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Good morning. A Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens the security and stability of Europe and catastrophe for the people who will be killed or displaced by military action.

In September 1938, the stability and security of Europe was also threatened. The then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, returning from Munich said: ‘This is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.’ He was referring to Disraeli, returning from the Congress of Berlin, but it is unclear whether he was appropriating or even misquoting ‘Give peace in our time, O Lord’, from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer.

I hear that prayer in weekly Choral Evensong in our College chapel, St Mary-the-Less. Standing in the shadow of Durham Cathedral, it was built in the 12th century as a chapel for the soldiers who guarded the walls of the city. For over 800 years prayers have been said in it through times of peace and war. Indeed, when we pray ‘Give us peace in our time O Lord’ I note the memorials on its walls of those who have been killed by war.

The Book of Common Prayer comes from the 16th century during the reign of Edward VI – a time of national and international tension between Catholicism and the move to Protestantism and where war was a constant threat. Fresh in the memory was Henry VIII mobilising 1 in 6 men for fear of an imminent French invasion and crippling taxation for the war effort. One can understand the plea ‘Give peace in our time, O Lord’.

More surprising is the next line in the prayer, ‘Because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God’. No doubt this is wrapped up in the sense of national identity which would be satirised much later by Bob Dylan’s ‘With God on our side’. But it also seems to come from a 7th-century Latin hymn based on biblical verses reflecting not just military victory but the cause of the poor and needy. God is the one who fights for justice and protection for those who are often ignored and have no other hope.

In any military action, as President Biden has said ‘things could go crazy quickly’. As the past has shown us, peace with honour is so difficult to achieve in the midst of geopolitical history, security and national self-determination, but people of faith will always want to highlight, act for and pray for the people who bear the real cost of war.

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