be made up on the last two and this seems evident seventy years on as ethical conflicts unravel Anglicanism. Chesterton, who flirted with Anglo- Catholicism en route to Roman Catholicism, complained justly about the Church of England of his day, ‘We do not want, as the newspapers say, a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world.’ John Gunstone is a writer concerned

for spiritual and theological renewal. Tis is no dry history. It brings out how the early Anglo-Catholics had a strong mystical element. Writers like Evelyn Underhill would be dismayed at the severance between the mystical and the sacramental that seems to abound in the church today. Te ascendant evangelical and pentecostal streams in today’s Anglicanism seem to be turned away from the sacraments. A rigidity and lack of charity among the Congress succession has played a part here, perhaps in response to the confusing impact of liturgical change and the divisive repercussions from atempts to make women and homosexuals more up front in the church today.

Liſt High the Cross is an easier read

than its size and historical chronicle might appear to offer. It provides many gems of wisdom for today’s church. I liked part of the Curate of St Barnabas, Pimlico’s, Fr Rawlinson’s address to the 1921 Convention: ‘Te longer I live the more convinced I am that sins are not conquered; they are crowded out. Te energies are directed into a fresh channel. Te disappearance of sin and the growth of the interior life are not successive but parallel movements’.

Te Revd Dr John Twisleton, Rector of Horsted Keynes, West Sussex

MORAL CLARITY

A Guide for Grown-up Idealists

Susan Neiman Bodley Head, 470pp, hbk

978 1 847 92044 7, £20

I should have taken

the subtitle as a warning; instead I allowed myself to be persuaded by the adulatory comments on the back. I wanted to be convinced. As a reader of New Directions my

32 ■ newdirections ■ April 2010

first reacion to the Enlightenment is to reject it as a malign influence on Western Christendom. Until that is, I face modern secularists and political theorists who dismiss its legacy still more vehemently. Ten I want to defend the notion of a liberal liberalism against the modern absolutists. Ten I see tolerance as a rational Christian virtue, and even secularism as a Christian Enlightenment ideal (before it too was highjacked by contemporary relativists). Tis promised to be a philosophical

rehabilitation of the ideals and virtues of the Enlightenment project, but without the technical, professional jargon. It was certainly that. Neiman writes with atracive fluency and with an assured grasp of our cultural heritage: a top class commentator. But in the end, her thesis did not convince: the climax cum conclusion was an anticlimax: not that I thought, ‘She’s wrong,’ but ‘Is that it?’ – a collection of essays in search of a thesis. Her grounding in American culture

and politics was at first off-puting – I am not that interested in the philosophical batles of the neo-cons and their opponents – but in the end proved the most enlightening element. It revealed how far we are different, and that the differences mater. Whatever the atheist secularists

may believe, England is an old society, fully established long before the Enlightenment. America, by contrast, was founded during the Enlightenment and upon its ideals and principles. Tis difference is crucial when one is caught up in a reassessment, rejection, or (in Neiman’s case) a rehabilitation. Te key problem is what one might call the Asymmetry of Lapsing. Christendom and

traditional Christians show clear limitations – both institution and members are in need of improvement, secifically in terms of the personal virtues that relate to freedom. Te best option seems to be to have solid, traditional, Christian parents who will bring you up in the bosom of the Church. Once you

have gained all that they have to give, your best bet is to lapse. You will have

gained all the merits of a full Christian education, while being able to lose all the stultifying limitations evident in pracising members. Tis is what the Enlightenment

achieved; and these are the virtues and ideals that Neiman celebrates. But then? What the Enlightenment passed on was not membership of the Church (with all its limitations), but the benefits of Sunday School (the distillation of the teaching without the personal commitment). And it failed. Sending your child to Sunday School,

as so many well-meaning parents have discovered to their cost, is not the same as bringing them to Church. If only it worked. If only a distillation of the Enlightenment ideals could be passed on to the next generations without the additional baggage imposed by pracising believers. Neiman tries, and I warmed to

her for trying; but I have to say I remained unmoved. Her modern day ‘Enlightenment heroes’ are admirable people, but a collection of admirable people cannot prove a truth. If all Catholics and all modern-atheists were manifestly wicked, it might; but they are not.

Arthur Savage ND

WOMEN BISHOPS?

by John Pitchford

37 pages £5-00 P and P free

Bishop John Broadhurst:

“It covers all the issues and is very easy to read”

Now is the time to prepare for Deanery and Diocesan Synod discussions and votes.

Do you have a copy of

Women Bishops?

available in your Church?

Order from:

Additional Curates Society 8 Spitfire Road

Birmingham B24 9PB Tel: 0121 382 5533

www.

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