THE NEED FOR SPIRITUAL RENEWAL [To the Editor of the
SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Your correspondent N. A., in your issue of October 31st, must claim the sympathy of many in his aspiration for a spiritual renewal of the national life ; but he seems sadly out
of touch with practical reality in his suggestions as to how this shall be brought about. He suggests that the greatest needs of to-day, are the revision of the Book of Common Prayer in an extreme Modernistic direction and the compilation of a com- pendium of " inspired writings " in addition to those tradition- ally received as such. To these suggestions I would answer.
(I) That the masses of English people are unlikely to be influ- enced by either revised Prayer Books or revised Bibles. They are definitely not inclined towards a Modernistic " interpretation " of Christianity as against the traditional Faith, but rather, very little interested in any presentation of religion, and certainly not attached to the idea of Christ, as " N. A." would seem to maintain.
(2) Of the minority of people who are definitely interested in religion a large percentage are adherents of that most rigid of all bodies, the Roman Catholic Church, and of schools of Anglicanism and Nonconformity, which, together with Catholicism, would certainly repudiate the writer's versions of Christ and His Teaching. Only a small section of persons (and these of an academic type, out of touch with'the Man in the Street) would be found to undertake such a sweeping revision as is suggested. As for the compendium of " inspired writings "—the issue is here completely begged, for (having disposed of the fiction of a nation whose spiritual inclinations are in line with " N. A.'s " own) what remains but a minority of widely-differing schools of thought and feeling ? To say that such an undertaking would mean a " putting away of many childish things of sentimental rather than of real value ' is one of those silly spiritual-sounding phrases, so common in Modernism, which, because of their implication of the infallibility of their author's own particular viewpoint in regard to precisely what is Truth, and their ignoring of the true issue which is one of basic intellectual principle, may be said to militate rather against, than towards that national spiritual unity for which all Christians pray.
Lee, S.E.
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