Echoes of Malvern

Malvern's call (TIME, Jan. 20, 1941) to Britain's Christians to reconcile their economic and social world with their religious principles has been all but muffled by the guns of war. But now & again the ringing note still echoes, to the well-bred annoyance of political and religious Tories.

Said Malvern's godfather, William Temple, who is also Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England: "Our function is to watch the politicians, spurring them on by criticism of the existing order in the light of our principles. . . .

"We have got to find a way to effect the real marriage of state concern with voluntary enterprise. . . . We are bound to be concerned about housing, nutrition, social security, freedom from unemployment . . . that will cover nearly every proposal in the social and economic field . . . and keep us true as regards our main direction and deliver us, as nothing else can, from the hell we have made of life by letting the means to our welfare assume in our thought the function and position of that welfare itself."

At the same meeting spoke up the Anglican Church's second-ranking prelate, Cyril Forster Garbett, Archbishop of York: "The condition of many of the children from the large industrial areas is a disgrace to our civilization* Evacuation has thrown a sudden searchlight on the evils of which the majority of citizens are ignorant. It showed that there still exists a submerged tenth over which squalor, ignorance and vice reign supreme."

*From Our Towns: Close Up, a new book about the British slum-children evacuees: head lice were found on 20.8% of the Liverpool children, 19.8% of the Middlesbrough children and 17.3%of the Manchester children.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.