MISSION TO LONDON
By EDWARD HODGKIN
THE sight of a figure in clerical dress standing in Piccadilly holding a cross thrust forward in one hand is unusual enough to attract a crowd. But if the crowd is on its way home after work it will only stay to listen if the priest has something unusual to say. On the evening last week when I saw this scene the crowd seemed to be no more impatient to catch its homeward buses than if the priest had been selling gold watches for half-a- crown, and the only reasonable assumption was that his message was unusual, either in manner or matter. The assumption behind the Mission to London, now drawing near the end of its second and final week, is that for most Londoners even the simplest presentation of Christian doctrine is something unusual.
It is now more than a year since it was decided that London was an area ripe for missionary activity, and once this decision had been made it became necessary to treat the capital very much as if it were a tract of darkest Africa or a Polynesian island. First the district had to be surveyed and sub-divided, then the missionaries had to be chosen and trained, then the con- fidence of the natives had to be won, and finally the attempt had to be made to convert them. It was natural to hope that this might be made easier by the fact that a leaven of converts had existed for a number of years among the population, through whom the approach to the pagan majority might be made.
The Mission has been confined to the diocese of London, which means more or less the urban area north of the Thames as far west as Uxbridge and as far north as Edmonton. This area was divided into 120 districts made up of three or four parishes grouped round the parish church of one of them, and to each of these districts one, or in some cases two, missioners were assigned. In a few cases only a local priest was selected as missioner for his own district ; in all other districts the missioner was a newcomer, often from the North of England or from one of the Anglican orders such as the Community of the Resurrection. The Mission began on May 14th, by which time the missioner had probably paid one or two visits to his new territory, and the programme for the following week was filled with a daily succession of services, meetings and less formal contacts. On May 24th the second part of the Mission began. From this date until May 28th the number of centres was reduced to three—St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Southwark Cathedral—where addresses have been given on the application of Christianity to various contemporary problems by fourteen " specially picked leaders of religious thought " headed by the Archbishop of York.
What has all this meant in practice? It is too early to start making any comprehensive estimates of total attendances at church or of man-hours spent in preaching, and more than doubtful whether there would be any 'taint in doing so. Perhaps the best way of assessing the impact which the Mission has had on London is to take a look at one of the districts ; no district can be called typical, but there have been certain features about the fortnight's activities which were common to all. Here, for example, is one in a residential district of North London—the sort of suburban area which looks at its best in early May, when every garden shows off its lilac and tulips. As a matter of fact this is the sort of area where the habit of church going has been most tenacious, where petrol-rationing has largely curtailed the rival lure of week-end motoring and where the parish is still a known entity and the vicar a friend. Four parishes combined into one district for the Mission, and at the church which became its headquarters there had been a thousand communicants at Easter out of a population of 22,000—which is a remarkably high proportion by urban standards.
Preparation here for the Mission has been going on for a year past. The parish was divided up into ten areas, each under the supervision of laymen whose job it was to visit each house and explain the purpose of the Mission to the residents. Three visits were made, at each of which a letter was handed in—handed in personally, that is to say, not pushed through the letter-box like a circular. These letters were from the Bishop of London, the vicar and the missioner, and each explained the writer's part in the forthcoming activities. The missioner himself came from Yorkshire, and this particular suburb, though not London itself, was new to him. During the week from May 14th there were always two and sometimes three early services a day, a lunch-time service for workers in the district (with an average attendance of about sixty men and women) and an evening service when the attendance was as high as four or five hundred. In addition there were special services for men, for women and for young people, some of which were held in church and some in the open air.
Even this outline of the programme gives little or no indication of what has been achieved. Churches have been full, certainly, and the congregations attentive ; backsliders may have slid a bit forwar the uninterested may have been interested, and the uninformed vv.i at least have been given a clear statement of the obligations an rewards of Christianity. But the results, even on the narrowest basis of counting heads in church, cannot be reckoned except over a course of years, and the ultimate results are not of a sort which can be conveniently reckoned at all. The Mission to London is not strictly comparable to the recent recruiting campaign for the Territorial Army, although some of its more exuberant propaganda may have given the impression that it was. There have, it is true, been cards available which could be signed and handed in, on which the signatory reaffirmed his membership of the Church and corft- mitted himself to certain resolutions of his own choice—church?,, going, almsgiving and so on. But these are not going to be added up for production as evidence of the success of the Mission.
The publicity with which the Mission was introduced has proved to be a double-edged weapon. It was never intended to be more than a very minor adjunct to the campaign, but it has succeeded in stirring up all the overworked arguments about whether the Church should or should not use modern methods of publicity. The result is that the casual reader of the daily Press probably, thinks that the Mission to London has been something of an expensive stunt, trying to draw people into church by circus methods because they won't go of their own accord. This is a pity ; but anyone who, was inveigled into a mission service by the catchpenny question on. the front cover of the Mission magazine See: "Do you know howl lively, how vivid and how exciting the Church of England today, really is ? " would have heard the Christian dialectic presented, without any attempt at easy compromise.
At the end of this month, when a fortnight of intense activity comes to an end and the missioners go back to their own parishes,1 there will be a natural tendency among all those who have been personally concerned in these labours to ask: " What happens next ? ", Will there be another Mission to London in a year or two, or will, other dioceses adopt the idea? Is there any machinery for following up the successes won or for making good the weaknesses revealed?, To these questions there is no set answer. If the Mission had been a recruiting campaign it would be a comparatively simple matter to plan another fortnight with new speakers, new slogans and a brushed-up technique. But it is not strictly speaking a campaign in itself, rather an incident in a prolonged campaign to make Britain a Christian country which began about 135o years ago. It is there- fore pointless to predict the next stages, although since this Mission to London was not the first there has been (two were held towards the end of the nineteenth century), it is reasonable to suppose that it will not be the last.
Certain more or less obvious comments can already be made on she Mission. First, the size and spirit of the congregations have been impressive ; men and women, young and old, rich and poor, have turned up in greater numbers than could ever be accounted for by ordinary curiosity. Secondly, the Church of England, based as it is on the parish, is not easily adapted to the missionary enterprise within its own framework ; it could do with more Franciscans and Dominicans of its own_ Thirdly, even without the extra demands which special occasions such as the Mission put upon it, and the extra work which successful proselytism inevitably entails, the Church is short of staff, short of income and short of helpers. But if it ceases to be short of practising members the other deficiencies will right themselves.
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