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English Historical Review
June, 2000
RE:
Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge,
1933-40(*).
Author/s: Philip Williamson
The most prominent lay churchman in Chamberlain's Cabinet, the one
invariably identified by historians as Christian, was Lord Halifax. He
was not, however, the first to offer a substantial Christian
Conservative response to totalitarianism. This came from
Chamberlain's predecessor as prime minister, Stanley Baldwin.
Baldwin also became associated with another indication of Christian
Conservative anxiety and faith. The public figures who from the
mid-1930s became involved with or interested in Buchman's Christian
evangelist movement, the Oxford Group, were remarkable in their
number and eminence: clergymen, sportsmen, trade unionists,
businessmen, academics, military officers, society hostesses, civic
leaders, peers and politicians. In June 1939, 236 MPs of all parties
signed a message of support for Buchman's campaign in the United
States: `There is urgent need to acknowledge the sovereign
authority of God in home and nation, to establish that liberty which
rests upon the Christian responsibility to all one's fellow men, and to
build a national life based on unselfishness, unity and faith'.(1) Among
the most active of these figures was Lord Salisbury. In October 1936
he arranged a weekend meeting at Hatfield House during which
Buchman and his close advisers explained his teachings to a group of
Anglican Cabinet ministers, ex-ministers, imperial proconsuls, peers
and MPs, including Halifax, Cecil, Wolmer, Percy, Lytton, Goschen,
Bernays, Cazalet and Sankey, MacDonald's Lord Chancellor.(2) During
1937 Salisbury gave public support for the Group, and was joined by
the Baptist Cabinet minister Ernest Brown: it was rendering `the
greatest possible service ... to the nations at this critical time'.(3)
Another Hatfield participant and public supporter was Davidson,
Baldwin's close friend, a former Conservative party chairman and until
May 1937 a junior minister. Through Salisbury, Davidson and family
members, Baldwin was drawn into contact with the Group. He
declared himself `profoundly' interested by Salisbury's report of the
Hatfield discussions, and in December 1936 invited Buchman to explain
his work to him at Chequers.(4) Thereafter Group leaders and
activists made persistent efforts to persuade Baldwin -- described by
Buchman as the `Abraham Lincoln of this generation' -- to become in
his political retirement the `authoritative voice in the spiritual rebirth
of the Empire'.(5)
The Oxford Group was controversial, not least in its uncertain
relationship to the churches and in its leader being an enigmatic
American. For leading Conservatives to have been interested in such
an unorthodox movement testifies to their sense that a spiritual crisis
had been reached. Many shared the reservations of the Group's
clerical critics: its lack of theology and institutionalized authority, its
practice of public confession and its emotional style, and its activists'
assumed familiarity with God and often embarrassing earnestness,
naivety and self-satisfaction.(1) They also disliked its importuning and
flattery of themselves and other public figures, and its use of the
names of such figures for its own purposes. Baldwin and Inskip both
withdrew from its Royal Albert Hall meeting in July 1936 when their
intended private attendance was publicized, and Baldwin declined
later invitations.(2) Even so, Christian Conservatives were impressed,
because in several respects the Group appeared to `hold out some
hope of a remedy' for the `present state of the world'. It had
extraordinary success, exceeding that of the churches, in converting
many people and especially the young to active Christian belief and
conduct. It placed great emphasis upon individuals and personal
relationships rather than the state as the source of improvement in
communities and nations. In reaching across denominational, social
and industrial divisions, it appeared to promote social harmony and
promise that `violent antagonism in politics' would be `softened or
swept away'.(3) Although Cecil, at least, remained troubled on the
issue, most were reassured by Buchman's explanations of his
associations with German leaders and of his notorious reported (he
claimed misunderstood) statement in August 1936 -- `I thank heaven
for a man like Adolf Hitler' -- the more easily because, without the
positive emphasis, they sympathized with his qualifying clause, that
Hitler had `built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of
Communism'.(4) The more immediate attractions were, first, that the
Group seemed a vigorous force against the materialism, immorality and
irreligion which these politicians believed to be at the root of
totalitarianism, nazi, fascist and communist. Second, with its reputed
large numbers of supporters in continental European countries and
influence among their statesmen and royalty, it appeared to have
potential as an international movement helping to preserve peace. As
Salisbury, Brown and Davidson wrote in a public letter published by
The Times in August 1937, the Group's success in inspiring `loyalty to
... the spirit and principles of Christ' might with the help of `all the
Churches of Christendom' provide the `effective unifying or
harmonizing principle' -- a `Christian Front' -- needed to overcome
the `disunity of aim and conflict of interest that now disturbed all
human life and relationships' and was `the greatest menace to
modern civilization'.(1) Buchman himself adopted a broader purpose in
May 1938, renaming his movement `Moral Re-Armament', and as the
Czechoslovak crisis developed a series of collective public letters from
prominent sympathizers began to be published in leading newspapers.
This stimulated wider correspondence and comment on the
contribution of Christianity to the solution of national and
international problems which continued through the autumn. The first
public letter came from thirty-three MPs, including Wolmer and sixteen
other Conservatives.(2) The second and most publicized was
organized by Salisbury. Challenging Baldwin to act upon his repeated
call for `spiritual leadership', he wrote that `many of us are terrified
at the crumbling of civilization, ... and ... are convinced that policy,
however skilful and honest, is not sufficient to save us from
catastrophe': it was necessary to tap `the deeper springs of human
motive'.(3) With war apparently imminent in early September 1938,
Baldwin responded by joining Salisbury and his group of eminent
peers, ex-government ministers, retired military chiefs, and academics
in an appeal in The Times -- much reprinted, translated into other
languages and circulated across Europe -- for acceptance of moral
and spiritual rearmament as the fundamental force for peace.
God's Living Spirit calls each nation, like each individual, to its highest
destiny, and breaks down the barriers of fear and greed, of suspicion and
hatred. This same Spirit can transcend conflicting political systems, can
reconcile order and freedom, can rekindle true patriotism, can unite all
citizens in the service of nations, and all nations in the service of
mankind. `Thy Will be done on earth' is not only a prayer for guidance, but
a call to action. For His Will is our Peace.(4)
While Salisbury and Group leaders hoped the letter would be read by
German leaders, Baldwin doubted the likelihood of immediate effects:
`I don't think it can do any good but it is a voice from England to like
minded people in every country'.(5) When broadcasting across North
America in April 1939, however, he used Buchmanite terms for another
pressing purpose. Seeking to counteract those calling for Canadian
and American neutrality in any European war, he spoke of the
Christian as well as political objections to totalitarianism and of the
strength of British resolve: the British people were undergoing not
only a `material rearmament' but also a `spiritual rearmament',
preparing `the defences of body and soul'.(1)
After Baldwin retired as prime minister in May 1937, his role as the
National government's chief public moralist passed to Halifax.(2)
Although he delivered fewer lay sermons than Baldwin, Halifax's
addresses received similar prominence in the press and sold well as
pamphlets, while his speeches as House of Lords spokesman on
foreign affairs from 1935 and as Foreign Secretary from February 1938
displayed unusual sensitivity to their moral aspects. In August 1940 a
selection of his speeches and broadcasts since 1934 was published in
a volume widely noticed as defining the Christian basis of British
policy.(3) He had been moved by the Hatfield House meeting with the
Oxford Group leaders: he `could not doubt that the Holy Spirit had
been among our little company as we worshipped together in the
family chapel'. He remained privately sympathetic towards its
members, and in July 1939 sent a message of support for the Moral
Re-Armament campaign in the United States.(4) But he declined
requests to add his name to the Salisbury, Davidson and Brown
`Christian Front' letter or to accept other public association with the
Group. This was partly its lack of appeal to his own sacramentalism,
and partly ministerial and ecclesiastical caution.(5) But it was also
because the Group could add nothing to his already considerable
authority as a spokesman of lay Christianity. Although a `high'
Anglo-Catholic, he had -- at least since the Great War -- displayed
tolerance and sympathy towards other church opinions and other
denominations; and while no longer occupying active positions in the
church his manifest personal devotion, sense of duty and solidity of
`character', and evident assumption that religion was the true basis
of social life, meant that he commanded `the trust, respect, even
veneration' of many British Christians, and many others as well.(1)
Halifax used this position to address publicly such questions as `Is
England Christian Still?': it was `vitally important [to] recapture for
England & [the] world [al sense of God's presence in the world of men
& of men's responsibility to a paramount power'.(2) He used it also to
justify both British values in general, and (after privately registering
conscientious scruples over the first air rearmament programme)(3)
particular government defence and foreign policies. Like Baldwin,
Halifax believed that in the face of post-war disillusionment,
impatience, intolerance, `false patriotism', belief in short cuts, `quack
remedies' and other causes of totalitarianism, parliamentary
democracy was best defended not so much in terms of its secular
benefits as by affirmation of its moral and spiritual foundations. His
version focused upon a conception of personality, as understood by
reflection upon the moral order. God, it might initially appear, had
made strange arrangements for His government of the world. In
choosing to work for the good of the world through the agency of
men and women and by endowing them with the power of choice and
free will, He had taken the enormous risk that they might misuse this
free will -- as indeed, they had often done, sometimes disastrously.
Insofar as God's patience and willingness to take this risk could be
understood, it seemed `to be taken for one purpose -- to achieve,
through man's right direction of his free will, the fulfilment of human
personality'. It was `against all our experience and ... understanding
of the moral order ... to expect that the way of salvation in our own
difficulties' would be `through surrender of our private will and private
judgement to some outside authority'. Halifax's fundamental and much
reiterated political message was therefore that the `ultimate object
of government' was `the fuller and freer development of human life so
that each person may be enabled to make the most of his or her
personality'. From acceptance of this premise flowed the other
democratic political values, together with those qualities of
individualism and self-help which generated improved material
standards of life.(4)
Yet Halifax even more than Baldwin displayed the dilemmas of a
Christian politician in the face of severe foreign policy pressures. For
most of the 1930s he did not spell out the full implications of his
argument -- that totalitarian governments by exalting the state as an
end in itself and by demanding the surrender of private will and
conscience, inhibited their subjects from seeking spiritual salvation
and so offended against the providential order.(1) He too declared
that Britain as `the example and the champion of free institutions'
had a `special responsibility' for `the future of the world'.(2) But
moral and political example did not become diplomatic -- still less
military -- crusade against Germany or Italy or the Soviet Union. Like
Churchill, he declared that Britain had no `wish to interfere with a
system of government with which we may not happen to agree'.
Provided a government accepted the principles of peaceful
international relations, the British desire was `to live and let live in
the world'.(3) Privately he alerted the German government to British
religious and humanitarian concerns -- the German church struggle,
treatment of the Jews, the fate of Austrian anti-nazis after the
Anschluss and Czech refugees after Munich -- but he neither pressed
the protests hard, nor introduced these concerns into his public
statements. At some level he perhaps supposed that non-interference
followed from his doctrine on the moral principle of choice, which
logically required the possibility of wrong choices, and from the
democratic principle of tolerance. In public he presented it as a policy
necessity, yet with remarkable argumentative subtlety always
asserted that expediency was justified by moral principle. In unstable
and delicate international conditions `the tendency to import into our
judgements on the issues of foreign policy our likes and dislikes of
forms of government elsewhere is full of danger'. A government, like
an individual, might `rightly be moved by indignation' at immoral or
criminal acts, but even more than an individual it had `an imperative
duty of weighing the consequences' of acting upon mere moral
revulsion. For there were both `higher and lower calls of duty'. An
attempt to interfere, or direct ideological confrontation with the
dictators, might precipitate the far greater horror of war.(4) Even
when dictators did resort to acts of international aggression, the
cause of peace might still make it desirable to accept the outcome. In
May 1938 he declared that when `two ideals -- righteousness and
peace -- are in conflict, and you have to choose between an
unpractical devotion to the high purpose that you know you cannot
achieve except by a war you do not mean to have, and the practical
victory for peace that you can achieve', he could not hesitate `when
both my conscience and my duty to my fellow men impel me directly
in the direction of peace'.(1)
From these perspectives Halifax presented rearmament as a means
not just to secure the `ideals and principles of the British nation' but
also to maintain international peace -- paradoxical as this second
argument seemed after the supposed lessons of the Great War.
Defence and peace were compatible; given that Britain's greatest
interest was peace, a rearmed Britain would make war `far less likely'.
Here was the delicate balance that the government tried to sustain,
as much in rhetoric as in policy. Against the pacifists of the left he
asserted that in the dangerous condition of the world it was neither
`politically practicable' nor `morally imperative' for a nation to forgo
`both the will and the right to defend what it believes to be right'.(2)
Against Churchill and other anti-appeasers he shared and expounded
the objection of wider peace opinion towards balance-of-power
doctrine and alliances, that these would divide Europe into armed
camps and so precipitate war.(3) Against isolationists he argued that
British policy could not be merely passive avoidance of international
difficulties. Beginning in ostensible support for the League of Nations,
in early 1938 this became a moral presentation of `appeasement' as
positive activity for peace. `No great country has a right, even if it
could, to throw away its power and its capacity to exert influence on
the problems that lie at its door'; it was `our plain duty to bend all
our efforts to the avoidance of catastrophe'.(4) Throughout, he
spoke of Christian values as the basic solution to the international
crisis. The weakness of covenants, pacts and treaties, and the
suspicions, fears and misunderstandings which blocked `the path to
the temple of peace' had arisen because `the world as a whole has
not yet called clearly enough to its aid the old cardinal qualities on
which all life is based, the qualities of Faith and Hope and Charity'.
They must therefore hold firm `to the faith that can remove
mountains; the hope that will not be denied; and the charity that
seeks always to think and to find the best, and not the worst, in
other people'.(5) He spoke also of the most fundamental solution. He
asked whether the world's problems were not directly due to `the
half-heartedness and dullness' of their prayers; even the `humblest'
could pray, and this might `achieve more than the greatest efforts of
those we rank as statesmen'.(6)
Nevertheless, from late 1938 Halifax made his criticism of Nazi
Germany and later all totalitarian regimes more explicit, and as war
became more likely arguments he had earlier offered for national
rearmament changed almost seamlessly into justifications for
international resistance. Following Kristallnacht he spoke of actions
`directly opposed to the Christian doctrine on which European
civilization has been built'. Speaking after the German seizure of
Prague in March 1939 of the need, if people were to be asked to fight
in war, for a cause appealing to `the highest elements in their
nature', he invoked Christian principles and moral values.(1) After the
outbreak of war he spoke of `the ... denial of elementary human
rights' arousing `something instinctive and profound in the universal
conscience of mankind'. By February 1940 the war had become a
crusade to defend the `free expression of the human personality'
against `the Devil's work' -- `an active force of evil which, unless we
fight it, will rapidly reduce our civilization to a desert of the soul'.(2)
Then in July, a week after the Churchill broadcast with which this
article began, Halifax also spoke on the radio, in answer to Hitler's
public demand that Britain should submit to his will. The German
people, he declared, had `given their consciences to Hitler' and been
reduced to machines, unable to distinguish right from wrong. Hitler
had inverted all values, ordaining that force, bad faith, cruelty and
crime were right: `that is the challenge of anti-Christ, which it is our
duty as Christians to fight with all our power'. Speaking as he was
after the Norwegian defeat, Dunkirk, and the fall of France, with
Britain alone and facing invasion, he offered comfort and hope:
Where will God lead us? Not, we may be sure, through easy or pleasant
paths. That is not His way. He will not help us to avoid our difficulties.
What He will do is to give to those who humbly ask, the spirit that no
dangers can disturb. The Christian message to the world brings peace in
war; peace where we most need it; peace of soul ... And there is one thing
we can all do ... which may be more powerful than we know. And this is to
pray.
... [P]rayer is not only asking God for what we want, but rather the way
to learn to trust Him, to ask that we may know His will, and to do it with
all our strength. If we can really do our work, whatever it is, as well as
we can in God's sight, it will become His work, and we can safely leave the
issue in his hands.
This ... is the spirit in which we must march together in this crusade
for Christianity ... We shall go forward, seeing clearly both the
splendour and the perils of the task, but strengthened by the faith,
through which by God's help ... we shall prevail.(3) |