Christendom, 10 (June 1940) 101-08
The method of approach of The English Situation(the Syllabus of the Church Union Summer School of Sociology for 1940) is historical. 1 In the first section there is a sub-section entitled “Social Basis of Religious Groupings.” It is my purpose in the present paper to develop certain thoughts suggested by this sub-section. 2 What I venture to put forward is concerned rather with the present, and the possible future; but I offer it as to some extent a preface to the historical study. For I believe that a complete historical method must proceed to interpret the past by the present, as well as the present by the past. Our understanding of our own time will direct, whether we will it or not, our interpretation of the past. This contention finds evidence, I think, in the work of the Liberal school of historians in the nineteenth century and in our own time, for whom past history was explained in almost teleological terms, as leading up to the freedom, justice and enlightenment by which they felt their own civilization to be distinguished. The better we understand the times in which we live, the better we shall be able to understand the past; and only by this movement of thought to and fro between the present and the past can we hope to approximate to the detachment necessary for understanding. A phenomenon is understood as much by its consequences, as by its causes.
The origin and development of sects in England is, so far as I know, a subject still awaiting careful sociological analysis. A superficial acquaintance with the subject would lead us, at least, to believe that a sect has been a complex social-religious unit, starting from a particular stratum of society and affirming that stratum as it develops. We are too much inclined to see the origin of a sect only in the religious enthusiasm of a leader, and too little inclined to notice the importance of the social motive and the economic interest. The strictly theologicalelement – that which has an intellectual character such that it is capable of being submitted to argument – is perhaps no more than a minor part; and in consequence no purely theological argument is practically adequate as persuasion, with a view to the reintegration of sectarians into the Church, unless the person under persuasion is 65also brought to such a point of mental clarification as to dissociate the various elements which went to his social formation. We must remember that the conversion of a dissenter may involve a good deal besides intellectual conviction, and the removal of a good deal that obstructs such conviction: it may involve the conscious dissociation of the individual from a group which has been formed for some generations past. This is confirmed – though the complication only adds further confusion – by the fact that individuals whom a change of circumstances has allied to a new social group have often found it easy to change their religious communion accordingly. While such a change may usually be due to other than religious causes, we must not ignore the possibility that in many cases the “conversion” may be attributed to the removal of impediments by the adherence to, rather than by the ambition to join, another social group.
The significance of these remarks lies in the inference that, just as we must consider social-economic causes in the formation of religious groups, so we must recognize the importance of future social and economic changes in society in their possible effect upon these groups. The changes brought about by war – which, up to the present, appear to be merely an acceleration of the change proceeding during a generation past – might of course elevate one or more sects to a position of greater importance in the nation: but in view of the general decline of Christianity this does not appear probable. The tendency might rather be to iron out so much of the...
