Armistice Centenary Service

An address by the Minister, Rev. Rob MacPherson - recorded on Sunday, 11th November, 2018 in the Unitarian Meeting House in Adelaide to mark the Centenary of the signing of the Armistice at the end of WW1. In this address, Rob describes the rapidly changing face of war in the 20th century, WW1 being the first war that utilised mass production techniques to create armaments of unprecedented killing power. The so-called "war to end all wars" - was followed - in less than a generation - by WW2 and by an almost continuous succession of other wars ever since. This 21st Century has seen war continue uninterrupted, with weapons of even greater destructive power.
We can condemn war and the economic and political systems that create it. We can mourn and honour those human souls who enlisted for a multitude of reasons. We cannot escape history but we do not have to keep repeating it. We can decide what this costly legacy means to each of us: 100 years of almost constant war and the moral choices we must make.
The participants in this service then leave the Meeting House to walk to a nearby relic of WW1 - to be confronted by the brutality of a heavy weapon - a field gun - to place flowers, leave messages and to sing responses to "We Shall Overcome".
We then return to the Meeting House to conclude this service of remembrance.

On our return, Rob challenges us to make a "binary choice". In a globally interdependent world we are either complicit in the atrocity of ongoing militarism and war or we resist it.