The four brief lectures that comprise The Idea of a Christian Society were delivered prior to the onset of World War II. In them, T. S. Eliot hoped to make a small “contribution to a discussion which must occupy many minds for a long time to come.” He insisted that his lectures offered only “a slight outline of what I conceive to be essential features” of a Christian state and society. He believed firmly that such could and must be achieved, and his desire was to have a hand in moving such a project forward.
Eliot understood that bringing a Christian society into being in days of widespread paganism must be undertaken as a generation-spanning effort. He explained, “The fact that a problem will certainly take a long time to solve, and that it will demand the attention of many minds for several generations, is no justification for postponing the study. And, in times of emergency, it may prove in the long run that the problems we have postponed or ignored, rather than those we have failed to attack successfully, will return to plague us.”
Eliot provided only a sketch of a Christian society, by which he meant, “the Christian can be satisfied with nothing less than a Christian organisation of society—which is not the same thing as a society consisting exclusively of devout Christians.” There will always be pagans—various sorts of wrong-believers—and the Church will always be comprised with people whose faith is merely pious and private or even nominal. But a Christian society exists when the institutions of society are infused with Christian principles and the population, even among the pagans, is agreeable to a Christian presence and morality.
Thoughtful Christians, recognizing that “much in our system is not only iniquitous, but in the long run unworkable and conducive to disaster”, will not cease striving, by small means and large, to realize a better and more Christian framework and essence for our society.
To achieve this, we need a “change in our social attitude”, that is, in how we think about society as a whole, its ends and means, how it is comprised, and how to improve it. Eliot wrote, “I believe that the choice before us is between the formation of a new Christian culture, and the acceptance of a pagan one. Both involve radical changes; but I believe that the majority of us, if we could be faced immediately with all the changes which will only be accomplished in several generations, would prefer Christianity.”
However, a Christian society cannot be built upon the foundations of liberal faith, since liberalism largely does away with whatever is distinctly Christian in its social program, pushing the essence of religion into a merely private sphere.
Nor can it be constructed on the foundation of a merely personal piety. Christians must work toward a Christian society by embracing a form of Christian education that “would primarily train people to be able to think in Christian categories, though it could not compel belief and would not impose the necessity for insincere profession of belief.” This would help us get beyond the tendency to live our faith in niches—which Eliot regarded as disastrous for Christian faith: “The compulsion to live in such a way that Christian behaviour is only possible in a restricted number of situations, is a very powerful force against Christianity; for behaviour is as potent to affect belief, as belief to affect behaviour.”
Eliot envisioned a society comprised of three spheres: a Pagan Community, a Christian Community, and a Community of Christians. The first consists of those who do not believe in God but are not necessarily animated against those who do. The second consists of all who claim to believe in Jesus or to act on Christian principles. And the third interacts with both the other two for the purpose of improving society toward Christian ends. Eliot wrote of the Community of Christians: “We need therefore what I have called ‘the Community of Christians,’ by which I mean, not local groups, and not the Church in any one of its senses, unless we call it ‘the Church within the Church.’ These will be the consciously and thoughtfully practising Christians, especially those of intellectual and spiritual superiority.” He added, “The Community of Christians is not an organisation, but a body of indefinite outline; composed of both clergy and laity, of the more conscious, more spiritually and intellectually developed of both. It will be their identity of belief and aspiration, their background of a common system of education and a common culture, which will enable them to influence and be influenced by each other, and collectively to form the conscious mind and the conscience of the nation.”
He insisted that such a society can only exist when churches pursue a unity not only of intellectual assent but of active interest and endeavor toward a Christian society. Such a unity must be established on the fact of Christianity being true, not merely beneficial. Unity could allow believers to work together to produce “not a society of saints, but of ordinary men, of men whose Christianity is communal before it is individual.” We will be helped in this effort by consulting our fathers in the faith: “We need to know how to see the world as the Christian Fathers saw it; and the purpose of reascending to origins is that we should be able to return, with greater spiritual knowledge, to our own situation. We need to recover the sense of religious fear, so that it may be overcome by religious hope.”
Eliot insisted on the importance of this project, even though progress may be minimal in any generation and the realization of the whole will always seem a long way off. But he believed that the only alternative to a Christian society is a political society, established on and in pursuit of material ends. And such a society, devoid of a strong Christian presence and influence, can only lead to the oppression and subjugation of any who do not embrace its goals. In short, tyranny.
So we must take up the yoke of laboring for a Christian society; as we do, “we have to remember that the Kingdom of Christ on earth will never be realised, and also that it is always being realised; we must remember that whatever reform or revolution we carry out, the result will always be a sordid travesty of what human society should be—though the world is never left wholly without glory.”We should listen to Eliot’s counsel and seek to recover his vision.
We will not, of course, agree with all the details of his project—such as his belief that a formal bond and agreement must exist between Church and State—but there is much to guide and encourage us in our generation to believe that the Kingdom of God can make progress in our day in every aspect of life and all our institutions—throughout, that is, the whole of our society.
T. M. Moore