YOUTH AND A COMPROMISE RELIGION
By E. B. CASTLES
ITN his article on " Religion and Youth " in last week's Spectator, Mr. Peter Winckworth very truly says that a sub-Christian compromise is more likely to deter this generation from responding to the Primate's Recall to Religion than any demands it may make on their comfort. Most close observers would agree that the young people who have left school during the last few years are the best generations since the War. They have little of that pitiful cynicism which characterised the immediately post-War generations ; and they have none of that pre-War ignorance of current affairs that received so rude a shock in 1914. They are intensely conscious of the world around them, of its troubles, its dangers and opportunities ; indeed this interest in society, national and international, is so urgent that they are in danger of neglecting pure learning in their desire to keep pace with the rush of contemporary change.
The social thinking of these young people has in it not only a ruthlessness which renders them less careful of dis- turbing results than their elders but also a religious quality which captures their allegiance in a way which was once the preserve of the religious revival. But this fervour is not directed to religious ends ; it is often anti-religious in its outward manifestations, it is always opposed to institu- tional religion, and it usually confuses the Christian gospel with the institutions which represent it. This is not a sensible thing to do, but it is an error for which it is not hard to find excuse. And so, at a time when there are possibly more seriously-minded young people in school, university and workshop than at any time during the century, the Primate issues a Recall to Religion to which the vast majority of those young people will be indifferent.
The reason is not far to seek. It is not that this generation remains in stiff-necked opposition to a noble appeal, nor that they are living in comfortable indifference to the highest needs of life ; it is because they do not see organised Christianity thinking ahead of the accepted social and political practice of the day. They simplify the issue too easily, no doubt, but to them the issue is a simple one. They see the world in the grip of two great evils—poverty and war. They are perfectly clear that nothing is more im- portant than their abolition, and they are prepared to use drastic means to eradicate them—even a surgical operation. It is surely nothing but a good thing that in 1937 there are so many young people in this country who are clear that, whatever they don't believe, they do believe that they have in the eradication of war and poverty a tremendous call to duty. They doubt the existence of God, they doubt the efficacy of prayer, they doubt the validity of the capitalist
'Mr. Castle is Headmaster of Leighton Park School, Reading.
system, they are indifferent to the promise of a next world ; but they are solidly united in their will to make this world a better one.
Far more than they know, their ideals of justice and peace are a product of the Christian tradition ; but when they look for leadership they do not find it in the organised Christian Church. Instead they find confusion, indifference and even opposition. I am not so much concerned to assess the justice of their position, certainly not to defend the arrogance with which they not infrequently maintain it, but rather to see the picture as they see it. Nor am I referring specifically to the Anglican Church ; but no better example of the compromise that repels them could be given than in the debates in the recent Church Assembly. Here they were invited to accept the consistency of the Dean of Winchester's declaration that " the elemental impulses of pride, of fear and of selfishness which sweep through the human heart, are more potent than anything else in the cause of war," with Dr. Temple's assertion that " it can be a Christian duty to kill," that " only when the reign of law has been established will it be possible to go forward to the still higher claims of the gospel "—a declaration that received applause from the Assembly.
It is not surprising that amid such confusion the Dean was led to doubt " whether the Church had any better contribution to make to peace than through its ordinary pastoral and evangelical work." But it is a deVastating admission to make, and one which will chill the hearts of thousands of young people who are waiting for a lead. It is the sort of statement that is true but which ought not to be true. How can young people see in it anything but retreat from the most pressing problem the Christian Church in its social aspect has ever had to face ? Throughout the whole debate the Church identified its interests with those of the civil government, and to such an extent that the younger generation may well see an answer there to the cause of the Church's timidity.
It is this refusal of the Church to be a crusading Church which lies at the bottom of youth's refusal to accept its guidance. In spite of the gospel's insistence on righteousness now, the Church asks us to postpone the exercise of forgiveness till there is nothing to forgive, and to use the method of love when armed force has rid the world of hatred. There is no note of prophecy in the Church. If the bishops are to get at the mind and soul of contemporary youth they must demand of them more than acquiescence in an established order ; if they are afraid of Marx they must be prepared to do by other means what the followers of Marx are already doing in their peculiar way. A young man recently said to me after reading the Recall to Religion : " the Archbishop- irsi a slap at the ' poison ' of godlessness in Russia, but the godless Russians are tackling poverty as I've seen no bishop tackle it."
It may be difficult for those whose education and associations have intimately allied them with the State in a very special way to think out afresh the implications of the religion they profess. Their thinking is bound to be coloured by this peculiar relationship, and the special responsibilities attached to it are apt to deter them from radical change. But we cannot afford to deny that Christianity is a drastic medicine. More- over, these two sores of poverty and war are the ideal material for the Christian method to work upon. As far as poverty is concerned that method involves a condemnation, root and branch, of every obstacle to the common enjoyment of the world's wealth. The Church's duty in regard to war is to preach that methods of hatred and violence will re-create the evils they hope to uproot. And the extent of the Christian Church's persistence along these lines must be such as will test its faith in Christ's observation that we may have to lose our life if we are to save it. The German Confessional Church has revived its almost dead body by a quiet refusal to be crushed by the most ruthless oppression in Europe. The English Church may save its soul by refusing to teach any but the methods of love practised by its -Founder. It was a tragic moment when, in a vast assembly of English men and women at the Albert Hall last autumn, Canon Sheppard was forced to admit that if the world was rid of war his own Church could never claim to have conferred the blessing. And it will. be a tragic moment in Christian history if a pagan dictatorship of one of the most backward peoples in Europe is regarded as the State which has most effectively solved the problem of poverty. These are a few of the demands that the Church will have to meet if it is to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of youth.
A German Christian told me the other day that he believed the Nazi revolution could just as well have been a Christian revolution, that it was a tremendous explosion in response to an offer of leadership. The mild agnosticism of English youth, its impatience with the patchwork method of social improvement, its widespread support either of pacifism or of the Communist position, are manifestations of a fundamen- tally religious nature. Organised Christianity can choose to neglect this force or to lead it. If the latter way is chosen only a radical change in outlook among its leaders will capture a vast reservoir of willing energy for the service of the Kingdom of God.
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