CHRISTIANITY AND THE TOTALITARIAN STATE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I have read and re-read Mr. A. H. T. Clarke's letter in your issue of July 22nd, hoping that it might be an instance of over- subtle irony, but I was forced in the end to conclude—to my horror—that he believes what he writes.
He asks : what are the facts ? If he really wishes to know, he can soon find out, by reading first, the book that the Bishop of Durham was reviewing—The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Germany, by the Dean of Chichester—and secondly, Searchlight on Spain, by the Duchess of Atholl.
To take two points. First, his astounding statement, " So strongly is Hitler Christian that he has sent 6,000 Germans to help Franco in Spain." A more gorgeous piece of unconscious irony I have never read, for in the Dean of Chichester's book he will find (page 162) that Hitler is a self-confessed pagan ; while in Searchlight on Spain he will read how this " defender of the Faith " caused the merciless bombing of the defenceless town of Guernica, in the Christian and Catholic Basque Pro- vince. It has surely been sufficiently proved by now that the Spanish Government is not, and never has been, Communist nor atheist. There have certainly been spontaneous popular outbursts against a corrupt and reactionary ecclesiasticism ; but in the Basque country, where the priests were devoted to the people, there was no " persecution " of religion, while elsewhere in Government territory, Protestant congregations and pastors have gone unharmed.
Secondly, it is hard that the Bishop of Durham should be taunted with the Erastianism of the Church of England since he has worked unceasingly for the abolition of State interference in ecclesiastical matters.—Yours faithfully, G. B. Timms, Assistant Priest, St. Bartholomew's, Reading.
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