to risk a lot to defend their communities. But they would not risk their soul. They would not risk their conscience. God is with each and every one of us as humanize each other to prevent more conflict. We need not be bound for war.
Amen.
%20(4).png)