CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIANS
By BARBARA WARD
THE presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Hinsley at a gathering of Christians of all communions this week marks a new and notable stage in the progress of effective Christian co-operation in Great Britain, not indeed in the sphere of faith or dogma, but in the practical field of social and international ethics.
Every great civilisation has been based upon the concept of the Natural Law—Dike, divine justice ; Rita, the sacred order ; Dharma, the norm ; Tao, the way of heaven. Men have universally believed this law to be independent of time and space, to be the foundation and justification of all human laws and to be imprinted snore or less clearly on the heart of man in his ability to distinguish right from wrong. This law has, moreover, been universally iden- tified with God's will for the world, the Divine Pattern, the way of heaven, which to follow is health and life, to disregard, decay and death. Objectively, the Natural Law is expressed in sound social institutions and relationships such as responsible citizenship, strong and devoted family ties, freedom of association, or the subordination of the State to the purposes of the community. Subjectively, it is mirrored in the concern over right and wrong, the pietas of the Romans, the decency, honesty and integrity of average men and women.
Western civilisation is permeated through and through with the influence of the Natural Law. It was the foundation from which British freedom grew up. " The King," wrote Bracton, " is under God and the Law." It was in the mind of the Founding Fathers : " We hold these truths to be self-evident. . . ." Torn from its anchorage in the will of God, it is nevertheless recognisably there in the Rights of Man. Until the nineteenth century the vast majority of men in Europe accepted, even if they violated, the Natural Law. The bitter controversies, the great religious struggles, were carried on not at the level of Nature but of Super-Nature. They were concerned with dogma, with revelation or with the unity of Christen- dom, the supernatural life of the Church.
In the last hundred years, the situation has entirely changed. The Communists first substituted the historical process for immutable Law and made the question of right and wrong subordinate to class interest. In Nazism the denial of the whole basis of western civilisation is carried to fantastic extremes. The basic human rights and relationships are destroyed. Man has no further right to " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." His children belong to the State. Freedom of association is denied. The citizen is the total subject of the totalitarian State. And with education, propaganda and mass psychology, not only his body but his mind and soul are enslaved. As for right and wrong, they are reversed. The new Nazi beatitudes are " Blessed are the strong, blessed are the success- ful, blessed are they that possess other people's land." No 'other society in the history of man has so consciously sinned against the spirit in saying: " Evil, be thou my good."
The emergence of violent and aggressive States bent on the destruction not only of the religious but even of the natural basis
of society obviously created an entirely new historical situation, and called therefore for a new response from Christians. Faced with the new totalitarian menace, how would they react? Here, clearly, was an attack launched not at the high level of dogma and Church
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allegice, but against the different Christian communions' comm.. heritage of Christian civilisation with its roots deep in the Natu Law. The religious wars of Europe no longer divided along th. frontiers of differing religious allegiance. The Christians now f oun. themselves all on one side of the arena, with the pagans and the atheists armed for the onslaught on the other. Thus it was a mattes of expediency as well as duty to unite in defence of what wa, steadfastly held in common—belief in the Natural Law as th. expression of God's rule for man and society.
Few difficulties stood in the way of the Anglican and Free Chur bodies in this country. Ever since the last war co-operation hal been going forward, covering not only social ethics but dogma an. worship as well. The great conferences at Edinburgh and Oxfor. brought together representatives from all over the world. Th. Catholics did not participate, but with the pontificate of Pius XI a new note sounded from Rome. In almost every official utteranc. since Darkness Over the Earth in 1939, the Pope has appealed to joint action among Christians to defend the civilisation of Eu In his Christmas Allocution of 1939 he has even called this effort . " crusade ": " If ever there was an objective deserving the collaboration of noble and generous minds, if there was ever a spiritual crusad which might assume with a new truth as its motto, ' God wills it then it is this high purpose, it is this crusade, enlisting all unselfis, and great-hearted men in an endeavour to lead the nations ba from the broken cisterns of material and selfish interests to the livin. fountain of Divine justice."
The basis of collaboration is not dogma ; the new crusade does no set out to achieve Christian reunion. The basis is "Divine justice or, in other words, the Natural Law. It was in response to thi appeal that Cardinal Hinsley launched the Movement of the Swor• of the Spirit in August, 1940. It aimed at rallying " all men • good will " in a crusade of prayer, study and action for the preserva tion of Christian civilisation and the building of a just peace. Th Movement provided an instrument for co-operation on the Catholi side. Just over a year later a similar movement, Religion and Lif. under the direction of the Anglican and Free Church Commission • the Churches, came into being. It was to representatives of thes two bodies that the task was given of working out an agreed has' for co-operation which " while scrupulously respecting the religio and doctrinal position of the Christian bodies taking part " woul encourage the maximum amount of " joint Christian action in th international and national sphere." As a result of these discussion a formula was reached and made public last Thursday in the pr. sence of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Hinsley. two movements will work on parallel lines in the purely religio sphere, and nationally and locally they will be linked by joint court or committees for action in the social field.
This structure—which roughly resembles a letter H, with
Sword of the Spirit and Religion and Life as the parallel lines a the Joint Committee as the crosspiece—mirrors the realities and possibilities of the situation: no dogmatic or religious comprom on the one hand, full and generous co-operation in the sphere of civic order on the other. Does this mean an impoverishment of work before Christians in this country, a preoccupation with pur secular issues, a failure to make a specifically Christian contributio Surely not. The main work of the two parallel movements will to quicken the religious life of the Christian community, to in Christian souls realise their heavy responsibility in an age in wh fire and power and dynamism have passed to the enemies of G.• The leaders of the movements know that the work of the Jot Councils will be superficial and transitory unless their mein come to their task fired with a new enthusiasm and a new respon bility—which only a deepening of their religious life can give. Ch once more covers the face of the earth. Only the Spirit brooch over the dark waters of murder and starvation and racial hatred vengeance can bring order out of chaos Only in the power of spirit will the work of Christian co-operation thrive.
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