THE ARCHBISHOP'S APPEAL
THE address broadcast by the Archbishop of Canterbury from Lambeth Palace on Sunday evening had been given unusual publicity in advance. It was no isolated utterance, but designed to herald a considered campaign, in which both the Church of England and the Free Churches will take part, having for its aim the recall of the people of this country to religious practices and beliefs from which they have drifted, and to moral standards which they have largely abandoned. Few will question the need for such a summons, nor the right and the duty Of " the chief officer of the Church of England " to sound it. The Archbishop is right in saying there has been a drift from religion ; he is right in saying that in spite of that there are genuine religious and moral instincts in the common heart ; whether he is equally right in holding that the general interest in religion is " perhaps more widespread than ever before " is less certain ; the statement is not to be fully reconciled with the declaration made a few sentences earlier, that God is not so much denied as crowded out. A people that has forgotten God is not a people more interested in religion than ever before.'
But Whatever the starting-point, the goal is clear. Dr. Lang is appealing for the acceptance of no abstract philosophy, nor even for a return to a religion no further defined than in that single word. He is the prophet of a particular religion, world-wide in its appeal, inexorable-in its claims oil an individual or a people. He calls for a return not merely to the old moral standards but to the old Christian standards. His recall to religion he defines as " a summons to re-found our life, personal and national, on the fear of God, on the revelation of Himself, of His will and purpose for the human race, in Jesus Christ, on the standards of human conduct which Jesus Christ has set." Such words read reasonably. They arc a natural appeal to fall from the lips of any Christian spokesman. They hold the attention without par- ticularly arresting it. And it is probable that the vast majority of the Archbishop's hearers on Sunday regarded them as unexceptionable pulpit phraseology. It is certain that the speaker did not so regard them. Nor can any man who, to the fleeting impression they made upon his car, adds the reflections to which he is inevitably prompted as he sees them in print before his eyes. What is our life, personal and national, to be, if the controlling force in either case is to be the standards of human conduct which Jesus Christ has set ? That is the searching question which the Primate put on Sunday—and did not answer. He did well to put it ; he did well, perhaps, to leave. his hearers in the first instance to answer it for themselves. But the religious leaders, laymen as well as cleric, if they associate themselves with that tremendous challenge, arc under a compelling obliga- tion to those they seek to lead to show what in terms of personal and national conduct a response to their leadership involves.
Their task is one that calls in equal measure for wisdom and for courage. It is not for them to dictate how the lives of their fellow-citizens, or the larger life of the nation, should be ordered. There is that in every man, or may be, which, if he grants it free expression, will shape the broad purposes of his life aright. But " the standards of human conduct which Jesus Christ has set " are not so simple to define even for the individual, much less for a nation moving and acting in a world of nations whose standards n►ay be other than its own. In this sphere fervour, however disinterested, is not enough. The brain must be called in to reinforce the heart. There is need of conference, consultation, discussion, a common exploration of possibilities perhaps never adequately considered before. One endeavour of that kind is to be made this summer at Oxford when a conference, long and carefully prepared for in many countries, on Church, Com- munity and State assembles there. It will face, as anyone who recognises the force of the Archbishop of Canterbury's words must face, the problem of what a society conditioned by Christian standards would be and how it would differ from the society in which we live today. That is in part an intellectual and in part a spiritual task, but it may take those who shoulder it into strange places. For the dis- covery of the right way is purposeless unless the resolve exists to follow it wherever it may lead.
There lies the heart of the Christian challenge. For Christianity is a religion not of might and triumph but of dedication and sacrifice. Its values are not the values of common life, and men and nations who hear the summons back to Christian standards may be called on to surrender much that they take for granted today as among the unquestioned essen- tials of existence. The Dean of St. Paul's, speaking two days before the Archbishop, dwelt like him On a return to forsaken standards, and called for a revival of the revolutionary note of early Christianity, a religion ready to put down the mighty from their seat and to exalt the humble and meek. Those are not meaningless words. They may mean distil rb- ingly much. If the return to Christian standards is to be genuine, if the endeavour to discover the will of God for this generation is sincere, many things in the life of the nation may have to be altered. Are we ready, if need be, to alter them ? If Christian standards and the methods by which mining dividends are earned in various British dependencies are found to clash, which is to be accommodated to the other ? It is axiomatic of Christianity that it may demand heavy sacrifices of individuals ; is the demand to be recognised in the case of nations . or of Empires ? Is there a Christian Imperialism ? If so, is it the same as, or other than, the Imperialism which lacks a qualifying adjective ? Where our relations with native races can be shown to partake of exploitation rather than trusteeship, are we prepared to change them ? And, if so, will the community, as a Christian community, bear the cost ?
The Archbishop's appeal for a return to religion may be answered or rejected. But if it is answered, let it be well understood what the answer involves. It may well mean a new austerity, the shedding of pretences and extravagances and ostentations and luxuries, the return to a simplicity which will level, or materially lower, the barriers of class and wealth. It will mean a new readiness on the part of the whole community to share the burdens of the children, of the sick, the aged, the unemployed, and to regard such taxation as that necessitates as a form of ordered charity in which each man contributes not of compulsion (though compulsion there must be), but ungrudgingly according to his means. It means remoulding society ; it means presenting to the Nazi State and the Fascist State and the Communist State the challenge of a Christian State—a challenge resting not on might or power, but on the demonstration of a higher and better conception of life.
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