The Church's Message

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 14297, 21 February 1947, Page 4

The Church's Message

THE CHRISTIAN LEADER

BY REV. N. C. OATRIDGE

In a famous phrase of the war Mr Churchill asked: “What sort of a people do they think we are?” Today the question is: “What sort of a people are we likely to become? The prevailing social conditions encourage the type of citizen required. Society-at-war demands a man who knows how to kill and 1 be killed, and will not be too squeamish about it. He must be content with economic security paid for by absolute military discipline, and he must be prepared to sacrifice trutn to propaganda and brotherhood to hatred. Archbishop Temple noted that war called forth superb heroism and endurance but inhibited sexual and business morality. Many did not feel the national effort was weakened by promiscuity or petty larceny. The peak period of the national spirit was reached’ in ’'the months ‘after Dunkirk, but none can say if it expressed a latent quality evoked by the national peril, or if it was the last spirited flash of a civilisation doomed to destruction. Now we are at peace, and a new ikind of citizen is required. The political future is so uncertain that to hazard the character of this new citizen is a shot in the dark. Alex Miller, in “The Christian Significance of Karl Marx,” says it is extremely difficult to get students even to discuss political Issues because ‘‘the future of society is being shaped by influences impersonal or daemonic, so that intelligent decision or democratic action is impossible or meaningless and can have no constructive effect.” After the previous world war men at least knew where they were, even if they didn’t like it. Society then demanded men actuated by the profitmotive, whose first contribution to community was their ambition to get on and make money. If they failed, as about two millions of them did each year, they were a nuisance and given the dole to keep them quiet.

Three Choices

But no return to the old laissezfaire seems possible to-day. The ■recent report of a Commission of the British Council of Churches on “The Era of Atomic Power” sees three choices before us: (1) Secular futurism, of which the keynote is “social engineering”; (2) Withdrawal, that is, to a detached and contemplative life' exemplified by

Aidous Huxley and Gerald Heard, but open only to the few; and (3) Responsible citizenship, which can achieve a synthesis technical power and the life of the spirit. Lenin said that one engineer was worth ten heroes. But Stalin must feel that since 1941 the hero has been reinstated. “The war has deepened Soviet experience,” says the Times correspondent in Moscow, “it has brought about a more serious, a profounder attitude to the eternal values of life, a more sincere respect for human relationships.” Social engineering is not enough. , In this fluid situation it is only natural that people should ask; “Why doesn’t the Church do something?” That is, where is our Christian leadership?

The leader begins by having a disposition to start things. He matures according to his capacity for selfsacrifice. The Christian, leader must,' in addition, believe that all are precious in the sight of God. For him, leadership is not a mystical surrender to the excitement of power, but the humble guidance of people to God. Have we men who can show forth the life of the Spirit in such a way that our “social engineers” feel compelled to take note of it? Or is Christian leadership confined to creating oases of community which amount mostly to a withdrawal?

The World Background

The task of leadership must be seen against the background of world events. Europe to-day is looking to the United States for money and goods to restore her shattered economy. She needs also a new spirit and hope for the future. The role of Britain in the Big Three is often described as that of moral leadership. Can the two great Western democracies together canalise that spirit and that hope? If there is any conflict of ideas between the democratic way of life and the Communism which the prestige of Russia is encouraging in Europe it will not be resolved, by scoring debating points or even by the flourish of superior weapons, but by the essential vitality inherent in competing creeds. The life of the Church is inevitably a foremost factor, in the situation. Its witness lies not in eloquent denunciation but rather in manifesting the power of the Spirit in its members. What can wo , ■ . A ’say about that? We have to remember that Christians in Britain and America have not suffered persecution as have their brethren in German-occupied Europe. In undertaking the responsibility of leadership we shall be reminded that we have not been tried in the fire, and our initiative may be resented and mistrusted as much as it is desired and expected. Dr. W. L. Cperry, writing on “Religion in America,” says that there is a deeper, more serious note in American preaching to-day than between the two wars. But it is to be doubted if it has risen to the power to which Adolf Keller testifies in his “Christian Europe Today.” In the anguish of their suffering, says Keller, many preachers in Central Europe are showing forth Christas Victor with a new conviction and triumph. Even in England, where we have lived closer to the European •tragedy, the uninspired habit of our

churchgciug makes it almost impossible for us to appreciate the Christian ferment in Europe as, for example, it lias recently been described by Mrs Bliss returning from the World Council of Churches in Geneva. The new birth in Christ is being uttered by Berggraev and Niemoller rather than in London or New York. The Hour and the Man There are some who believe that the Hour produces the Man. For Marx the Hour is always the state of the means of production: a leader’s inspiration is derived solely from the economic processes of his time.. For others, the Hour is the sum total of myriads of psychological events, and the leader is the man in whom they find their most forceful outlet. Thus Hitler was a paranoid, representative of the frustration felt by millions of bourgeois Germans after Versailles, Even the Christian idea that Jesus the Son of God came in the fulness of time has been twisted to mean that He was simply the inevitable product of the religious, economic and psychologic situation of His age. Carlyle was vitriolic about the Hour producing the Man, and the truth seems to be that prophets arise not when they are consciously wanted but when they are least expected.

There are two ways of educating for leadership. Either you teach people to acknowledge a supreme, universal Authority called God, or you fix your social goal and then train your children by “vocational selection” to do the particular jobs to which the State calls them. But even if the former method be adopted no guarantee has yet been found against the leader who, in the excitement of power, dethrones God and puts himself in His place. Hitler is not the only statesman who has spoken of himself as the agent of 'God. It may be noted that when men ceased to think of themselves as potential sons of God they transferred their ambition to posterity: they sought “imperishable fame.” Between the two wars there arose a great deal of debunking of famous men, and coincident with this scorn the rise of tyrants and dictators. The modern leader is often the logical conclusion of the flight from God. Christian leaders cannot be made to order. Technique is mostly vanity and self-deception. It is true that many paiish priests find' themselves baffled in dealing with souls: there is a real problem of approach and communication in the modern world. But the essential thing for a Christian leader is to be a follower of Christ. He must love Christ and his fellow men. We need saints, net. technicians. Artifex, writing in the Manchester Guardian, about the late Bishop Winnington-Ingrara, admitted most of the faults that lay at his door. But, he added, he brought more people to Christ than any other-man of his generation Ami the reason? He loved all whom he met. And no syllabus can teach us that.