LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE NATIONAL CHITRCH AND THE EDUCATION BILL.
Fro THE EDITOR OF THE " $PECTATOR."3
. Sur,—The pronouncements of the majority of the Bishops, , and the polemical fervour with which some of their Lordships have thrown themselves into the political "fighting line," have effected a sudden and most serious change in the educational controversy. If the non-Anglican complains that the whole force of the national Church has been placed by the deliberate action of the hierarchy at the disposal of a political party, it is not very easy to disprove his contention. There is no question of reasonable objection to details of a large measure, . or of steady effort by the normal Constitutional machinery to amend it, but of an organised, impassioned, indiscriminating, " unhesitating " opposition to the Bill root and branch. Yet this Bill is the first great measure of a Government returned to power by an overwhelming majority of the electors, and is designed to carry into effect certain definite objects which
were primarily before the country at the Election.
The unification of the educational system, and the establish. meat of complete popular control in all the State schools, not to
say also the abolition of all religious or denominational tests for teachers, were decisively bound by the electors on the Govern- ment as the conditions of the resettlement of the education question. Whatever may be the defects in detail of Mr. Birrelrs Bill, it must be allowed that it is an attempt to carry into law the mandate of the nation, as declared by a General Election, which had something of the character of a Referendum. That the
Unionist Opposition should ignore all this, and take up at the start a hostile attitude, is natural, and, from a partisan stand-
point, may be advantageous, for "it is the business of an Opposi- tion to oppose," and it needs no great penetration to see that, in all the circumstances, the present Government is more vulnerable from the side of education than from any other.
So far everything is normal; but here enters into the situation a factor which is abnormal, and, I cannot but think, most deplor- able. The national Church is urged, almost commanded, by its own hierarchy to adopt the tactics of a Parliamentary Opposition, and, indeed, to unite itself frankly with the actual Opposition, to clothe the party leaders of Unionism with the character of the accredited exponents of Anglican interests, and so far as is possible to place the machinery of the national Church at the service of a single political party. Opposition to Mr. Birrell is frankly iden- tified with the cause of Establishment by the hierarchy itself. The summons to the Bishop of London's meeting in the Albert Hall, for example, is issued from the Church House by the secre- tary of the "Church Committee for Church Defence and Church Instruction." The form of summons contains the interesting information that "the Executive of the Church Defence and Instruction Committee" have "undertaken at the request of the Bishop of London the responsibility for the arrangements of the meeting." All this, of course, is very agreeable to the Unionist politicians, who are naturally smarting under the censure and humiliation of the late Election; and the mass of unthinking zealots, which is the strength and embarrassment of every religious denomination, sees nothing improper or incongruous in this handling of a matter on which it feels strongly; but to calm and considering men, if such remain among us, it will appear a very grave fact that the national Church should have been brought to a frankly partisan position, and on an issue with respect to which the nation feels strongly and has spoken clearly should have been led to an attitude of sharp antagonism to the electorate. If the action of the majority (happily not quite all) of the Bishops were endorsed by the mass of the members of the national Church, it would be hard to avOid raising the issue of the maintenance of the Establishment, and that in a very unfortunate connection. Even such thoroughgoing champions of Establishment as War- burton and Paley allowed that the condition of valid Establish- ment was the general goodwill of the nation. "If the Dissenters from the Establishment become a majority of the people, the Establishment ought to be altered or qualified," wrote Paley. As an earnest advocate of Establishment, I should despair of the future of the national Church if I did not believe that, not- withstanding the apparent unanimity and enthusiasm of the ecclesiastical camp, the general multitude of English folk who are not Dissenters and not secularists, but silent members of the Established Church, are not really in accord with the hierarchy at this juncture.
Take the point to which, Sir, you have recently directed public attention,—the position of the Bible in the scheme of elementary. education. Speaking broadly, but not therefore unfairly, it must be said that the hierarchy is now, so far as it can in the circumstances, repudiating as inconsistent with Anglicanism that "simple Biblical instruction" of an "undenominational" character which has been given for more than a generation with general acceptance in the State schools. Will the English people as a whole endorse that repudiation? I do not believe it. Many circumstances have led me to the conclusion that at the present time the Anglican laity are extremely ill-represented by the professed organs of Anglican opinion. I will limit myself to a single example. There is now in being a "Representative Church Council," a body which includes both the Convocations and Houses of Laymen, a body designed to serve, and claiming to be com- petent to serve, as the organ of an autonomous Church. This Council has behind it the toil and wisdom of the Episcopal Bench; it was referred to in terms of marked approval by his Majesty the King when the Convocation of Canterbury presented an address a few weeks ago. Elections to this Council have been recently held. Here in London, where the diocese contains about three million souls, the poll was headed by Lord Hugh Cecil, who actually secured 206 votes. The voters were presumably repre- sentative of "the qualified persons" who, according to a some- what complicated system, had elected representatives to the Diocesan Conference. These from their number had chosen members for the Representative Council. I do not think any well-informed Churchman of the diocese of London will dispute the statement that the immense majority of parishioners cared nothing whatever about the election to the Diocesan Conference, or about this further election to the Church Council, probably knew nothing about the elections, in any case regarded them with complete indifference. We all admire the lofty character, personal gifts, and uncompromising principles of Lord Hugh Cecil, but his
clear-cut Anglicanism is not that of the majority of London Churchmen, and his right to speak as the exponent of lay opinion in the London diocese is as doubtful in fact as it is absolute in form.
Into the discussion of the Education Bill I will not here enter, for I have said what I have to say elsewhere, but I desire, in the interest of the national Church itself, to protest against the violent "course into which it is being hurried.
Westminster Abbey.
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