,4 THE BROAD APPROACH"
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Sut,—I delight in " Janus," who invariably makes me forget that he is an ancient two-faced Italian deity—until his signature slaps up against my consciousness!
But was he not over hasty in his notes on October 9th when he asserted that " it is not the details, but the broad approach to the good and evil features of contemporary life that matters "? I venture to suggest that " the broad approach " which disdains the details is all too apt to suffer disillusionment when it arrives at the detail of the ditch. Economics especially derives its value from a meticulous attention to its necessary data. All the pother occasioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury's Albert Hall speech was concerned with the details rather than with the broad approach to his subject. To introduce details where the Christian derivation is suspect and open to dispute among Christians, is seriously to jeopardise the acceptability of a movement which might otherwise have been more representative in character and more decisive in influence ; and I am surprised that in all the correspondence in the newspapers no one appears to have pointed out that what is really required from the Christian Church as a whole is a consultative, detailed, and agreed policy, jointly sponsored by the leaders of the Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Federal Council of the Free Churches. I am convinced that such a pronouncement would have carried with it an authority which could not be ignored ; it would have lost nothing in forthrightness by eschewing all matters of detail that could possibly be conceived as being extraneous to the essential principles of the Christian faith ; and Christianity in its most catholic quality would have reasserted an influence which it has largely forfeited by default, and have made an indelible impression on the solution of many of the post-war problems which await us.
Both as a Church and a people we need to develop a sense of the significance of our historicity ; for the teaching of history is meaningless if it is not regarded as a guide to present behaviour. The tendency of the present age not so much to ignore as deliberately to scrap and repudiate the past, is much to be deplored ; for the past is fruitful in examples of both what to avoid and what to accept, and how to retain what Burke loved to call " equipoise " in the midst of world upheaval.
Although Dr. Temple spoke as the titular head of the Anglican Church his challenge was really a personal one, and it remains open to the criticism that it tended to be an individualist attempt to squash individualism, for he sought to allocate powers to the State which are too near in alignment with totalitarianism to commend them to those principles of civic independency which many of us regard as exceedingly precious ; and further, his unequivocal condemnation of " the profit- motive " is precisely one of those details extremely debatable from a Christian standpoint. The speech was undoubtedly Socialistic. We should not be unduly prejudiced on that account ; but if we accept it as an authentic programme of Christian ethics to meet modern needs, it would seem to suggest the intriguing question, " Can then a Conservative or a Liberal be a Christian? " It would appear to be exceedingly dubiOus! Are we to have not only a New Order to off-set Hitler's, but a New Orthodoxy as well? The value of a theory, particularly of a theory which aims to formulate a policy, is only discoverable by its specific applications ; and the practical utility of a religious political programme demands that its details should be in direct relationship to its central thesis or inspiration. If the great Church of Christ—the Universal Church—would concentrate on its absolutes, but be careful to see that its details all come within its absolutes and proceed therefrom, it would achieve the immeasurable gain of being entitled to say " These are the views of the Christian Church." Which Dr. Temple cannot do! Nevertheless it is impossible to formulate a political policy without giving it a specific application. But when the specifics are ill-judged the major hypothesis becomes hopelessly compromised. So, my dear " Janus," details do matter! Quite a lot —Yours faithfully, REGINALD L. SWABY. 7 Huddlestone Road, Willesden Green, N.W. 2.
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