Onward Christian Soldiers

      When Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in August 1941 on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to agree to the Atlantic Charter, a church service was held for which Churchill chose the hymns.  He chose “Onward Christian Soldiers” and afterwards made a radio broadcast explaining this choice.
   He said, “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 are 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.”
   Let’s take a look at this historic event, because there are many things we should take note of.  First of all, we have two western world leaders: the leader of Great Britain and the leader of the United States.  They hold a historic meeting to officially declare the goals of the Allied powers concerning the war and the way things would be handled after the war had ended.  Note that this was in August of 1941, four months before the US officially entered World War II.
   What were those goals, set forth in the Atlantic Charter?  They included ...