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Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

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Now it has been generally supposed that the Anglican clergy are bound to
declare their adhesion not only to the Creeds, but to the Thirty-nine
Articles, and to the infallible truth of Holy Scripture. Bishop Gore,
however, holds that when a new deacon, on the day of his ordination,
solemnly declares that he 'assents to the Thirty-nine Articles,' and
that he 'believes the doctrine therein set forth to be agreeable to the
word of God,' he 'can no longer fairly be regarded as bound to
particular phrases or expressions in the Articles.'[39] And further,
when the same new deacon expresses his 'unfeigned belief in all the
canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,' 'that expression of
belief can be fairly and justly made by anyone who believes heartily
that the Bible, as a whole, records and contains the message of God to
man in all its stages of delivery and that each one of the books
contains some element or aspect of this revelation.'[40]

The Bishop himself has affirmed his personal belief that some narratives
in the Old Testament are probably not historical. It may fairly be asked
on what principle he is prepared to evade the plain sense and intention
of a doctrinal test in two cases while stigmatising as morally
flagitious any attempts to do the same in a third. For it is
unquestionable that a general assent to the Articles does not mean that
the man who gives that assent is free to repudiate any 'particular
phrases or expressions' which do not please him. A witness who admitted
having signed an affidavit with this intention would cut a poor figure
in a law court. And it is difficult to see how adhesion to the
antiquated theory of inspiration could be demanded more stringently than
by the form of words which was drawn up, as none can doubt, to secure
it. These things being so, either the accusation of bad faith applies to
the treatment which the Bishop justifies in the case of the Articles and
the Bible, or it should not be brought against those who apply to one
clause in their vows the principle which is admitted and used in two
others.

There are some honourable men who have abstained from entering the
service of the Church on account of these requirements. But there are
many others who recognise that knowledge grows and opinions change,
while formularies for the most part remain unaltered; and who consider
that, so long as their general position is understood by those among
whom they work, it would be overscrupulous to refuse an inward call to
the ministry because they know that they will be asked to give a formal
assent to unsuitably worded tests drawn up three centuries ago. Dr. Gore
himself would probably have been refused ordination fifty years ago on
the ground of his lax views on inspiration; and the Bishops who approved
of the condemnation of Colenso, who condemned 'Essays and Reviews,' and
who would have condemned 'Lux Mundi,' were more 'honest' to the tests
than their successors. But an obstinate persistence in that kind of
honesty would have excluded from the ministry all except fools, liars,
and bigots. Again, it might have been supposed that the laity also, who
at their baptism and confirmation made the same declaration of belief in
'all the articles' of the Apostles' Creed, and who are bidden by the
Church to repeat the same Creed every week, are in the same position as
the clergy. But the Bishop again attempts to draw a distinction. 'The
responsibility of joining in the Creed is left to the conscience of the
layman,' but not to the conscience of the clergyman, nor, we suppose, of
the choir.[41] This plea seems to us a very lame one. The Church of
England has never thought of imposing severer doctrinal tests on the
clergy than on the laity, and assent to the Creeds is as integral a part
of the baptismal as of the ordination vows.

No loyal Christian wishes to impugn a doctrine which touches so closely
the life of the Redeemer as the account of His miraculous conception,
which appears, in our texts, in two books of the New Testament. If the
tradition is as old as the Church, which is very doubtful, it must, from
the nature of the case, rest on the unsupported assertion of Mary, the
mother of Jesus; for Joseph could only testify that the child was not
his. It is therefore useless to reinforce the Gospel narrative by
appealing to 'Catholic tradition,'[42] as if it could add anything to
the evidence. It is significant, however, of the Bishop's own feelings
about tradition, that he quietly sets aside the plain statement of the
Synoptic Gospels that Joseph and Mary had a large family of four sons
and more than one daughter by their marriage. This statement, which is
doubtless historical, became intolerable to the conscience of the Church
during the long frenzy of asceticism, when marital relations were
regarded as impure and degrading; and in consequence the perpetual
virginity of Mary, though contradicted in the New Testament, became as
much an article of faith as her conception of Jesus by the Holy Ghost.
We have no wish to criticise the arguments for the Virgin Birth which
Dr. Gore has collected in his 'Dissertations.' But when a strenuous
effort is made to exclude from the ministry of the Church all who cannot
declare _ex animo_ that they believe it to be a certain historical fact,
it becomes a duty to point out that, on ordinary principles of evidence,
the story must share the uncertainty which hangs over other strange and
unsupported narratives. The Bishop expresses his doubt whether those who
regard this miracle as unproven can be convinced of the Divinity of
Christ. This only shows how difficult it is for an ecclesiastic in his
high position to induce either clergy or laity to talk frankly to him.
To most educated men there would be no difficulty in believing that the
Son of God became incarnate through the agency of two earthly parents.
The analogy of hybrids in the animal world is not felt to apply to the
union of the human and divine natures, except by persons of very low
intelligence. We should have preferred to be silent on this delicate
subject, but for the fact that some men whom the Church can ill spare
have been advised officially not to apply for ordination, on account of
their views about this miracle. Fortunately, the practice of demanding
more specific declarations than the law requires has not been adopted
in most dioceses.

The question of the miraculous element in religious truth has indeed
reached an acute stage. The Catholic doctrine is and always has been
that there are two 'orders'--the natural and the supernatural--on the
same plane, and distinguishable from each other. The Catholic theologian
is prepared to define what occurrences in the lives of the Saints are
natural, and what supernatural. Miracles are of frequent occurrence, and
are established by ordinary evidence. Three miracles have to be placed
to the credit of each candidate for canonisation before he or she is
entitled to bear the title of saint, and the evidence for these miracles
is sifted by a commission. This theory has been practically abandoned in
the English Church. There are few among our ecclesiastics and
theologians who would spend five minutes in investigating any alleged
supernatural occurrence in our own time. It would be assumed that, if
true, it must be ascribed to some obscure natural cause. The result is
that the miracles in the Creeds, or in the New Testament, are isolated
as they have never been before. They seem to form an order by
themselves, a class of fact belonging neither to the world of phenomena
as we know it, nor to the world of spirit as we know it. From this
situation has arisen the tendency, increasingly prevalent both in the
Roman Church and in Protestant Germany, to distinguish 'truths of faith'
from 'truths of fact,' The former, it is said, have a representative,
symbolic character, and are only degraded by being placed in the same
category as physical phenomena. This contention is open to very serious
objections, but it at least indicates the actual state of the problem,
viz. that to most educated men the miraculous element in Christianity
seems to float between earth and heaven, no longer essentially connected
with either, while on the other hand the majority of religious people,
including a few men of high intelligence, find it difficult to realise
their faith without the help of the miraculous. Supernaturalism, which
from the scientific point of view is the most unsatisfactory of all
theories, traversing as it does the first article in the creed of
science--the uniformity of nature--gives, after all, a kind of crude
synthesis of the natural and the spiritual, by which it is possible to
live; it is, for many persons, an indispensable bridge between the world
of phenomena and the world of spirit. But when the heavy-handed
dogmatist requires a categorical assent to the literal truth of the
miraculous, in exactly the same sense in which physical facts are true,
a tension between faith and reason cannot be avoided. And it is in this
literal sense that Bishop Gore requires all his clergy to assent to the
miracles in the Creeds.

The fact is that the Catholic party in the Church are in a hopeless
_impasse_ with regard to dogma. They cannot take any step which would
divide them from 'the whole Church,' and the whole Church no longer
exists except as an ideal--it has long ago been shivered into fragments.
The Roman Church is in a much better position. The Pope may at any time
'interpret' tradition in such a manner as to change it completely--there
is no appeal from his authoritative pronouncements; but for the High
Anglican there is no living authority, only the dead hand, and a Council
which can never meet. It is much as if no important legislation could be
passed in this country without a joint session of our Parliament and the
American Congress. It is difficult to see any way of escape, except by
accepting the principle of development in a sense which would repudiate
the time-honoured 'appeal to antiquity.'

We have next to consider Bishop Gore as a Church Reformer. We have seen
that he desires an autonomous Church, which can legislate for itself.
The dead hand, which weighs so lightly upon him when it forbids any
attempt to revise the formularies of the faith, seems to him intolerably
heavy when it obliges the Church to conform to 'the laws, canons, and
rubrics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which it cannot
alter or add to.'[43] The only remedy, he thinks, is a really
representative assembly, of bishops, presbyters, and laymen. In the
early Church, as he points out, the laity were always recognised as
constituent members of the government of the Church. In a democratic
age, the laity as a body should exercise the powers which in the Middle
Ages were delegated to, or usurped by, 'emperors, kings, chiefs and
lords.' The parish ought to have the real control of the Church
buildings, except the chancel; the Church servants ought to be appointed
and removed by the parish meeting. It would be a step forward if these
parish councils could be organised under diocesan regulation, and
invested with the control of the parish finances, except the vicar's
stipend; the right to object to the appointment of an unfit pastor; and
some power of determining the ceremonial at the Church services. The
diocesan synod should become a reality; there should also be provincial
synods, which could become national by fusion. But in the last resort
the declaration of the mind of the Church on matters of doctrine and
morals ought to belong to the bishops.[44]

But who are the laity? 'By a layman,' he says, 'I mean one who fulfils
the duties of Church membership--one who is baptised into the Church,
who has been confirmed if he has reached years of discretion, and who is
a communicant.' A roll of Church members, he suggests, should be kept in
each parish, on which should be entered the name of each confirmed
person, male or female. The names of those who had passed (say) two
years without communicating should be struck off the roll. Further,
names should be removable for any scandalous offences.[45]

It is easy to see that the 'communicant franchise' would work entirely
in favour of that party in the Church which attaches the greatest
importance to that Sacrament. It would exclude a large number of
Protestant laymen who subscribe to Church funds, and who on any other
franchise would have a share in its government. But we need not suspect
Dr. Gore of any _arriere pensee_ of this kind. His ideal of parochial
life is one which must appeal to all who wish well to the Church. We
will quote a few characteristic sentences:

'Are we to set to work to revive St. Paul's ideal of the
life of a Church? If so, what we need is not more
Christians, but better Christians. We want to make the moral
meaning of Church membership understood and its conditions
appreciated. We want to make men understand that it costs
something to be a Christian; that to be a Christian, that
is, a Churchman, is to be an intelligent participator in a
corporate life consecrated to God, and to concern oneself,
therefore, as a matter of course, in all that touches the
corporate life, its external as well as its spiritual
conditions.... We Christians are fellow-citizens together in
the commonwealth that is consecrated to God, a commonwealth
of mortal men with bodies as well as souls.'[46]

With regard to ritual, he will not allow that the disputes are
unimportant. The vital question of self-government is at stake. From
this point of view, a 'mere ceremony' may mean a great deal. St. Paul,
who said 'Circumcision is nothing,' also said, 'If ye be circumcised
Christ shall profit you nothing,'[47] This is quite consistent with his
hearty disapproval of the introduction of purely Roman ceremonial.

Does this ideal of a free Church in a free State involve
disestablishment? Not necessarily, Dr. Gore thinks. Why should not legal
authority be entrusted to diocesan courts, with a right of appeal to a
court of bishops, abolishing the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee
in spiritual cases? It is the paralysis of spiritual authority, in his
opinion, which pushes into prominence all extravagances, and conceals
the vast amount of agreement which exists in essentials. 'We are weary
of debating societies; we want the healthy discipline of co-operative
government.'[48] The policy of this self-governing Church is to be
'Liberal-Catholic,' a type which 'responds to the moral needs of our
great race.'

Such is the scheme of Church reform towards which the Bishop is working;
and he has told us, in the sentence last quoted, what kind of Church he
looks forward to see. But what kind of Church would it actually be, if
his designs were carried out? It would not be a national Church; for
his belief that Catholicism 'responds to the moral needs of our race' is
contradicted by the whole history of modern England. The laity of
England may not be quite 'as Protestant as ever they were, though we
often hear that they are so; but they show no disposition to become
Catholics. Catholicism as we know it is Latin Christianity, and even in
the Latin countries it is now a hothouse plant, dependent on a special
education in Catholic schools and seminaries, with an _index librorum
prohibitorum_. Such a system is impossible in England. Seminaries for
the early training of future clergymen may indeed be established; but
beds of exotics cannot be raised by keeping the gardeners in greenhouses
while the young plants are in the open air. The 'Liberal Catholic'
Church, accordingly, would shed, by degrees, the very large number of
Churchmen who still call themselves Protestant. Nor would the adjective
'Liberal' secure the adhesion of the 'intellectuals.' Bishop Gore's
Liberalism would exclude most of them as effectually as the most rigid
Conservatism. It would also be a disestablished and disendowed Church;
for surely it is building castles in the air to think of episcopal
courts recognised by law. The prospect of disestablishment does not
alarm the Bishop. Some of his utterances suggest that he would almost
welcome it. Indeed, disestablishment is viewed with complacency by an
increasing number of High Church clergy. They feel that they can never
carry out their plans for de-Protestantising the Church while the Crown
has the appointment of the bishops. For even if, as has lately been the
case, their party gets more than its due share of preferment, there will
always, under the existing system, be a sufficient number of Liberal and
Evangelical bishops on the bench to make a consistent policy of
Catholicising impossible. And the Catholic party are so admirably
organised that they are confident in their power to carry their schemes
under any form of self-government, even though the mass of the laity are
untouched by their views. Moreover, the town clergy, among whom are to
be found advocates of disestablishment, find in many places that the
parochial idea has completely broken down. The unit is the congregation,
no longer the parish, and the clergy are supported by pew-rents and
voluntary offerings, not by endowments. In such parishes,
disestablishment might, they think, give them greater liberty, and would
make little difference to them in other ways. But in the country
districts the case is very different. Thirty years after
disestablishment, the quiet country rectory, nestling in its bower of
trees and shrubs, with all that it has meant for centuries in English
rural life, would in most villages be a thing of the past.

For these reasons, the Bishop's policy of reconstructing the Church of
England as a self-governing body, professing definitely Catholic
principles and enjoining Catholic practices, seems to us an impossible
one. The chief gainer by it would be the Church of Rome, which would
gather in the most consistent and energetic of the Anglo-Catholics, who
would be dissatisfied at the contrast between the pretensions of their
own Church and its isolated position. The non-episcopal bodies would
also gain numerous recruits from among the ruins of the Evangelical and
Liberal parties in the Church.

But, it may be said, this dismal forecast may be falsified if the
Anglican Church can win the masses. The English populace are at present
neither Protestant nor Catholic; they are, if we count heads, mainly
heathen. May not the working man, who has no leaning to dissent, unless
it be the 'corybantic Christianity' of the Salvation Army, be brought
into the Church?

Bishop Gore has always shown an earnest sympathy with the aspirations of
the working class to improve their material condition. He is also
profoundly impressed by the apparent discrepancy between the teachings
of Christ about wealth and the principles which His professed disciples
wholly follow and in part avow. These anxious questionings form the
subject of a fine sermon which he preached at the Church Congress of
1906, on the text about the camel and the needle's eye. Jesus Christ
chose to be born of poor and humble parents, in a land remote from the
centre of political or intellectual influence, and in the circle of
labouring men. He chose to belong to the class of the respectable
artisan, and most of the twelve Apostles came from the same social
level. In His teaching He plainly associated blessedness with the lot of
poverty, and extreme danger with the lot of wealth. All through the New
Testament the assumption is that God is on the side of the poor against
the rich. As Jowett once said, there is more in the New Testament
against being rich, and in favour of being poor, than we like to
recognise. And is not this the cause of our failure to win the masses?
Is it not because we are the Church of capital rather than of labour?
The Church ought to be a community in which religion works upward from
below. The Church of England expresses that point of view which is
precisely not that which Christ chose for His Church. The incomes of the
bishops range them with the wealthier classes; the clergy associate with
the gentry and not with the artisans. We must acknowledge with deep
penitence that we are on wrong lines. For himself, the Bishop admits
that he has 'a permanently troubled conscience' in the matter. Then,
with that admirable courage and practicality which is the secret of much
of his influence, he proceeds to indicate four 'lines of hopeful
recovery.' First, the Church must get rid of the administration of poor
relief. Where the charity of the Church is understood to mean the
patronage of the rich, it can do nothing without disaster. All will be
in vain till it has ceased to be a plausible taunt that a man or woman
goes to church for what can be got. Secondly, we must give the artisans
their true place in Church management, and must consult their tastes in
all non-essentials. Thirdly, the clergy should 'concentrate themselves
upon bringing out the social meaning of the sacraments,' and giving
voice to the spirit of Christian brotherhood. Lastly, we ought to free
the clerical profession entirely from any association of class.

The Bishop is not a Collectivist, but he has great sympathy with some of
the aims of Socialism. In a 'Pan-Anglican Paper' just issued, he
discusses the attitude of the Church towards Socialism. Christianity, he
says, must remain independent of State-Socialism, as of other
organisations of society. Socialism would make a far deeper demand on
character than most of its adherents realise. 'An experiment in
State-Socialism, based on the average level of human character as it
exists at present, would be doomed to disastrous failure.' (Bishop
Creighton said the same thing more epigrammatically. 'Socialism will
only be possible when we are all perfect, and then it will not be
needed.') But what we have is no Socialistic State, but a great body of
aspiration, based on a great demand for justice in human life. The
indictment of our present social organisation is indeed overwhelming,
and with this indictment Christianity ought to have the profoundest
sympathy, for it is substantially the indictment of the Old Testament
prophets. The prophets were on the side of the poor; and so was our
Lord. Where is the prophetic spirit in the Church to-day? We need 'a
tremendous act of penitence.' Our charities have been mere
ambulance-work; but 'the Christian Church was not created to be an
ambulance-corps.' We have followed the old school of political economy
instead of the prophets and Christ. Broadly, we may contrast two ideals
of society: individualism, which means in the long run the right of the
strong; and socialism, which means that the society is supreme over the
individual. 'On the whole, Christianity is with Socialism.'

This 'Pan-Anglican Paper' is a fair representation of the views which
are spreading rapidly among the High Church clergy. The party is in fact
making a determined effort to enlist the sympathies of the working man
with the Church, by offering him in return its sympathy and countenance
in his struggle against capitalism. This is a phase of the movement
which it is very difficult to judge fairly. Dr. Gore's sermon was
calculated to give any Christian who heard it, whether Conservative or
Liberal, 'a troubled conscience;' and his practical suggestions are as
convincing as any suggestions that are not platitudes are likely to be.
But in weaker hands this sympathy with the cause of Labour is in great
danger of becoming one of the most insidious temptations that can attack
a religious body. The Church of England has been freely accused of too
great complaisance to the powers that be, when those powers were
oligarchic. Some of the clergy are now trying to repeat, rather than
redress, this error, by an obsequious attitude to King Working-man. But
the Church ought to be equally proof against the _vultus instantis
tyranni_ and the _civium ardor prava iubentium_. The position of a
Church which should sell itself to the Labour party would be truly
ignominious. It would be used so long as the politicians of the party
needed moral support and eloquent advocacy, and spurned as soon as its
services were no longer necessary. The taunt of Helen to Aphrodite in
the third book of the 'Iliad' sounds very apposite when we read the
speeches of some clerical 'Christian Socialists,' who find it more
exciting to organise processions of the unemployed than to attend to
their professional duties.

heso par' ahython hiohysa, thehon d' haphoeike kelehythoy,
med' heti sohisi phodessin hypostrhepseiast 'Holympon,
hall' ahiehi perhi kehinon hohizye kahi he phylasse,
ehist ho khe s' he halochon poihesetai, he ho ge dohylen.[49]

It is as a slave, not as an honoured help-mate, that the Social
Democrats would treat any Christian body that helped them to overthrow
our present civilisation. And rightly; for Christ's only injunction in
the sphere of economics was, 'Take heed and beware of all covetousness,'
He refused pointedly to have anything to do with disputes about the
distribution of property; and in the parable of the Prodigal Son the
demand, 'Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me,' is the
prelude to a journey in that 'far country' which is forgetfulness of God
(_terra longinqua est oblivio Dei_). Christ unquestionably meant His
followers to think but little of the accessories of life. He believed
that if men could be induced to adopt the true standard of values,
economic relations would adjust themselves. He promised His disciples
that they should not want the necessaries of subsistence, and for the
rest, He held that the freedom from anxiety, covetousness, and envy,
which He enjoined as a duty, would also make their life happy. This is
a very different spirit from that which makes Socialism a force in
politics.

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Roy Greenslade: Michael Wolff on Rupert Murdoch - he loves gossip
Articles published by guardian.co.uk Books

President Obama teams up with one of Marvel's greatest heroes, reports Alison Flood

Here's Michael Wolff, still doing the rounds promoting his Rupert Murdoch biography, The man who owns the news. This interview with Jon Stewart is fun. It starts off with Wolff saying: "You wanna start a rumour, tell Rupert. He's the biggest gossip I've ever met." And there's an amusing pay-off too. (Via Comedy Central/The E&P Pub)

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Murder One closing so did we commit this crime?

Barack Obama is teaming up with Spider-Man in a new comic from Marvel, which will see the future president exchanging a fist-bump with Peter Parker's alter ego.

The five-page story takes place in Washington DC on inauguration day, when one of Spidey's oldest enemies, the Chameleon, attempts to stop Obama's swearing-in ceremony. Fortunately, Peter Parker is covering the event as a photographer, and jumps in to save the day.

"Ya hear that, Chameleon? The president-elect here just appointed me ... secretary of shuttin' you up," Spider-Man says as he thwacks the Chameleon in the face. "I hope this doesn't ruin the inauguration for you," he tells Obama, as the Chameleon is led away by security officials. "Honestly, I'm more upset by the Chameleon's shockingly deficient understanding of the electoral process," Obama replies.

Spidey then cedes the limelight to Obama. "This is your day, after all, and I know it wouldn't look good to be seen palling around with me," he says, in a nod to Sarah Palin's comment that the then presidential candidate had been "palling around with terrorists".

The story, written by Zeb Wells and illustrated by Todd Nauck and Frank D'Armata, will appear as a bonus feature in Amazing Spider-Man 583, which goes on sale on 14 January.

"When we heard that president-elect Obama is a collector of Spider-Man comics, we knew that these two historic figures had to meet in our comics' Marvel Universe," said Marvel's editor-in-chief Joe Quesada. "A Spider-Man fan moving into the Oval Office is an event that must be commemorated in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man."

In October, graphic novel biographies of Obama and his then rival John McCain were published by IDW. April will see Michelle Obama appearing in the Female Force comic book series.

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