The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical EditionVol. 6: The War Years, 1940-1946

Is a Christian Society Possible?

The American clergyman Charles Clayton Morrison (1874-1966), editor of The Christian Century, a nondenominational weekly based in Chicago, wrote to TSE on 10 Oct 1942, inviting him to contribute to a series titled “British Christianity Speaks for Itself.” Morrison suggested the article’s title – a question inspired, he said, by his regard for The Idea of a Christian Society(1939) – and promised that the article would reach “the entire leadership of American Christianity as well as our academic and social-minded leadership.” Other contributors included J. H. Oldham, who encouraged TSE to participate; Sir Richard Acland; Hewlett Johnson; John Baillie; and Leslie D. Weatherhead.

TSE sent his typescript to Morrison on 5 Jan 1943. Uncertain of its suitability, he assured Morrison that he “need feel no embarrassment in rejecting it, should it appear ill adapted to the needs and requirements of The Christian Century.” Morrison’s response on 29 Jan bore out TSE’s concerns. Professing hesitation but writing bluntly, Morrison admitted to “a sense of disappointment” with TSE’s failure to provide “a constructive answer to the question” of whether a Christian Society was possible:

Your answer seems to be, so far as the main body of your article deals with it, that we must avoid a premature union of the churches. In this negative thesis you make your point clear enough . . . but I feel that your article ought constructively to discuss the nature of a Christian society and the possibility of achieving it. A paragraph could be devoted to your premature union thesis, but the body of the article would be greatly helped if you faced your question more constructively. ¹

He thus returned the article, “hoping that you will wish to reconceive your treatment as a positive contribution rather than merely a warning against a pitfall.” TSE replied on 17 Mar, pleading a lack of time and admitting that “even were I given enough time I could not be sure of giving satisfaction in a rewrite.” The typescript (8 pp., with pen-and-ink corrections) was never revised or published.

The Editor of The Christian Centuryhas proposed to me that I should attempt to answer this question. While it is not a question to which a simple affirmative or negative reply is possible, it is one which can, I think, give rise to interesting by-products, and is therefore worth considering. And in view of the fact that I have devoted a small book to prefatory examination of the nature of Christian Society, there is perhaps some necessity for a postscript or interim statement.

We must recognise, first of all, that there is one interpretation of the question to which we cannot give anything but an affirmative answer. The words which we repeat in the Lord’s Prayer, if I understand them, pledge us to direct our lives towards the realisation of the Kingdom on earth: for whatever we pray for, we commit ourselves to work for, in ignorance of the extent to which the human will can participate. It is superfluous for me to attempt to elicit, in the space which I am to occupy, the disastrous consequences to which a negative answer would lead us. Furthermore, this is a question for the trained theologian: and I am aware that theologians can disagree. I only mention it for the purpose of keeping it distinct from the same question on the plane with which I am concerned, which is that of my book. It is not the question whether we should aspire to, or hope for, the realisation of the Kingdom on Earth; it is not the question of helping towards its realisation by the spirituality of our lives: it is the question, how far is a Christian Society possible as an aim of our social planning, and on the political plane?

I tried to make clear in my book, the difference between our present-day society and that of any place or period in the past in which we could say that society was Christian, in the sense of a definitely Christian pattern...