Politics
From the Harvey Road
Thanks to the work of Dr Edward Norman, the Dean of Peterhouse, we now know that most of the pro- nouncements of modern western churches on political and economic subjects amount to little more than 'secular moralising'. Dr Norman's point was an easy one to make, but it needed making, and it needed to be demonstrated with his flair. The argument becomes more difficult when people try to define the precise limits of the churches' competence in these matters. Dr Norman's suggestion in his Reith Lectures that the role of the church was simply to offer other-worldly spiritual comfort was not very satisfactory.
But one can take Dr Norman's thesis a little further without floundering about in the deep waters of theology. One can ask whether the secular moralising, taken as such, is any good. For there is a long and honourable history of clergymen writing well on subjects which are not obviously religious. Clergymen, at least in the tradi- tion of the Church of England, are suppos- ed to be educated people. Many of them have, or had, the leisure to advance public knowledge of archaeology, of classical verse, of ornithology etc. Probably the clergymen of our time who have produced the greatest happiness of the greatest number are the late W. Keble Martin, author of The Concise British Flora, and the Revd W. Awdry, author of Thomas The Tank Engine and many similar volumes. One would not so much mind being told the latest on Namibia by (say) the British Coun- cil of Churches if such reports contained new information or interesting ideas.
It is a sign that Dr Norman's message has been heard that SPCK, of all publishers, has dared to bring out a collection of essays (The Kindness that Kills, edited by Digby Anderson, £3.95) by economists, sociologists and the like, which considers the pronouncements of churchmen and church organisations on the questions about which the authors know rather a lot. You can read Caroline Cox and John Marks (of Black Paper fame) on the chur- ches and education, Ralph Harris of the In- stitute of Economic Affairs on the un- critical acceptance of the welfare state, Peter Bauer on the 'ecclesiastical economics of the Third World'.
These and the other essays set out suc- cinctly the feebleness, predictability, ig- norance and uncharitableness of so many church productions. The book is an ex- cellent point of reference. But it also sets one to wonder. There are, after all, many things to be said, from many points of view, about such subjects as race, industrial rela-
tions, education spending, the condition of the poor. Why is it that one can predict, with near certainty, the line that will be taken by church working parties, boards, commissions and even individual bishops? Racism in British Society by the Catholic Commission for Racial Justice; The Cuts and the Wounds by the Internal Economy Group of the Thames North Province Church and Socicty Panel (sic extendit gloria mundi); Bias to the Poor by the Bishop of Liverpool — is there anyone, even someone who agrees with the sen- timents of the authors, who really, honest- ly, seizes such works from the bookstalls and plunges into them like Keats into Chap- man's Homer?
There may be a number of explanations of the phenomenon which apply solely to the clergy. The Church of England, in par- ticular, no longer dominates the religious life of the nation, and the nation no longer has such an active religious life. As a result, the Church is more like a sect than it once was, and therefore includes a narrower range of ideas. The decline of the status of the churches, and, to some extent, of their wealth, has produced a decline in the quali- ty of their recruits. Clergymen are less well- educated and less confident figures.
But strictly ecclesiastical explanations are not enough. If the churches are becoming more like sects, one would expect them to be more pious and more hostile to the assumptions of the outside world than when they were more comprehensive. In- stead, they have succeeded in becoming both more marginal and less distinctive. And their leaders have chosen to speak not in a hieratic language set apart from or- dinary usage, but in the terms and tones of current 'serious' discourse. They choose the same subjects — race, the Third World, South Africa, unemployment — and they say the same things.
I do not think that this can be blamed on some sinister left-wing influence. We are in the realms of psychology rather than politics, though we are dealing with a psychological disorder common in politics too. It has to do with a need both to evade pressing issues and obvious truths and yet to appear to be confronting them. Take the subject of race. Church leaders naturally think that it is wrong for people to hate one another on grounds of race. They are happy to call for 'action' to suppress such people. But they are not prepared to take on the complicated arguments about racial and cultural differences which have perplexed people for thousands of years. Nor do they enjoy considering the problems that a politician faces accommodating widespread
prejudices and whole new sets of people. If the bishops had had their way, there would never had been any control of immigration at all. The beauty of this half-alert, half- comatose way of addressing public issues is that it permits incessant activity. If you can go on getting the money from parochial church councils, you can go on forming study groups and producing documents which investigate racism without threat of interruption. You are challenged by your own 'radicalism' to spread your beliefs, and syoocual droerpeerrmitted to do so by an indulgent social In The Kindness that Kills, Robert Miller Keynes:
Roy Harrod, the biographer of ... he [Keynes] was strongly involved
with what I have called the presuPPosi" tions of the Harvey Road. One of these presuppositions may perhaps be sum- marised in the idea that the government of Britain was and could continue to be in the hands of an intellectual sairiosnt.bcracy using the method of
Last weekend, I had cause to reflect on
these words. I was round the corner from the Harvey Road in various buildings of ., Catherine's College, Cambridge, parrMereu by the generous hospitality of the Konigswinter Conference, a venerable an- nual event devoted to the mutual political understanding of Britain and Germany' Keynes's presupposition endures. The in telligent, well-informed people who made up the conference were almost unanirnous in believing that the orthodoxy of their political/intellectual class could and shoula transcend the wishes of voters and the facts of history. They upheld the 'European ideal', and they said that this meant the, eventual political union of the members of the EEC. If one suggested that the British, for one, (would the French or even the Ger- mans really be so different?) would neve o', agree to be governed by a collection e' foreign powers, one was told that ther_ would be no problem if the question weree `correctly presented'. On these falsa premises the conference then constructed brilliant edifice of policy about European security cooperation, common P mes, interlocking conscription and so °I1*, What has happened — perhaps it alwaYai happens — in ecclesiastical and Politicci a circles is that the active spirits have lb° language which conceals simple facts from its practitioners, yet allows them to carry ve talking. The simple facts become repu.s1.,. rogrant to such people and it becomes rude to gal` them. The reality of racial differences is ons such fact; the importance of nation states: another. The strength of the British Parlia- ment ment and the Church of England den from an ability to recognise such facts, snort, is particularly sad to see one
fee owl countrymen Harvey Road.
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