The Free Churches and the Future
The Free Church Tradition in the Life o! England. By E. A. Payne. (Student Christian Movement Press. 6s.) " IN the generation that has passed since the great Liberal landslide of 1906, one of the greatest changes in the English religious and social landscape has been the decline of Nonconformity."
This sentence from Professor D. W. Brogan defines the main interest of Mr. Payne's book. How is this decline to be accounted for? Must it continue or can it be arrested? Should it be welcomed or should it be regretted? Of the immense value of the contribution of the Free Churches to the life of England there can be no question. It has been indis- pensable to the achievement of our civil and religious liberties and to the effectual working of political democracy. If any one doubts this, Mr. Payne's scholarly survey of the history of the Free Churches should remove his doubts. But past services are no guarantee of present usefulness. Has the Free Church witness served its purpose _ and is it time that the Free Churches should softly and silently vanish away? The analysis of the causes of decline may supply the answer. Mr. Payne devotes a chapter to the twentieth century and describes this period by the one word " hesitancy." Free Churchmen became less sure, not of their principles, but of their right application to twentieth-century conditions. Hesitancy implies uncertain if not divided leadership. The Student Christian Movement itself and the circumstances which made it possible tended to drive a wedge between the older leaders of militant Nonconformity and the rising generation of leaders who had been educated with Anglicans and had co-operated with them on terms of friendship and equality. The Passive Resistance Movement of 1902 was the last demonstration of the older fighting Nonconformity. It did not command the con- vinced support of younger men. Both in Church and State, the urgent need seemed to be not so much independence as union, not so much self-help as co-operation. The claims of Labour presented the same sort of necessity for readjustment. Neither the Liberal Party nor the Free Churches were able to make the readjustment quickly enough. The decline may have been due in no small measure to the fact that too many Free Churchmen followed Dr. John Clifford in the Passive Resistance Movement and too few followed him in his sympathies with Labour.
If this were all, it would be natural to expect a recovery of balance and a new direction of aim as hesitancy gives way to a firmer grip on the situation. But there are other factors at work for which Free Churchmen are not mainly responsible. At the beginning of the century, William James described our generation as religiously inhibited. He stressed the widespread effectiveness of " the agnostic vetoes upon faith as something weak and shameful, under which so many of us today lie cowering, afraid to use our instincts." In such an atmosphere, Churches which insist on conscious personal faith suffer most. Then the last war sand the subsequent disillusionment weakened political Liberalism and the Free Church tradition. The two have much in common, and in particular both the Liberal Party and the Free Churches in their times of greatest influence united men and women of different classes in common convictions.
If the decline of Liberalism and Nonconformity means that politic in England are to be dominated by parties devoted to class-interest the decline is an unmitigated disaster.
The failure of Liberalism on the continent is due to the absent of a genuinely Free Church in the leading countries. Bernan speaks of " the unhappy condition of men of good will in moder society which gradually eliminates them, as a bye-product that ca be turned to no good account. A man of good will has no longue any party." Something like the Free Church tradition is needed save Europe. It must not be allowed to die out in the land of it
Previous page
