ABSTRACT
There are signs that we are losing the fervour of the earlier years of the century. The Christian Social Union and the Church Socialist League were twenty years or more ago the inspiration of many of us. I am inclined to think there were more men ordained about that time than ever before. The social crusade caught us up, and we felt that we were doing a man's work in the slum parishes to which we were sent. And undoubtedly the movement had an influence out of all proportion to its numbers. If we didn't bring one working man to church, we brought the church nearer to the working man, and the Archbishop's Committee's Fifth Report (1918) represents the high water mark of the official church opinions on social questions. Yet now we are conscious of a decline. (The Socialist Christian, 1(1), p. 15)
A similarly pessimistic assessment of Christian Socialism for the 1930s and 40s is followed by Dr Edward Norman in his largely polemical study, Church and Society in England, 1770-1970, which in more general terms attempts to discredit the liberal or radical views held by sections of the Anglican establishment during the last century. By concentrating his attention mainly on the Christian Social Union stream of Christian Socialism, on the career and writings of William Temple, and on the evidence of episcopal charges and other statements, Dr Norman ignores and hence misrepresents the strength and authentically socialist character of the Christian Socialist movement of the 1930s and 40s. Furthermore he fails to acknowledge the activities of its proliferating organizations and the breadth of its publications during this period, shown in the diagram (Figure 28.1).
