The CND at Prayer

By QUINTIN HOGG, MP

Smen the Confessions of St Augustine, the spiritual - Odyssey has become one of the familiar by-ways of Christian literature. New- man's Apologia pro vita sua, Knox's Spiritual Aeneid are both, worthy successors of the great original, providing, the one an introspective and noble, the other a somewhat esoteric and urbane, account of a soul's journey between two fixed points. There are many other examples, most readable, some moving, almost all sincere. But in this field, sincerity is hardly enough.

There is nothing introspective or esoteric about Lewis John Collins, since 1948 Canon and Pre- centor of St Paul's Cathedral, founder of Chris- tian Action, co-founder, and first chairman, of CND.

There is also little enough of two fixed points. Granted that his point of departure, a narrow Tory Churchmanship, certainly already outdated by the time he was educated into it, may fairly be described as fixed. But how about his point of arrival? With Canon Collins, the object of the journey is less the arrival than the joy of travelling. And when one asks where, apart from chasing his own tail in a variety of lavishly illus- trated public poses, he has travelled, one is- driven to confess that, in spite of a wonderful series. of gyrations, during the past eighteen years he has remained precisely where he started. In 1948 he was a priest of the Church of England, and Canon and Precentor of St Paul's, a Crown appointment obtained on the advice of Mr Attlee at the instigation of Sir Stafford Cripps. He is still Canon and Precentor of St Paul's in 1966.

He appears to recognise that this ecclesiastical immobility in a world of change is something of a parodox. His book* begins with the ques- tion: 'Why don't I get out of the Church?' It ends without providing the answer. 'Ought I to leave the Church? The reader must decide. For myself I am content to remain.'

Unhappily, whatever else it contains, the book offers inadequate material for a judgment. Unlike Conrad Noel, Trevor Huddleston, or, I suspect, Michael Scott, Canon Collins is not recognisably Anglican, or even specifically Christian, in his theology. He still believes in God, though even this seems to be to some extent subject to 'agnosticism.' But the divinity, or even the per- fection, of Jesus is not part of his credo. The sinlessness of Christ is one of the Christian FATIlli UNDER Fete. By Canoe L. Jobs Collins. (Leslie Frewin, 40s.)

traditions that modern .man finds exceedingly offensive, and, if we are not to hurt his suscepti- bilities, one that must go.' Christ is a manifesta- tion of the absolute within the setting of this world, though I do not believe he was a perfect manifestation.' Canon Collins joins in the Creeds as he joins in the Magnificat. 'I feel I am sharing in the rich heritage of a past Christian experience, not reciting the dogmas of faith, which I regard as a contradiction in terms.' Fair enough. But what is he doing 'as Canon' in Residence in St Paul's Cathedral? He does not say.

Sometimes this extraordinary equivocation in his theology leads him into strange paths. We know, for instance, or rather we think we know, since he ascribes this view to 'the majority of the clergy' that the resurrection of the body (and therefore the empty tomb) 'may seem to contradict any view of life which takes into account a scientific appraisal of the Universe.' But this knowledge did not prevent him pur- suing an investigation into co-operation with the Roman Catholic Church based on the assumption of 'the common acceptance of the Apostles' creed as a sufficient dogmatic justification for joint Christian social and political action by the two Churches.' He seems surprised that this project, `which went further even than the famous Malines conversations,' broke down.

His political views are even more difficult to disentangle. At the outset, we are told: 'I have little sympathy with those who speak and behave as though it is right or even possible to follow the way of love as revealed in the life, death, and teaching, of Jesus by reliance upon temporal power and by the exploitation of human fears.' The latter point seems difficult to reconcile with the whole ethos of CND, whose formation was based, and whose propaganda relied, so largely on our very human fears of the nuclear bomb. Rejection of 'reliance on temporal power' also seems a little odd on the lips of one who once drew up a programme for the Anglican Church based on 'the common ownership of land and all the major means of production necessary to the well-being of the state.' Occasionally, it is true, he seems to have an inkling that there is possibly something a little lacking in intellectual coherence about his various attitudes. He takes refuge in Walt Whitman. `Do I contradict my- self? Very well then, I contradict myself.'

This is indeed all very well. But what does it add up to? At the, time of Munich, he was par- ticularly 'nauseated' at the 'acclamation given to Neville Chamberlain,' and in the Oriel Common Room was known as 'Fire-eating John.' He be-

came an RAF chaplain in the war. In other words, he was in favour of war with Hitler. He now thinks he was 'probably wrong' and proclaims

himself a 'pacifist.' But this without a word of apology to Chamberlain's shade, nor any account of the way in which he now thinks that Hitler

should have been dealt with. The bombing of Viet- nam and the use of napalm come in for special protests, but only when done by the Americans.

Nasser, who until recently was doing exactly the same things in the Yemen, gets by without even

a sigh of regret. In the same way. South Africa

and Rhodesia are roundly condemned for their tyrannical policies. Nkrumah is but faintly re- proved. But Hungary, Tibet, and the Baltic States, are not so much as mentioned in this context. What kind of consistency is there in this kind of Christian witness?

At the end of the day, one is left with a com- plete scepticism concerning Canon Collins's in- tellectual coherence, either in space or time. He

is hard on Billy Graham for concentrating too much on the individual, on Moral Rearmament ('an unintentional cheat') for its subjectivism, and on the Rev Charles Lowry (who tries to do on the right wing almost exactly the same thing as Christian Action does on the left) for encouraging McCarthyism. But these are para- gons indeed in intellectualism and consistency

compared with Canon Collins himself, who, over thirty years, appears to an outsider to have climbed on to almost every successive left-wing bandvdion, in the great name of Christianity, until it has lost its vogue, and betrays no under- standing whatever, either of his counterparts of the right, or of the basic fallacy which leads them all astray.

This is that the Church is basically a worship- ping society. It is neither of the right, nor of the left. It is concerned equally with the individual, and with the individual in the community. But it is not a means of arriving directly at common political conclusions. There are Christians of all

political persuasions, and of none, all of approxi- mately equal intelligence and sincerity. It is

simply not true that one 'cannot vote Tory [or Socialist for that matter] on the basis that the kind of social or economic patterns fostered by the Conservative [or the Labour] party are con-

sonant with our Christian convictions.' It is neither possible in principle, nor, in a democracy, desirable in practice, to create 'a nation-wide movement, political in effect but non-party,' spon- soring 'a comprehensive Christian political pro- gramme.' But this is precisely what Canon Collins seeks to do.

Of this simple truth, the whole interesting, but unedifying, account of the squabbles and in- trigues. and ultimate disintegration, of the CND movement as originally constituted, and Canon Collins's own successive agreements and disagree- ments 'with Mervyn Stockwood, Michael Scott, and Ambrose Reeves, not less than with two, and perhaps three or four, Archbishops of Canter bury, is no more than a commentary. But to all this Canon Collins is bewilderingly blind. It is simply not sense to jibe at the old Anglican establishment as the 'Tory Party at prayer' and then complain of Attlee's episcopal appointments as insufficiently Socialist. Nor is it possible with any degree of intellectual respectability to gird at the 'Establishment' (a phrase underdefined and overworked since Henry Fairlie first coined it for the SPECTATOR) from the safe niche of 'a pulpit in St Paul's which becomes, when CanOn Collins occupies it, little better than a political platform. —to this kind of argument Canon Collins replies, plausibly. enough, in effect: 'Well whit

about torture and slavery? If, as some say, apartheid and nuclear war are indifferent or unclear, surely there are some things which the Christian, as a Christian, must condemn.' Pre- cisely so. But on what arguments? You do not need to be a Christian to condemn torture or slavery, and the arguments for, or against, apar- theid are equally valid for Jews, Communists, or intelligent atheists or agnostics. In other words, politics is about natural justice, and, whatever natural justice may be, it is not the monopoly of Christianity, or Christians. To introduce religious overtones into political discussion is to prostitute religion or to corrupt politics or both. The two important obligations on all Christians, as on members of other world re- ligions, are disinterestedness and good faith. Christianity may help us to achieve one or both. It cannot tell us what will be the answer that either gives.

But there is one thing more which Canon Collins would also do well to recognise. Though the Christian Church (thank goodness) has never achieved a coherent political weltanschauung, it has been strenuously consistent over two thousand years in demanding, as a condition of its fellowship, a certain minimum factual belief concerning the birth, life, crucifixion, resurrec- tion, ascension, and second coming of Jesus of Nazareth. It may have been wrong to do so. But if it has been, it had better shut up shop and give way to a post-Christian humanism. The Abbe Loisy, from whom Canon Collins claims to have derived his present theological approach, was, no doubt, an honourable man. But he was unfrocked, and died unreconciled, precisely be- cause, having lost his faith in them, he preached that the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church could still be taught as mythology, on the basis of their utility, after it had been ascertained that they could no longer be defended as truth.

It may be, as Canon Collins says, that 'agnosticism, a positive, questing, dynamic, and, I hope humble, agnosticism,' is 'an essential con- dition of faith.' But, if so, the faith of which it is a condition is not historical Christianity, and, if it be the faith of the modern clergy of the Church of England, the sooner we turn St Paul's Cathedral into a museum or a concert hall, the better for our integrity.