A voice in the crowd
C.H. Sisson
The pretence that politics is an affair of conscience is very seductive. It enables those who promote it to think well of themselves. It flatters those who support it, for they are told that they are virtuous too. And whatever the changes in manners, which result in yesterday's scandals being today's respectabilities, people always like to be thought virtuous, it seems, even though they may shrink from any terminology they believe to be old-fashioned.
This is far from being altogether a bad thing, in political terms, for the survival of some form of collective prejudice is essential, for a society to survive — any society. The history of the prejudices now reigning in this country, and beyond, is at least as long as the history of Europe. In their present form these prejudices derive partly from the historical church, partly — and more largely — from post-Christian pagan sources which owe a good deal to ecclesiastical history. It is a commonplace that 'scientific' liberalism has more than a dash of Christianity in it, and that what is called 'humanism' is a post-Christian humanism. This makes the situation of the churches a rather complicated one, when they dabble in public affairs. The weaker heads in the ecclesiastical world are apt to see, in the 'rights' now bandied about so freely everywhere, an expression of what Christianity is 'really' about. More wily and sophisticated persons see a connection which may enable them to interest pagans in the doctrine of the church, which they assert is what the 'rights' are really about. Both are rearguard positions, so far as the historical church is concerned. They are a recognition that the churches are not among the socially or ideologically dominant forces, and that to obtain any sort of hearing in the public world they have to scream aloud — shouting with the best of them, so to speak.
Whether such loud and vulgar talk is possible, without denaturing the message they have to deliver, is for ecclesiastics to determine. If their predecessors spoke more genteely, it is because they were more assured, socially, than can be the case today. 'A gentleman in every parish,' said Coleridge, singing the glories of the English establishment. That is not what we have nowadays nor, if we have, would the parson be listened to on account of such a social status, now discredited. Popes were — and as far as seems plausible, still are — much given to showing kings and other rulers that they should, in the last analysis, take their orders from the see of Peter — a point of view which Dante, and no doubt many others in that 'age of faith' as well as in less faithful ages, found to be a detestable enormity. The claim is merely the extreme example of the church — or its ecclesiastical establishment — keeping its end up with the world.
It is difficult to discuss these subjects without coming near to theological ground which I should wish to avoid and in particular to the whole range of questions about the nature of the church. Anglicans, as usual, have a disarming and ambiguous answer to begin with: 'The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered . . .' (Article XIX), but that stops no one arguing and indeed such arguments can be stopped only by Authority — politically an aberrant notion, at least in our time; the notion of an authority defining itself is utterly unacceptable. Be that as it may, the church which 'keeps its end up' in the world, whether Roman, Orthodox or Protestant, does so by the most human of means. The judge in this matter is the world, which makes no bones about its own authority, however its constituent elements may bicker among themselves as to their share of it. What matters to the world at large is its prejudices, what matters to the political world is its votes. No doubt the Pope's advertising man, Mark McCormack, is bringing fresh enlightenment to the Vatican on these matters. The antics of men in funny hats, or in funny collars, and the degree in which these men pretend to or actually can influence the views of their constitutents, are what matter to the world. The theological subtleties adumbrated in Article XIX are beside the point. And when the authorities of an ecclesiastical institution — whether Papal, Rastafarian or Anglican — speak on a matter of public interest, it matters neither more nor less than the support they can command. So the more long-lived of these institutions tend to take on the social characteristics of the age. The Papacy has been princely and vicious in its time; it now wears an altogether blander look and speaks of rights — a word whose meaning changes with the times. E. J. Delecluse in his Journal for 23 February, 1826, tells how a young Roman who killed a prelate was Ymancipe by Leo XII; he was formally given some extra years (he was only 18) so that he could enjoy the benefits of capital punishment for which the lower age-limit in the Papal State was then 21. Emancipation in this sense has no doubt gone out of fashion in the Vatican.
The point is that a church, whatever its theology, must when it acts on the public scene take on the role of a political institution. The less practical responsibilities of its own it has, in any political field, the more respectable it will look. In the 20th century world, there has been a tendency for churches to confuse playing a sort of game with opinion with the prophetic role which they must be supposed to exercise without violence to their more intimate nature. Anyhow, even a genuine prophecy is only an opinion, when it comes on to the modern political scene. In emitting opinions churches are in some sort playing a political role; they are bodies elbowing around in the state and trying — like how many others! — to give events a twist which the unassisted electoral processes have failed to give them. Institutions engaged in such manoeuvres are a normal part of our society. The most notable are the TUC, and its constituent unions, and if general secretaries have an election at some point in their career to give them democratic legitimacy, they may in time come to speak with as much remoteness as any archbishop or cardinal.
With the Christian denominations which are now, so to speak, part of the advisory crowd on the public scene there are also Jews, Moslems, and Hindus to be considered. The Jews have been long established socially, so it is most often as a voice of conscience that they are heard, like the various Christian bodies. Because Moslems and Hindus-as groups, though of course by no means always as individuals, many of whom know all anyone need know about British ways — are still in the process of assimilation, they tend to appear in the public mind rather as racial than a religious groups. As far as they are public voices of conscience, they naturally couch their appeal in the vague generalities of 'world opinion' rather than in the traditional (near-Christian) language of this country. Muslims and Hindus have a delicate problem, they in a manner share with Jews and Roman Catholics; that is the temptation to invoke the help of their brothers across the seas. While no one would wish to suppress this activity entirely, it has its dangers, for those who use it are helping themselves to an extra weapon not available to the ordinary irreligious, or even Protestant, native. This tends to direct attention away from the channels available to all citizens, and to encourage thoughtless people to represent the ordinary difficulties of social life as intolerable oppressions that call for the intervention of outsiders.
There is a danger that groups with what might be called allies of conscience in other countries will exercise a disruptive influence by claiming to be not merely a domestic body seeking political influence but the representatives of a collectivity Which can assail the elected government waving the banner of a foreign power, however discreetly. We are so used to this sort of thing that the impropriety of it, in democratic terms, easily escapes people. Things were clearer on the less crowded stage of the 19th century. The first Roman Catholic peer to take his seat in the House of Lords delivered himself of a defence of drinking the Pope's health before the Queen's. Surely this is a piece of illmanners, or a mild sedition? It was certainly in contradiction with Lord Arundell's main thesis that the Pope's authority was of a wholly different kind from the Queen's.
This is the fourth of six articles on the relations between Church and State.
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