Religion: The Practical Christian

At the crimson gates of Her Majesty's Prison in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, a balding little Englishman stood one day last week, blinking in the sudden sunlight. Guy Clutton-Brock, 53, had just been released after 27 days in jail. His wife Molly was 250 miles away in a Bulawayo mental hospital; she had suffered a breakdown following her husband's arrest for associating with African nationalists. Clutton-Brock is what he calls "a practical Christian," and his courageous version of practical Christianity, many African churchmen were saying last week, may be just what is needed to get the church out from under the new white man's burden of identification with colonialism and racial discrimination.

Son of a wealthy English stockbroker, educated at Rugby and Cambridge, Guy Clutton-Brock planned to enter the Anglican ministry, then decided to devote his life to works as a layman. His works came to include rehabilitating prisoners in England, youth counseling in postwar Berlin, three years as a farm laborer and market gardener. Ten years ago, he was called to St. Faith's Anglican mission in South Rhodesia. His job: to help revive St. Faith's 10,000 acres of impoverished soil, bring African workers back from the towns to live on the land.

Clutton-Brock earned the Negroes' respect and friendship when in 1957 he helped organize the Southern Rhodesia branch of the African National Congress. When congress organizers were branded "agitators," he said: "It is the duty of every citizen and Christian to be an agitator for justice, righteousness and truth."

Last January Clutton-Brock left St. Faith's, moved on to work on an agricultural project in barren, lion-haunted Bechuanaland. But as soon as he and his wife returned to Southern Rhodesia in February for a vacation, he was arrested and held without trial under emergency laws prompted by the Nyasaland riots (TIME, March 9 et seq.). During his imprisonment, the Southern Rhodesian government offered freedom and free passage back to England if he would give up his Southern Rhodesian citizenship, but he refused.

Anglican Bishop Cecil Alderson of Mashonaland backed him up. Said he: "Clutton-Brock has taken the only course open to an honorable man to take."