Free Churches and the Future
Congregationalism in England, 1662-1962. By R. Tudur Jones. (Independent Press, 63s.) A Future for the Free Churches? By Christopher Driver. (S.C.M. Press, 7s. 6d.)
THE author of a recent book on the English People said that the image conjured up in the ind of the average Englishman by the words `the Nonconformist churches' was that of an angry and self-righteous father turning his errant daughter and baby out into the snow. Outrage-
o misleading as that picture may be, it is a reminder that, as a group of institutions, these churches often appear unattractive. Yet a large Proportion of the population of this country. especially if you trace the history of families back a generation or two, has some connection With one or other of the Free Churches and u chapels remain as -familiar a part of the dad n landscape of England as the local cinemas Pubs. Indeed, if we consider the ordinary. forY et°-day life of most communities, as reflected. xamPle, in reports in local newspapers, it is surprising how much of it continues to have some relation to Free Churches and related or- ganisations. It is, perhaps, an indication of the prejudiced and impressionistic character of the social observation even of our exponents of `popular culture' that they often fail to see this. These two new books may help to dispel ignor- ance, although Dr. Jones's history is so large and expensive as to daunt many readers. It is, how- ever, a very readable and competent account of the life of the most characteristic of the English Free .Churches over the last 300 years, deficient chiefly in being too narrowly domestic in its point of view. The book by Christopher Driver is a much more manageable and more lively piece of work. The author is not only an active Congregationalist but also one of the ablest younger members of the Guardian staff, and be has produced a book which is as full of up-to- date social observation as it is of independent Christian judgment.
The picture it presents of the Free Churches at present is not a cheerful one. They are unfaithful to their best traditions, especially in relation to education, and they are not showing themselves ready to assimilate the best of the modern world. There is little radicalism left in them and they misunderstand, almost as much as the world out- side them, what classical Puritanism was all about. Mr. Driver has a great deal of fun with current confusions among the apparently educated about what Puritanism means. He dwells on the para- dox that all English intellectuals of 'progressive' outlook, except for a minority influenced by Dr. Leavis, sneer automatically at 'Puritanism' and yet admire the classical Puritan virtues. We might add that they often display the Puritan vices, especially a tendency to self-righteousness and excessive introspection. Mr. Driver observes shrewdly that the Free Churches today are sub- Puritan in a Christian way, whereas much of the life of the community in general remains Puritan in a sub-Christian way.
Mr. Driver writes as a committed Free Church- man, with particular reference to the Congrega- tional churches he knows best. It is characteristic of the members of these churches that they should be ruthlessly self-critical. Because of this, his book may serve unwittingly to lead outsiders to suppose that Free Churches have as little future as they are already disposed to believe. This would be a mistake. These churches cer- tainly have plenty of formidable problems. They have many difficult adjustments to make if they are to function adequately in a mobile, tech- nologically-dominated society, and they are not well-equipped to make them, while they are not blessed with Church Commissioners to smooth their path. The areas of their traditional strength, Wales and parts of the North, are not in the van of social and economic expansion in these days, and in these places they escape suffering the characteristic malaise of declining communities only by great spiritual effort. There is no longer any need for them to perform the social role, as centres of anti-establishment culture, which made a large contribution to their institutional pros- perity in the nineteenth century. Yet perhaps Mr. Driver under-estimates some of the positive elements in the present situation. Free Churches continue to prosper in the newer suburban neighbourhoods and, while they need to be active in many other areas of life beside if they are effectively to influence the modern world, these are the places today where the most representative sections of the community are to be found. And members of Free Churches are in a peculiarly strong position to benefit from the greatly expanded educational opportunities which modern society provides. Their future role may well be, as Mr. Driver envisages, that of junior partners in a new church establishment rather than as effective rivals of the Church of England but, as such, they still have a great deal to offer. Mr. Driver may be a little unkind in saying that the Church of England, with the field left to itself, 'would become a huge bureaucratic juggernaut, managed by the uninspired for the uninformed,' but it would certainly do a much worse job without the constructive co-operation of Free Churchmen.
What does remain a difficult question is where any revival of Christian radicalism is to be looked for in England today. Private Eye reminded us in the Christmas number of this paper that the simulation of 'angry' attitudes is no way of reaching true radicalism. At the same time, few Christians can justifiably claim that our society is now so well-founded that radicalism is no longer necessary. Although the average Free Church congregation is still likely to be more liberal in outlook than its Anglican or Roman Catholic counterpart, the Free Churches as they exist show little sign of generating a new radical- ism. It is hard, however, to see how any genuine Christian radicalism can be reborn in modern England which does not have that awareness of the authority of God's truth and of the freedom which issues in responsibility and the belief that the new way is likely to be better than the old which the Free Churches have striven to express. These cannot be expressed today by any church in isolation either from other churches or from the general life of society. But they cannot be expressed either by those who have cut them- selves off from the faith of the New Testament and the Protestant Reformation.
DANIEL JENK INS
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