THE CHURCH IN FRANCE
Sus,—This correspondence on the Church in France seems to me to have served a very useful purpose. It has demonstrated that the French Church is filled with vitality and alertness. One correspondent after another has pointed to this piece of work and that, to this examination and that of the problems set by a pagan proletariat, which the Church in France has set in motion. As the author of the original article which started it all and as a priest of the Anglican Church, I should like to say how heartening the correspondence has been, and to pay seine public tribute to what it has disclosed. The one thing of importance remaining to be said, and which neither the article nor the letters have yet said, is that nearly all this experimental work of pen and life came out of the time of the German occupation. The original report, La France Pays De Mission?, was published in 1943. The corresponding report on the religious situation in the French countryside I have not yet succeeded in getting, but I am told it is just as penetrating as its partner. There is a third report in the same series, The Parish as a Missionary Community, by the Abbe Michonneau, which I am at present reading (rather laboriously because its French is difficult). This was published in the autumn of 1945, and was therefore written during the occupation. Taken together, these three reports constitute the most thorough examination of the evangelistic problem in the twentieth century which is known to me ; and it is as exhilarating as it is astonishing to realise that all were born and written during the moment of France's greatest agony. Truly, a-Church which is loyal to its Master can serve Him and His people in any kind of circumstance, however dark. It may be worth adding that at long last I have managed to discover the address of the French pub- lishers. It is: Les Editions du Cerf, 29, Boulevard Latour-Maubourg,
Paris 7 -E.—Yours faithfully, ROGER LLOYD. Chevney Court, The Close, Winchester.
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