associated with the Pastorate might gather, since it was felt that undergradu-ate activities in the university were best organized by the students themselves. Nevertheless, the chaplains did seek to maintain good relations

In 1942 this process was taken a stage further when the Pastorate finally took the step of organizing an undergraduate religious society – the Socratic Club. Initially founded by Stella Aldwinckle as a club for Somerville students, the Socratic rapidly developed into a mixed-sex university society with the orthodox Protestant C.S. Lewis as its president. Its aim was, according to the Annual Report, to bring undergraduates ‘into touch with well-informed men and women of living faith who can understand and meet their intellectual difficulties, and lead them on into a personal knowledge of Christ’. It was also ‘designed to challenge Christians to more radical realistic thinking about their Faith in the light of modern knowledge and thought so that they may be the better equipped as evangelists to meet educated pagans on their own ground’. The Club seems to have made a considerable impact during the 1940s. It had registered over 100 members by the end of its first year and by 1945 had begun to establish study groups and hold an annual conference.42