This raises the question of theology and politics. The nearest I can get to a settlement of the frontier problem between them is this: that theology teaches us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful, while politics teaches what means are effective. Thus theology tells us that every man ought to have a decent wage. Politics tells by what means this is likely to be attained. Theology tells us which of these means are consistent with justice and charity. On the political question guidance comes not from revelation but from natural prudence, knowledge of complicated facts and ripe experience. If we have these
'Hebrews xiii. 8.
'Sir William H.Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services, Command Paper 6404, Parliamentary Session 1942-43 (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1942). The "Beveridge Report" is a plan for the present social security system in Britain.
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qualifications we may, of course, state our political opinions: but then we must make it quite clear that we are giving our personal judgment and have no command from the Lord. Not many priests have these qualifications. Most political sermons teach the congregation nothing except what newspapers are taken at the rectory.
Our great danger at present is lest the church should continue to practice a merely missionary technique in what has become a missionary situation. A century ago our task was to edify those who had been brought up in the faith: our present task is chiefly to convert and instruct infidels. Great Britain is as much part of the mission field as China. Now if you were sent to the Bantus you would be taught their language and traditions. You need similar teaching about the language and mental habits of your own uneducated and unbelieving fellow countrymen. Many priests are quite ignorant on this subject. What I know about it I have learned from talking in R.A.F.8 camps. They were mostly inhabited by Englishmen and, therefore, some of what I shall say may be irrelevant to the situation in Wales. You will sift out what does not apply.
(1)1 find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about history. I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened two thousand years ago. He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. To us the present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. In his mind the present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called "the old days" - a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armor, etc. wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond the old days comes a picture of "primitive man." He is "science," not "history," and is therefore felt to be much more real than the old days. In other words, the prehistoric is much more believed in than the historic.
(2) He has a distrust (very rational in the state of his knowledge) of ancient texts. Thus a man has sometimes said to me, "These records were written in the days before printing, weren't they? And you haven't got the original bit of paper, have you?
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So what it comes to is that someone wrote something and someone else copied it and someone else copied that and so on. Well, by the time it comes to us, it won't be in the least like the original." This is a difficult objection to deal with because one cannot, there and then, start teaching the whole science of textual criticism. But at this point their real religion (i.e. faith in "science") has come to my aid. The assurance that there is a "science" called "textual criticism" and that its results (not only as regards the New Testament, but as regards ancient texts in general) are generally accepted, will usually be received without objection. (I need hardly point out that the word "text" must not be used, since to your audience it means only "a scriptural quotation.")
(3) A sense of sin is almost totally lacking. Our situation is thus very different from that of the Apostles. The Pagans (and still more the metuentes9) to whom they preached were haunted by a sense of guilt and to them the Gospel was, therefore, "good news." We address people who have been trained to believe that whatever goes wrong in the world is someone else's fault-the capitalists', the government's, the Nazis', the generals', etc. They approach God Himself as His judges. They want to know, not whether they can be acquitted for sin, but whether He can be acquitted for creating such a world.
In attacking this fatal insensibility it is useless to direct attention (a) To sins your audience do not commit, or (b) To things they do, but do not regard as sins. They are usually not drunkards. They are mostly fornicators, but then they do not feel fornication to be wrong. It is, therefore, useless to dwell on either of these subjects. (Now that contraceptives have removed the obviously uncharitable element in fornication I do not myself think we can expect people to recognize it as sin until they have accepted Christianity as a whole.)
I cannot offer you a watertight technique for awakening the sense of sin. I can only say that, in my experience, if one begins from the sin that has been one's own chief problem during the last week, one is very often surprised at the way this shaft goes home. But whatever method we use, our continual effort must be to get their mind away from public affairs and "crime" and bring them down to brass tacks-to the whole
The metuentes or "god-fearers" were a class of Gentiles who worshiped God without submitting to circumcision and the other ceremonial obligations of the Jewish Law. See Psalm cxviii. 4 and Acts. x. 2.
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network of spite, greed, envy, unfairness, and conceit in the lives of "ordinary decent people" like themselves (and ourselves).
(4) We must learn the language of our audience. And let me say at the outset that it is no use at all laying down a priori what the "plain man" does or does not understand. You have to find out by experience. Thus most of us would have supposed that the change from "may truly and indifferently minister justice" to "may truly and impartially"10 made that place easier to the uneducated; but a priest of my acquaintance discovered that his sexton saw no difficulty in indifferently ("It means making no difference between one man and another," he said) but had no idea what impartially meant.
On this question of language the best thing I can do is to make a list of words which are used by the people in a sense different from ours.
ATONEMENT. Does not really exist in a spoken modem English, though it would be recognized as "a religious word." Insofar as it conveys any meaning to the uneducated I think it means compensation. No one word will express to them what Christians mean by atonement: you must paraphrase.
BEING. (Noun) Never means merely "entity" in popular speech. Often it means what we should call a "personal being" (e.g. a man said to me "I believe in the Holy Ghost but I don't think He is a being!").
CATHOLIC means papistical.
CHARITY. Means (a) Alms (b) A "charitable organization" (c) Much more rarely-indulgence (i.e. a "charitable" attitude toward a man is conceived as one that denies or condones his sins, not as one that loves the sinner in spite of them).
CHRISTIAN. Has come to include almost no idea of belief. Usually a vague term of approval. The question "What do you call a Christian?" has been asked of me again and again.
"The first quotation is from the prayer from the "Whole state of Christ's Church" in the service of Holy Communion, Prayer Book (1662). The second is the revised form of that same phrase as found in the 1928 Prayer Book.
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The answer they wish to receive is "A Christian is a decent chap who's unselfish, etc."
CHURCH. Means (a) A sacred building, (b) The clergy. Does not suggest to them the "company of all faithful people."" Generally used in a bad sense. Direct defense of the church is part of our duty; but use of the word church where there is no time to defend it alienates sympathy and should be avoided where possible.
CREATIVE. Now means merely "talented," "original." The idea of creation in the theological sense is absent from their minds.
CREATURE means "beast," "irrational
animal." Such an expression as "We are only creatures" would almost certainly be misunderstood.
CRUCIFIXION, CROSS, etc. Centuries of hymnody and religious cant have so exhausted these words that they now very faintly-if at all-convey the idea of execution by torture. It is better to paraphrase; and, for the same reason, to say flogged for New Testament scourged.12
DOGMA. Used by the people only in a bad sense to mean "unproved assertion delivered in an arrogant manner."
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. In the mouth of an uneducated speaker always means Virgin Birth.
MORALITY means chastity.
PERSONAL. I had argued for at least ten minutes with a man about the existence of a "personal devil" before I discovered that personal meant to him corporeal. I suspect this of being widespread. When they say they don't believe in a "personal" God they may often mean only that they are not anthropomorphists.
POTENTIAL. When used at all is used in an engineering sense: never means "possible."
"A phrase which occurs in the prayer of "Thanksgiving" at the end of the service of Holy Communion.
12Matthew xxvii. 26; Mark xv. 15; John xix. 1.
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PRIMITIVE. Means crude, clumsy, unfinished, inefficient. "Primitive Christianity" would not mean to them at all what it does to you.
SACRIFICE. Has no associations with temple and altar. They are familiar with this word only in the journalistic sense ("The nation must be prepared for heavy sacrifices.").
SPIRITUAL. Means primarily immaterial, incorporeal, but with serious confusions from the Christians uses of irv6ii(ji,a.l3 Hence the idea that whatever is "spiritual" in the sense of "nonsensuous" is somehow better than anything sensuous: e.g., they don't really believe that envy could be as bad as drunkenness.
VULGARITY. Usually means obscenity or "smut." There are bad confusions (and not only in uneducated minds) between: (a) The obscene or lascivious: what is calculated to provoke lust, (b) The indecorous: what offends against good taste or propriety, (c) The vulgar proper: what is socially "low." "Good" people tend to think (b) as sinful as (a) with the result that others feel (a) to be just as innocent as (b).
To conclude-you must translate every bit of your theology into the vernacular. This is very troublesome and it means you can say very little in half an hour, but it is essential. It is also of the greatest service to your own thought. I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one's own meaning. A passage from some theological work for translation into the vernacular ought to be a compulsory paper in every ordination examination.
I turn now to the question of the actual attack. This may be either emotional or intellectual. If I speak only of the intellectual kind, that is not because I undervalue the other but because, not having been given the gifts necessary for carrying it out, I cannot give advice about it. But I wish to say most emphatically that where a speaker has that gift, the direct evangelical appeal of the "Come to Jesus" type can be as overwhelming today as it was a hundred years ago. I have seen it done, preluded by a religious film and accompanied by hymn singing,
"Which means "spirit," as in I Corinthians xiv. 12.
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and with very remarkable effect. I cannot do it: but those who can ought to do it with all their might. I am not sure that the ideal missionary team ought not to consist of one who argues and one who (in the fullest sense of the word) preaches. Put up your arguer first to undermine their intellectual prejudices; then let the evangelist proper launch his appeal. I have seen this done with great success. But here I must concern myself only with the intellectual attack. Non omnia possumus omnes.^
And first, a word of encouragement. Uneducated people are not irrational people. I have found that they will endure, and can follow, quite a lot of sustained argument if you go slowly. Often, indeed, the novelty of it (for they have seldom met it before) delights them.
Do not attempt to water Christianity down. There must be no pretense that you can have it with the supernatural left out. So far as I can see, Christianity is precisely the one religion from which the miraculous cannot be separated. You must frankly argue for supernaturalism from the very outset.
The two popular "difficulties" you will probably have to deal with are these. (1) "Now that we know how huge the universe is and how insignificant the earth, it is ridiculous to believe that the universal God should be specially interested in our concerns." In answer to this you must first correct their error about fact. The insignificance of earth in relation to the universe is not a modem discovery: nearly two thousand years ago Ptolemy (Almagest, bk. 1, ch. v) said that in relation to the distance of the fixed stars earth must be treated as a mathematical point without magnitude. Secondly, you should point out that Christianity says what God has done for man; it doesn't say (because it doesn't know) what He has or has not done in other parts of the universe. Thirdly, you might recall the parable of the one lost sheep.15 If earth has been specially sought by God (which we don't know) that may not imply that it is the most important thing in the universe, but only that it has strayed. Finally, challenge the whole tendency to identify size and importance. Is an elephant more important than a man, or a man's leg than his brain?
(2) "People believed in miracles in the old days because they didn't then know that they were contrary to the Laws of Nature." But they did. If St. Joseph didn't know that a virgin
14"Not all things can we all do," Virgil, Eclogues, bk. VIII, line 63. 15Matthew xviii. 11-14; Luke xv. 4-7.
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birth was contrary to Nature (i.e. if he didn't know the normal origin of babies), why, on discovering his wife's pregnancy, was he "minded to put her away"?16 Obviously, no event would be recorded as a wonder unless the recorders knew the natural order and saw that this was an exception. If people didn't yet know that the sun rose in the east, they wouldn't be even interested in its once rising in the west. They would not record it as a miraculum-nor indeed record it at all. The very idea of "miracle" presupposes knowledge of the Laws of Nature; you can't have the idea of an exception until you have the idea of a rule.
It is very difficult to produce arguments on the popular level for the existence of God. And many of the most popular arguments seem to me invalid. Some of these may be produced in discussion by friendly members of the audience. This raises the whole problem of the "embarrassing supporter." It is brutal (and dangerous) to repel him; it is often dishonest to agree with what he says. I usually try to avoid saying anything about the validity of his argument in itself and reply. "Yes. That may do for you and me. But I'm afraid if we take that line our friend here on my left might say etc. etc."
Fortunately, though very oddly, I have found that people are usually disposed to hear the divinity of our Lord discussed before going into the existence of God. When I began I used, if I were giving two lectures, to devote the first to mere theism; but I soon gave up this method because it seemed to arouse little interest. The number of clear and determined atheists is apparently not very large.
When we come to the Incarnation itself, I usually find that some form of the out Deus aut malus homo" can be used. The majority of them start with the idea of the "great human teacher" who was deified by His superstitious followers. It must be pointed out how very improbable this is among Jews and how different to anything that happened with Plato, Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed. The Lord's own words and claims (of which many are quite ignorant) must be forced home. (The whole case, on a popular level, is very well put indeed in Chesterton's The Everlasting Man.)
Something will usually have to be said about the historicity of the Gospels. You who are trained theologians will be able
"Matthew i. 19.
""Either God or a bad man."
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to do this in ways which I could not. My own line was to say that I was a professional literary critic and I thought I did know the difference b
etween legend and historical writing: that the Gospels were certainly not legends (in one sense they're not good enough): and that if they are not history, then they are realistic prose fiction of a kind which actually never existed before the eighteenth century. Little episodes such as Jesus writing in the dust when they brought Him the woman taken in adultery18 (which have no doctrinal significance at all) are the mark.
One of the great difficulties is to keep before the audience's mind the question of truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity not because it is true but because it is good. And in the discussion they will at every moment try to escape from the issue "true-or false" into stuff about a good society, or morals, or the incomes of bishops, or the Spanish Inquisition, or France, or Poland-or anything whatever. You have to keep forcing them back, and again back, to the real point. Only thus will you be able to undermine (a) Their belief that a certain amount of "religion" is desirable but one mustn't carry it too far. One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important, (b) Their firm disbelief of Article XVHI.19 Of course it should be pointed out that, though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life. And it should (at least in my judgement) be made clear that we are not pronouncing all other religions to be totally false, but rather saying that in Christ whatever is true in all religions is consummated and perfected. But, on the other hand, I think we must attack wherever we meet it the nonsensical idea that mutually exclusive propositions about God can both be true.
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