Editing Modernism, Editing Theology: T. S. Eliot, Karl Barth, and the Criterion

In this essay, I trace the presence of Protestant neo-Orthodox theology within the pages of the Criterion. In particular, I show that Karl Barth, whose radical Protestantism would appear to be at odds with Eliot’s orthodox Anglo-Catholicism, was in fact one of the Criterion’s major theological interlocutors from 1934 onward. Recovering Barth’s presence helps us to see two facts: first, that the Criterion was not as close-minded in theological matters as we tend to imagine; and second, that interwar theology, and in particular Barth’s dialectical theology, bears interesting resemblances to the literature of the same period.