IS CHRISTIANITY LOSING GROUND ?
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Mr. Kenneth Ingram is so intent on demolishing his own fancies that a protest becomes overdue. When he suggests that the new Christianity, unlike the old, will recognise spiritual and material as an indivisible unity, the answer surely is that the unity is already recognised by the Church in her Sacraments, and in that sacramental view of common things which she tries to encourage. Similarly the notion that the religious and the secular are two separate spheres has long ago been rejected by all Christians who think. Whether the Christianity of the future will wear a more cosmopolitan colour than that of the present is open to doubt. Perhaps the best it can achieve will be a workable compromise between national and international loyalties.
Critics often assume that the Church is wedded to a particular civilisation or order of society. Yet apart from Communism (a rival faith), advocates of every type' of polity may be found in the Church of England, which certainly is no longer, if it ever was, 'the Conservative Party saying its prayers. Equally unreal is the antithesis which pictures religion as pulling us back to the past, in contrast with modern development Which beckons us on to the future. Christianity must always look back to the facts on which it is based, - back likewise to the examples of martyrs and the experiences of saints. Inspired by' that backward gaze, the Christian, eager as any revolu- tionist, looks also 'onward to the redemption of society.—
Your obedient servant, E. J. BOLUS. The Rectory, Monk Sherborne, Basingstoke.
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