ABSTRACT
John Baillie's Church of Scotland Commission on God's Will in the Present Crisis, starting its deliberations when Britain stared defeat in the face, and ending when all the talk was of post-war reconstruction, gave a central place to equality. For nearly thirty years after the end of the Second World War the conventional wisdom in Britain and most other western liberal societies included a belief that equality was a significant social value, and a good thing. The need for a public debate about equality presents a major challenge to Christian theology. True loving, asserts that strange Danish thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, requires equality between the lovers. Richard Tawney, the economic historian and Christian moralist, believed throughout his life that: belief in God is the prerequisite for belief in human equality. Equality for Tawney is necessary for right relationships between people, for the establishment and maintenance of community.
