Religion
The two Christianities
Edward Norman
Like cheeky acolytes daring one another into irreverences at the altar; like strippers arranging an adjustment of their act; like coppers' narks on the edge of disgorgement: the theologians of this generation derive their style from a breathless acquaintance with secular culture. Each new departure from the spiritual tradition of Christianity is applauded as a courageous 'encounter' with the world, each adoption of the intellectual modes of atheism is seen as an affirmation' of human experience. The most useful feature of the conference of British church leaders held in Birmingham last September was that those who contrive to represent Christianity in this manner were flushed out into the open. An acccunt of the conference has now been published — by David Edwards* whose idea the venture was.
His book, as one would expect from Edwards, is fair-minded and luc;dly written. As it happens, the conference was a great success for the ecumenical instinct; but as an occasion of religious cleavage it was also, clearly, notable. " Conservatives and radicals seemed to have utterly different conceptions of the church," Edwards writes. "The theological split revealed was almost one between two Christianities." It symptomised, Edwards further suggests, two religious psychologies — "a psychology of openness, supporting a theology of adventure," and a "psychology of reverence and humble Study, supporting a doctrinal system."
Some would describe the distinction more crudely as one between humanism and Christianity. Edwards alsci notices (and this Is surely true) that the division is often between the ordinary churchmen and the intellectuals. He says that, "in the church the most loyal members seem to be the most suspicious of theology, while the most intelligent seem the most worried."
By the " most intelligent" he refers, of course, to the academic theologians of this generation. It is not a description which would attract universal agreement. At the conference, indeed, "many people were puzzled by the donnish style of the radical lectures." They ought not to have been. Did they really suppose that contemporary ecclesiastical radicalism arises from pastoral acquaintance with the needs of men? If the church leaders at Birmingham could not see that this sort of radicalism is drawn from the cardboard social models of the repentant public schoolboys, who constitute the intellectual avant-garde of the English Church today, then they lose any claim to church leadership.
One of the speakers at Birmingham noticed some of this with a splendid clarity. T. F. Torrance, the Professor of Christian Dogmatics at Edinburgh, appears to have said quite flatly that the theologians were in danger of reducing Christianity to the "pathological moral ism " of the guilty intellectual." He attacked the World Council of Churches: another indication of his soundness. The more the Church adopted current intellectual fashions, "the less had Church leaders been in touch with common people and their spiritual needs."
There was one other at Birmingham who seems to have preached a recognisable Christianity. Cardinal Heenan cut the ground from beneath them by denouncing "the cult of talk " in the modern Church. He also came near to realising the extent to which social agonising has become a bourgeois hobby. "Some laymen preferred conferences while others liked yachting," he said. After that, according to Edwards's account, one Roman Catholic priest had to be "carried off to the bar by two of his friends — both Anglican bishops — and fortified with large whiskies until he had recovered."
The present attitudes of the 'theology of adventure' were represented in their most adorned version in Canon David Jenkins. Mr Jenkins is the Director of the 'Human Study Project' of the World Council of Churches. He stated the familiar assertion that it is only by "becoming human" that men respond to God. Christians who aspire to a vision of the celestial dimensions beyond this earth are, in his judgement, "really neurotic." His allusion to a country, from which he told the conference he had just returned, where " the established church and the oppressive government go hand in hand" was presumably intended to point to an explicit belief about the relations of Church and State in general. Jenkins was not, on this occasion, diverted by this line of speculation, however. His preoccupations were elsewhere. "Deeply uncomfortable questions about the matter of domination are being raised for us under the slogantitle of 'Women's liberation,' but which is, of course, about human liberation," he told the expectant gathering. The Church must commit itself to the 'human struggle' — not to seek the leadership of that struggle, of course, for that would be illiberal — but the Church must constitute one of the liberation forces, striving for Humanity.
He offered a curious alternative. If there is no God, he said, then "for the sake of man, join the Communist Party: don't go messing about with this bloke Jesus." Why should he see the Communist Party as Christianity without God? Did he breathe in this sort of opinion from gaseous mixtures released by the World Council of Churches? The Reverend Paul Oestreicher recently uttered, a not dissimilar sentiment on BBC radio. " Of course I'm not a Communist," he said, " at any rate, no more than Jesus was." What do Churchmen mean when they speak of Communism in this way? Do they suppose • that the Saviour espoused the atheism of historical materialism — that his total failure to associate himself with the political excitements of his generation indicates his ulterior belief in some more fundamental consciousness of the inexorable movement of the dialectic? Or do they just mean that Christ recognised in the simp.:e virtues of humble men an authentic expression of Gcd's providence.
Mr Jenkins, who used to teach philosophy at Oxford, ought to know the score by now. The intellectual absurdities of the age were, however, given a nice shock when an Indian bishop told the conference that Western men took Eastern mysticism too seriously. It was, he said, much "inferior to the Gospel."
The allurements of political excitement appear to have hedged the conference on every side. The formal commission on 'The Churches and Public Issues' which, according to Edwards, "handled these hc t potatoes," was led by the Reverend George Balls. The commission was emphatic that in Britain " and Ireland," Christians "ought to be involved in politics." It urged the immediate assemblage of "a Christian critique of the present economic and financial system." No clear indication seems to have been made of the principles upon which such a critique should rest: perhaps the commission regarded them as self-evident, just like the parsons who seem to think that Communism is just Christianity minus Christ. The commission did, however, urge that "the theory and practice of Christian political involvement should be an integral part of the training of all theological students." God help us all.
As was only to be expected, the list of Christian priorities in the political field contains some pretty ephemeral items, with a heavy emphasis on yesterday's obsession: 'the environment.' The British Council of Churches was exhorted to discourage " the built-in obsolescence of products" (which, presumably, is now to be regarded as un-Christian). They were to find ways of encouraging "the imposition of upper limits to personal income and consumption "; a "national population policy "; reduced expenditure on defence; "environmental education." The younger radicals issued an additional manifesto in which the conference was told " to shift attention from the church's struggle to survive to man's struggle to be human." The young also warned that "the old style of authoritarian leadership is out, and this conference showed it." Their manifesto, as Edwards remarks, did not contain "a single statement which was specifically Christian."
The young had at least picked up that much from their elders: the old, style authoritarian leadership still appears to be in business. Those parts of Edwards's account of the conference which describe the political commission's work are a bit diffuse; very few speeches are reported, and there is difficulty in distinguishing the opinions of the reporter from those of the leader of the Commission. It is perhaps safe to conclude that attempts to give a general theological interpretation of political issues all derive from Edwards, and that the rest are all Balls.
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