The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Religion
The War and Unity: Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918
Christian sociology; Christian union; Social change; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
In England we hardly saw these things. The population was large enough
and indifferent enough to God to provide room for the activities of all.
The indifference indeed seemed to be growing. We did not stop to think
whether disgust at continuous controversy had not done much to cause
that indifference--how far our divisions simply manufactured scepticism
as to there being any religious truth--whether the obvious lovelessness
of such conditions was likely to recommend the religion of Love--whether
this disparate chaos was likely to be a field in which the Lord, who
designed and founded one brotherhood of believers, could work or give
His grace to the uttermost. No, the Christianity of our Christians has
tended to be a thin individual thing, with interests scarcely extended
beyond its own local congregation, which is bad enough; or still worse,
in our towns, content to wander from congregation to congregation,
owning no discipline or loyalty at all.
And yet in the same breath as we say, "I believe in God," we also say,
most of us, "I believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church." It is a
crowning mercy that we do say it; that we do bear witness so outright to
the state of sin in which we dwell; the clause does keep the mind of
Christ and our own duty before us, of establishing as the first, perhaps
the only hope of this sin-stained, war-stained earth, the brotherhood of
believers which shall be one.
Then came the war, and in many ways the war, which has in every
direction cleared vision, and both deepened and simplified thought, has
brought home to every Christian both the disaster of disunion, and the
imperative need of attempting unity.
You will expect me to give some account of the reaction of the chaplains
and the Church in France to this conviction. Perhaps I should make clear
my own position. Folk probably term me an "advanced High Churchman." I
should call myself "a Catholic"--an English Catholic, if you like--, at
any rate, one who cannot fairly be accused of ignorance of the details
and depths of our divisions; nor of underestimating their real
importance.
The priests who went out as Chaplains to the Forces had an experience
somewhat similar to that of colonial or missionary priests--they
exercised their ministry under totally new conditions, and in a new
atmosphere. So did the Roman Catholics, Nonconformists, and
Presbyterians, but of course I do not speak for them in what follows.
But all the Church of England padres--high, low, broad--tell exactly the
same tale of their experience; between them there has been no division;
they have worked together in perfect harmony and keenness, largely
appropriating each other's methods. In a word, they have discovered how
false and artificial is the partisan atmosphere of home religion; and
when they return, will find it hard to tolerate any continuance of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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