Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective

4. Hewlett Johnson: Britain's Red Dean and the Cold War

65 Chapter 4 Hewlett Johnson Britain’s Red Dean and the Cold War David Ayers Hewlett Johnson, widely known as the “Red Dean,” was a famous supporter of Communism from the mid-1930s to his death in 1966.1 Johnson served for five years as dean of Manchester Cathedral before being appointed dean of Canterbury Cathedral as the choice of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1929. The dean of Canterbury should not be confused with the archbishop of Canterbury, a mistake occasionally made by the Communist regimes that hosted Johnson’s visits; the archbishop is the primate of all England, while the dean performs merely local functions at the cathedral itself. Nonetheless , Canterbury is the most important cathedral in England and Johnson’s public projection was certainly aided by his status. Yet his influence in the public sphere was mainly built by his speaking in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere; by his role in pro-Communist bodies such as the Society for Cultural Relations; by his journeys to Communist countries ; by his extensive book, pamphlet, and periodical publications; and by the press reports of the controversy occasioned by his opinions and actions. The challenge that Johnson presented to the public was not only his assertion that Communism was the practical realization of Christianity, despite its avowed atheism, but also his endorsement of Communist regimes, which seemed not merely to ignore the widely reported abuses of authoritarian states but to mask or endorse them. Johnson was never a member of the Communist Party, and he could honestly deny this at a hearing for which he volunteered at the US Hewlett Johnson greeted by Nikita Khrushchev upon his arrival in Moscow for the All-Union Congress for Peace, August 1949. This photograph is held as part of the Hewlett Johnson Papers in Special Collections at the Templeman Library, University of Kent, and is used with the permission of Johnson’s family. Hewlett Johnson: Britain's Red Dean and the Cold War | 67 embassy in 1954. Yet it seems that in effect he accepted party discipline, no more so than in his funeral oration for Stalin in London: delivered in April 1953, it was published as a pamphlet that reproduces, section by section, the claims of the official biography of Stalin, frequently verbatim. Although he avoided the topic of revolutionary violence in his public statements, Johnson can be found endorsing it in his written works, where he caricatures landlords and similar groups who were the targets of such violence and defends political show trials. While Johnson may have taken as true things that were not, and while his technocratic ignorance of political process was at times breath­ taking, it is important to understand that in his political Communism and direct support for Communist regimes, he was quite conscious of questions both of revolutionary violence and internal repression. Johnson’s politics contrast with those of most other prominent British clergy in the period in question. Certainly in the 1930s a range of clergy could be found expressing an interest in Communism, and of course many clergy were socialists and supported the Labour Party.2 A strand of politically liberal Anglicans achieved an important voice in the interwar period, exemplified by William Temple, archbishop of York (1929–1942) and briefly of Canterbury (1942–1944), but while Johnson shared their interest in poverty and issues of unemployment, he did not share their communitarian approach to social cohesiveness. While such Anglicans were anti-authoritarian and firmly opposed to Adolf Hitler and Nazism, they were not pro-Communist.3 From the 1940s, few clergy could be found to support Communism, and some senior Anglican clerics were actively anti-Communist, portraying the Cold War as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil, a defense of the West and of Christianity.4 Others were reluctant to align themselves with an uncritical anti-Communism but took positive lessons for Christianity from the inability of Communist governments to extinguish faith among their own people.5 From the 1940s on, Johnson was a relatively unusual figure among British clergy in his open support of Communism, while his presence as a pro-Communist speaker in the United States contrasted sharply with the more familiar brand of anti-Communism preached by Billy Graham and other evangelicals.6 Johnson was an unusual figure, but it is important to remember that the Anglican Church was (and is) an established church. The relationship...