LIFE AND LIBERTY, CHAPTER TWO. T HE Life and Liberty. Movement
is doing splendid work in spreading among laymen the principles of Fellowship which were enjoined by the Lambeth Con- ference. It was wise of the Life and Liberty leaders not to rest content with having inspired and secured the passing of the Enabling Act which confers powers of self- government upon the Church. After all, it is the spirit which maketh alive, and although the Enabling Act provides machinery of which a great many people approve, it remains true that machinery does not make religion. The object of the popular Life and Liberty Meetings at Queen's Hall which have been a feature of London life during the week was " to disseminate the message of the fellowship of man with God and of man with man, and so to carry into action the courageous pronouncement issued by the leaders of the Church at Lambeth." The Life and Liberty Council have expressed their opinion that the Lambeth message " was more full of hope than any state- ment of thinker or politician since the armistice of 1918." The means of fellowship recognized as the most important by the Life and Liberty Movement are : (1) The League of Nations. (2) Social and Industrial Peace. (3) Christian Reunion. The Life and Liberty Movement is truly a vitamin in the body of the Church. Nothing quite like these Queen's Hall meetings has been seen before, and they are bound to leave their mark, especially as they are to be followed by similar meetings throughout the country.
We cannot describe the meetings at length, but let us take a point or two from the meetings of Monday and Tuesday. The discussion took the form of debates. The opening speaker was described as a " challenger," and other speakers, so far as they felt justified in doing so, said anything that might fairly be said in defence of the Church's record. On Monday the subject was " Fellowship between the Churches," which of course implies reunion. We have never ourselves believed in either the possibility or the desirability - of reunion under any very rigid scheme. Provided that there is co-operation and not merely mutual tolerance but mutual respect and mutual recognition, it-seems to us that there is plenty of room for diversity inside in a homogeneous frame-work of the Churches. Differences connote con- viction and sincerity ; and such a thing might be con- ceivable as a tranquil and lethargic union which would be much worse for religion than the rivalry of the sects which it displaced. The Archbishop of York in his speech on Monday, although some newspapers have exonerated his despondency—he was not really despondent—admitted that the Lambeth proposal that Nonconformist ministers should accept Anglican Orders was a real difficulty in the way of reunion. That was bound to be so when Lambeth in effect says to the Nonconformist ministry, " Although there is something in your orders and we respect you and have something to learn from you, Anglican Orders are nevertheless some- 70 per cent. better than yours ; and while clergymen of the Church of England will accept permission from you to minister in your churches, we must ask you to accept episcopal ordination before you can minister in ours." Principal Selbie was very wise in his appeal for a gradual reunion which would not be by any means the same thing as a kind of half-hearted approach of the various churches to one another. He told an illuminating anecdote of a husband and wife who had quarrelled and who, sitting by their fireside, determined to make a fresh start. " Why live this cat-and-dog life f " said the wife. " Why, even cats and dogs can get on together," she added, pointing to their cat and dog sleeping peacefully together on the hearthrug. " Yes," replied the husband, " but think what would happen if you tied them together." The fact is that in all schemes of reunion, whether they be schemes for uniting nations or schemes for uniting churches, there is a tendency for people to overreach themselves by ambition. It is extremely disagreeable even to hint that what is most desirable for its own sake may be defeated by the very excellence of the intention, but so it is.
One of the most important things, and it is a thing which we can make sure of at once, is that the Church of England should not repel from her altars men and women of other Christian communions. Surely there is not so much religion that we can afford to snub and discourage those who want to practise it I Moreover, though we must not go into this subject again, there is no law which justifies the refusal to administer the Holy Communion in the Church of England to Nonconformists except on the ground of notorious evil living. We are very glad to think that in the debates of the Church National Assembly last week the tendency was to remove tests and prohibitions rather than to assert or invent them. For example, it was agreed during the discussion of the measure conferring powers upon the Parochial Church Councils that the election of Churchwardens should be conducted by the Vestry and Parochial Councils sitting together. This plan for all practical purposes leaves the old conditions unaltered. The Bishop of Durham rightly pointed out that though the matter might seem to be a small one, it was really important, as the. Churchwardens under Vestry election do represent the parishioners without distinction of creed, and the arrangement thus maintains the conception of a National Church. A churchwarden still need not be a Churchman. One of the few good things which came out of the war was the tolerance it implanted in many of the younger clergy of the Church of England. However strong and deep their opinions about the proper exclusiveness of the Church may have been before, they came to see that, after all, the smaller interest must give way to the larger, and that it would be monstrous that men who had accepted any religious ministrations they could find when under fire in the trenches should be taught at home to regard men of other com- munions as heretics and religious aliens. The Queen's Hall meeting of Tuesday was of particular interest because the subject for discussion was the highly controversial one of the attitude of the Church towards industrial problems. Mr. Bevin, " the Dockers K.C.," Poured forth a challenge which was something like " the Great Defiance " and was worthy of Elijah Pog,ram himself. He said that in every endeavour of Labour he and his friends found it necessary to write down the Church of England as an enemy from the beginning. He also denounced the association of the Church with war and challenged the representatives of the Church to justify the war with Germany. He had been filled with horror at the spectacle of guns in churches and of guns being blessed by Bishops. Mr. Bevin's passionate challenge served its purpose admirably, as it . gave other speakers plenty to answer, but the present writer cannot honestly say that he was impressed by Mr. Bevin's reason- ing. After speaking for two or three minutes Mr. Bevin had worked himself up into a state of passion or ecstasy— a true case of standing outside himself as the Greeks understood it—which was probably fatal to thought. When a man is in this condition an explanation of the emotions which animate him must be pathological rather than intellectual. Mr. Bevin's cure for the failure of the Church was that she should " fight for the rights and freedom of the people "—in other words, ally herself to the Labour Party. " Freedom " meant freedom from wage-slavery, that is from Capitalism.
If such an alliance should ever come the Church of England would. be dead in a year or two. The greatest beauty and the most wonderful virtue of Christianity is that it is an inspiration for the soul and for conduct which never descends to maxims or codes. It is the relativity of Christianity which has made it and will make it adaptable to all the ages. Islam is precisely the opposite. It applied itself verbally, as it were, to an existing condition of gs, and it cannot be fairly or usefully applied to other con- ditions. Mr. Bevin's ideas, logically carried out, would require the Church to declare that the bricklayer is justified in laying three or four hundred bricks a day when he might easily lay a thousand, and that the Building Unions are justified in excluding the ex-Service men. As regards Christianity and war, Mr. Bevin did not answer the question—which possibly did not present itself to him— whether it is a greater evil to fight than to •put up with intolerable wrong. As we read the Now Testament, Christ considered that great wrong should not be tolerated even though the wrong could be defeated only by force. Of course, if all nations conducted their policy in a Christian- like spirit there would be no European wars. That goes without saying. Unfortunately, Mr. Bevin did not meet the real point, but preferred to put himself in the position of seeming to blame those who in defence of the weak— Mr. Bevin's whole plea was for the rights of the weak— submitted their bodies to the shells of Germany and now lie under the sod of Flanders and France, and to praise those who either denounced the war or were careful to take no part in it. Nevertheless, all who were present were grateful to Mr. Bevin for his galvanizing provocation. Moreover, he has a jolly power of being able to laugh when he is the object of an effective sally, and that power in the end is likely to save any man from fanaticism. Mr. Studdert-Kennedy, the Chaplain known to the troops as " Woodbine Willie," said true things when •he remarked that class hatred is always unchristian, that the manual worker has no monopoly of virtue, and that the gathering of power into the hands of a single class is tyranny by whatever name it may be called. If the Life and Liberty Movement can go on like this we hope that its " Chapter Two " will give way to Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on. It is impossible that men and women who have talked over their opinions in public debate, who have faced the bitter controversies of the movement, and who have been encouraged to speak bluntly and candidly what is in their hearts, should be uninfluenced by those discussions when they return to their ordinary work. New light has been cast on unexpected places ; humanity and sincerity have been found where they were not suspected to exist. Perhaps among no other nation in the world could fundamental differences, cutting right down into the soul of man, be canvassed with so much restraint and good temper. The Life and Liberty meetings so far have been a magnificent success. Before they come to an end they will have helped the whole nation.
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