SIR,—Mr. A. N. M. Jenkins, in your issue of April
29, claims that the religious revival in Cambridge represents a reawakening of the social conscience and of reforming zeal. If this were so, few people would quarrel with it. The burden of the humanists' complaint is that the new believers arc withdraviing themselves from everyday issues, that they stress man's sinfulness as opposed to his potentialities, and are pessimistic about the value of potential and social action.
The heroes of the revival give little guidance in the field which Mr. Jenkins considers the vital one : What has Billy Graham to say about race relations, or Mr. C. S. Lewis about the hydrogen bomb? Mr. John Vaizey is much nearer the truth when he says that 'Christianity has almost always identified itself with the forces of reaction' and that 'much of the good in modern life has been achieved in the teeth of the Church's opposition.'
Of course there is a minority of devoted Christians, like Canon Collins or Dr. Soper, who satisfy Mr. Jenkins's claims, but it is they who arc most sceptical of the value of the present revival, and they know that their true allies are equally devoted agnostic humanists.
Does Mr. Jenkins really believe that one has • to be either Ivan Karamazov or Peter Venkhovensky? Has he never talked to any 'Liberal Humanists'? There are plenty in his college.—Yours faithfully,
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