Religion: The Vicar's Cross

The English country parson, with his kindly stoop, his dear old ladies and his teatime calls, was one of the comforting and comfortable pillars of the Empire. But no longer, according to Britain's sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued minor poet, John Betjeman.

"Let us imagine a parson, young or old," he writes in Time & Tide, "coming . . . to an English village . . . On that first Sunday, his church, for the first and last time of his incumbency, will be nearly full. After the service, the village will be agreed on one point only—that his predecessor was much better."

The Victorian squire's spinster daughter will continue to go to church. But "no Labor people will go. . . because going to church means you are Conservative. The bell-ringers may continue because of the pleasure of ringing and because they admire Winston Churchill. The schoolmistress will not go . . . because being semi-educated and class-conscious, she has 'theories' about religion and regards the parson as too dogmatic . . .

"If he teaches religion, if he attempts to be definite, if he admonishes and exhorts, if he really loves God and his neighbor fearlessly, he will be despised and rejected . . . Scandals will be spread about him and the witchlike malice of the self-righteous will fall on him. The pride of the semi-educated . . . will flourish in village sloth. 'Many country people think there is something in all this religion,' as [Anglican Layman] Samuel Gurney says, 'and they aren't going to have anything to do with it.'

"The country parson's cross is heavy with their apathy, and sharp with their hate. He sees his failure round him every day. Only the very few help him to bear it. Small wonder if sometimes he fails."