Theology 0(0) 1–9 ! The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: Christian public ethics sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav tjx.sagepub.com Robin Gill

This special online issue of Theology focuses upon Christian public ethics or, more specifically, upon those forms of Christian ethics that have contributed sig- nificantly to public debate. Throughout the 95 years of the journal’s history, there has been discussion about public ethics (even if it has not always been named as such). However, Christian public ethics had a particular flourishing between 1965 and 1975, when Professor Gordon Dunstan (1918–2004) was editor. When I became editor of Theology in January 2014, I acknowledged at once my personal debt to Gordon. He encouraged and published my very first article when I was still a postgraduate in 1967, and several more articles beyond that. And, speaking personally, his example of deep engagement in medical ethics was inspirational. When he died, The Telegraph noted the following among his many achievements:

He was president of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and vice-president of the London Medical Group and of the Institute of Medical Ethics. During the 1960s he was a member of a Department of Health Advisory Group on Transplant Policy, and from 1989 to 1993 he served on a Department of Health committee on the Ethics of Gene Therapy. From 1990 onwards he was a member of the Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority and from 1989 to 1993 he served on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. (19 January 2004)

The two most substantial ethical contributions that I have discovered in searching through back issues of Theology were both published when he was editor and were doubtless directly encouraged by him. The first was written by the Anglican Professor Ronald Preston on his inspirational teacher and shaper of post-war welfare thinking, Professor Richard Tawney. The second was written by the Roman Catholic Professor Enda McDonagh on one of the most vexed politico- ethical issues at the time, the legalization of induced abortion. Both articles are searching and scholarly and raise many ethical issues that are still relevant today; they are republished in full in this online issue of Theology. Before setting them into context, it is worth mentioning some of the other con- tributions to Theology from the 1920s through to the 1950s. 2 Theology 0(0)

In the first issue of Theology (July 1920), T. W. Pym (1885–1945), author eight years later of Spiritual Direction, wrote a review of the recent report of a committee appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The report was entitled The Church and Social Work. In his review, Pym commended the public role of the Church of England at the time:

This Report is a natural corollary to the Report of the Archbishops’ Fifth Committee of Inquiry, ‘Christianity and Industrial Problems.’ The terms of reference were ‘to consider and report upon the ways in which clergy, Church-workers, and Church- people generally can best co-operate with the State in all matters concerning the social life of the community.’ The Report deals first with actual opportunities of social service, and is then divided into a consideration of (1) the clergy, (2) the laity, and (3) the parish in regard to it. There is a note on rural problems, and four Appendices which form perhaps the most valuable part of the Report as a whole. The book is a practical guide to those who, having read the Report on ‘Christianity and Industrial Problems,’ wish to take definite action.

We welcome the frank recognition throughout that the Church must care for the whole man – body, mind, and spirit – and that the line drawn in the past between secular and religious service has often been fictitious. There is nothing in the Report that is better than the frank statement that the Church of England cannot rightly confine its social activities to the more or less limited circle of those who are attached to it; that this may very easily become, not co-operation with the State, but self- centred competition against it. ‘The Church must co-operate, not compete, with the State, and it must accept the responsibility for the fullest social welfare not merely of the select few but of the whole community.’ (p. 57)

Six months later, Kenneth Kirk (1886–1954) wrote a substantial article in two parts (January and February 1921) on ‘Moral Theology: Some Lessons of the Past’. Not only was this article substantial at the time, it remained the longest article on moral theology or Christian ethics (I have never been very convinced about the difference between the two) until Ronald Preston’s articles in the 1960s. Kirk had served as an army chaplain during the First World War, before returning to Oxford as a tutor at Keble College. In 1920, he published his pioneering Some Principles of Moral Theology. He then became Reader in Moral Theology and subsequently Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, before being appointed Bishop of Oxford in 1937. He was one of the very few holders of this Oxford chair to contribute significantly to Theology on the subject of Christian ethics until the present holder, Nigel Biggar. Although substantial, Kirk’s article is, by modern standards, too dated to be reproduced in full here. In less ecumenical days he wrote at length about the Gill 3

‘depressing deterioration of [Roman Catholic] moral theology’ – viewing it as overly legalistic and authoritarian (especially within the confessional):

[M]odern manuals compare very badly with the Summa Theologica. In the latter St. Thomas assigns at most eight questiones to the decalogue, and is concerned rather with its duration and authority than with its contents; whilst he gives no less than 170 to the discussion of virtues and sins based upon the cardinal and theological virtues. On the other hand, in one of the most modern Roman Catholic manuals, the Summarium of Fr. Arregui, the cardinal and theological virtues are dismissed in 30 pages, whilst 145 are given to the Ten Commandments; and in this Arregui is no more than following the examples of Liguori and Gury. St. Alphonso gives 37 pages to the theological virtues, 800 to the decalogue; Gury 27 to the theological virtues, 97 to the decalogue. (pp. 58–9)

In the issue of December 1930, the theologian Lionel Thornton (1884–1961) of the Community of the Resurrection wrote a significant article, ‘Christianity and Morality: Some Reflections on the Present Situation’. It is written in a less scholarly style than that of Kirk, but it does have some abiding value. The central point that he made is that purely secular accounts of ethics and attempts to derive ethics purely from science are, from a Christian perspective, inadequate:

From the religious point of view the most far-reaching characteristics of the new morality are not to be found primarily in its divergences from the traditional Christian code, startling as these may be. For what is here called the new morality includes great varieties of opinion upon particular points of morals, some of them extremely radical, others relatively conservative. The essence of the new attitude appears to be comprised under three principles: (i.) The foundations of morality are to be sought in the facts of human nature; (ii.) the facts are to be discovered by the empirical methods of science, and the moral order based upon the facts is to be built up through the assistance of scientific information and equipment; (iii.) the goal of this moral order is human happiness conceived without reference to religious sanctions or to a supernatural end.

These three points, taken together, give us the essentials of the new programme of morality. All else must be regarded as incidental detail or consequence; and it should be clear that it is only in the last of these three principles that there arises an inevitable conflict with Christian conceptions. For Christian faith, however, the third point overshadows the whole position. For us the facts of human nature include the facts of religion, without which any account of human life must be incomplete. So, too, a scientific interpretation of the facts should include an adequate explanation 4 Theology 0(0)

of the facts of religious experience and of those high transformations of character and conduct which have been interwoven with that experience in Christian history. (p. 313)

Nine years later, Britain was at war again. Unsurprisingly, war and peace became important topics in Theology. Two articles stand out above others. Karl Barth (1886–1968) was already famous in theological circles. He had by now been banished from Germany and had returned to his native Switzerland. In March 1940, Theology included a translated letter from him to a French pastor. It was theologically strident and deeply passionate, as can be seen from the following extract:

The Church of Jesus Christ cannot and will not wage war. She can and will simply pray, believe, hope, love, and proclaim and hearken to the Gospel. She knows that The Event by which we poor men are succoured in an effectual, eternal and godly way has come, comes, and will come to pass, not, according to Zech. iv, 6, by force of arms or by power or by any kind of human effort and achievement, but only by the Spirit of God. The Church therefore will not see in the cause of England and France the ‘causa Dei,’ and she will not preach a crusade against Hitler. He who died upon the Cross died for Hitler too, and, even more, for all those bewildered men who voluntarily or involuntarily serve under his banner. But precisely because the Church knows about justification which we men cannot attain by any means for ourselves, she cannot remain indifferent. She cannot remain ‘neutral’ in things great or small where justice is at stake, where the attempt is being made to establish a poor feeble human justice against over-whelming, flagrant injustice. Where this is at stake, there the Church cannot withhold her witness. It is the command of God that justice be done on earth: it is precisely for this purpose that God has instituted the State and given to it the sword; and, despite all the shortcomings of which it may otherwise be guilty, the State which endeavours to defend the right proves itself precisely by these endeavours to be a Just State, and may claim the obedience of everyone. It would be regrettable if the Christian Churches, which in previous wars have so often and so thoughtlessly spoken the language of nationalism and of militarism, should just in this war equally thoughtlessly decide to adopt the silence of neutrality and pacifism. The Churches ought today to pray in all penitence and sobriety for a just peace, and in the same penitence and sobriety to bear witness to all the world that it is necessary and worth while to fight and to suffer for this just peace. They certainly ought not to persuade the democratic states that they are, so to say, the Lord’s own warriors. But they ought to say to them that we are privileged to be human and that we must defend ourselves with the power of desperation against the in-breaking of open inhumanity. The Churches owe the duty of witnessing to the Christians in Germany as well as to the whole German nation: Your cause is not just! You are mistaken! Have no more to do Gill 5

with this Hitler! Hands off this war! It is his war alone! Change your course while there is yet time! (pp. 212–13)

In February of the following year, William Temple (1881–1944), writing as Archbishop of York but soon to become Archbishop of Canterbury, published a powerful article on the book of Revelation in Theology. He entitled it ‘The Sealed Book’. In it, he showed how the central message of Revelation could be applied to the wartime context, as can be seen in this extract:

There is no promise in this book or anywhere else in Scripture that a day will come when on this earth the victory of love is complete, nor even that hereafter all men will open their hearts to the love of God and let it direct their purposes. If we hope for that it is because we shrink from the thought that God may fail in His purpose for any human soul. But if the outcome is and must remain uncertain so far as our knowledge goes, the issue at stake is clear. Two powers are at grips in human history: love and pride. For each several soul, for every nation, for mankind itself, welfare consists in the supremacy of love, and progress is advance towards that goal. Set in the midst of history as the focus and source of the power that can carry us forward is the Cross; every true sacrifice endured and offered in service of a good cause is part of the moving power of progress, and those who endure and offer it have found the secret of life and the joy of heaven. The meaning of history is the triumph of the Lamb that was slain. ‘Behold, the Lamb of God which beareth away the sin of the world.’ (p. 71)

Ethical issues continued to be addressed in the 1950s, but I found nothing quite as substantial and powerful as these two wartime contributions. However, some of the ethical topics that were to dominate the 1960s and subsequent decades were begin- ning to emerge as topics for discussion in Theology. Canon Alec Vidler (1899– 1991), editor of Theology, reflected early and largely positively on the emerging welfare state (December 1952). D. I. Luard, a vicar in Leeds, briefly discussed suicide, which was then still illegal in Britain, and voluntary euthanasia, which of course is still illegal in Britain (April 1953). (Two decades later, Peter Baelz (1923–2000), soon to become a holder of the Oxford chair, made a lengthier, albeit non-committal, contribution on both of these issues (May 1972).) Hugh Warner, education secretary of the Church of England’s Moral Welfare Council, discussed the ethics of various forms of contraception, which had been increasingly supported since the shift at the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Bishops away from outright condemnation (January 1954). R. P. Casey, Dean of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, wrote a review article of D. S. Bailey’s influential book 6 Theology 0(0)

Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition that also pioneered something other than outright condemnation (December 1955). And the Episcopalian theo- logian Norman Pittenger (1905–97) wrote about theological understandings of sexuality, albeit without mentioning homosexuality or, at this stage when it was still illegal, that he was himself gay (July 1958). Important topics but not enduring articles. Then, in April 1960, something new and sharply different emerged. Ronald Preston (1913–2001) wrote his first article for Theology, ‘The Christian Left Still Lost’. It opens as follows:

One of the sad features of recent years has been the apparent eclipse of the various Christian Left groups in this country. They have an honourable history, going back in various ways at least to F. D. Maurice and the Christian Socialist experiment he inspired. They have never been very numerous, but at different times have had an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. Indeed, before the war, in the mount- ing crisis of the thirties, anyone at all concerned with Christianity and the social order could hardly fail to come across them. But for some years now all this has changed. A Christian interested in these concerns today is hard put to it to know which (if any) of the various Socialist Christian groups still exist. However some do exist, and mem- bers of certain of them have been meeting in a public house in Bloomsbury, and have published their conclusions in a pamphlet called after their meeting place, Papers from The Lamb. It carries twenty-three signatures, including those of John Collins, Tom Driberg, John Groser, George MacLeod, Donald Soper and Mervyn Stockwood. In the light of the election result [when the Tory Harold Macmillan won a second term as Prime Minister] it is all the more interesting to see what they have to say. The election found the Labour Party not having had time properly to digest a considerable amount of re-thinking, and the process is obviously going to continue. What have these Christian Socialists to contribute?

The question is important, for we need a vigorous, radical alternative to Toryism in this country, and one that does not depend on economic crises to come to power. There were alarming signs at the election that a country which has never had it so good [Macmillan’s election slogan] may be too disposed to sit at ease in Zion. It is also important that vigorous Christian thought should contribute to such a radical movement. (p. 478)

This article was followed less than a year later by a very substantial article by Preston entitled ‘Christian Ethics and Moral Theology: 1939–60’ (January and February 1961). It begins as follows:

Both Christian Ethics and Moral Theology are cinderellas among theological studies in Britain. The only theological discipline more neglected is the Psychology of Gill 7

Religion. It is in keeping with this neglect that Christian Ethics has recently been cast out of the General Ordination Examination of the Church of England. One theolo- gian, on hearing of this decision by the Central Advisory Council for the Training of the Ministry (as it was called until recently), remarked that a Council which thought it more important in the training of the ministry to preserve a third Old Testament paper rather than one on Christian Ethics needed its head examining. (p. 3)

A new and significant voice had arrived within Christian ethics in Britain. It was a voice that was highly committed to ecumenism and to public ethics, and shaped by his undergraduate studies in economics at the London School of Economics under the Christian prophet Professor Richard Tawney. A true professional had at last emerged within Christian public ethics and he chose Theology to stage this emergence. As with Gordon Dunstan, I must confess a personal bias. As a young curate, with a doctorate in systematic theology and now studying sociology, I hoped to become a university lecturer in applied theology, albeit with a firm, non-stipendiary foot also in parish ministry. So I sought Ronald’s advice in the early 1970s. By then, he had just been appointed to the newly established Chair of Social and Pastoral Theology at Manchester University. He gave me a detailed financial account about how a junior lectureship was unlikely at Manchester but encouraged me to look elsewhere. When, in 1972, an opportunity arose in Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at New College, Edinburgh University, especially for someone with degrees in both theology and sociology, I applied with alacrity. My next sixteen years were spent in that fruitful academic environment, first under Professor James Blackie and then under Professor Duncan Forrester – both abid- ing influences. Ronald was also a very important influence and encouragement. At the very end of his life, he even identified his earlier dissent from the Christendom Group with my dissent from Radical Orthodoxy. I felt a bit like Elisha receiving the mantle from Elijah – the latter personified in my final meetings with both Ronald and then Gordon! Inevitably after more than half a century, Preston’s account of the contempor- ary literature on Christian ethics is of limited interest today. But, at the time, it was crucial both to developing the discipline in Britain and to encouraging universities and theological colleges to appoint Christian ethicists to their staff. Of much greater interest is his article published in three parts (April–June) in 1966 in Theology. It is this that is reproduced in full within this online issue. It gives a remarkable first-hand account of Tawney and, through its criticisms, a clear indi- cation of Preston’s own position. If Kenneth Kirk was deeply critical of Roman Catholic moralists in 1921, by contrast Gordon Dunstan in 1968 turned to the distinguished Roman Catholic theologian Professor Enda McDonagh of Maynouth to give a detailed, scholarly and historical account of considerations about abortion across different 8 Theology 0(0)

denominations following the Abortion Act 1967. McDonagh’s article was also published in three parts (September–November) in Theology and is reproduced in full here. It does not actually reach a clear conclusion, but perhaps that is not surprising given sharp sensitivities within the author’s own Church. However, it does set out theological and ethical differences between denominations that still divide Christians today. The British Abortion Act 1967 was swiftly interpreted as allowing any abortion within the first trimester and some abortions almost up to gestation. This was not the position taken in the Church of England’s 1965 report Abortion: An Ethical Discussion chaired by Bishop Ian Ramsey and with Dunstan acting as secretary. Nevertheless, this report did propose legal reform based upon ‘grave risk of the patient’s death or serious injury to her health or physical or mental well-being’, taking into account ‘the patient’s total environment, actual or reasonably foreseeable’ (p. 67). This was highly significant in the political con- text of the time. Writing later, Dunstan regretted the liberal interpretation of the Abortion Act that lead to so many abortions (The Artifice of Ethics, London: SCM Press, 1974, p. 87), but neither he nor the House of Bishops (including Rowan Williams when Archbishop – the most pro-life of recent Primates) ever campaigned actively for its repeal. A very similar pattern emerged on the issue of divorce. The Divorce Reform Act 1969 was preceded by lengthy discussions within the Church of England and by the report Putting Asunder (1966), again with important inputs from Ian Ramsey and Gordon Dunstan. A special issue of Theology on Marriage and Divorce in May 1975 considered some of the theological and ethical issues involved. In his final year as editor, Dunstan published important articles by J. R. Lucas, Professor John MacQuarrie and Lady Helen Oppenheimer, together (more quirkily) with an ear- lier sermon of his own, all of which are reproduced here. Some theologians and senior clergy were more supportive of the Divorce Reform Act than others, but many regretted that it had gone too far. Yet, once again, a process of legal reform that had been encouraged significantly by a Church of England report did not lead to a bishops’ campaign for repeal despite subsequent regrets about its outcomes. The influence of the Church of England on both abortion and divorce reform has sometimes been used as an example of misguided theological/ecclesiastical intervention (although it should be noted that a very similar intervention in the 1960s against capital punishment has seldom been criticized). For critics, it would have been better to have opposed such reforms altogether, effectively leaving abor- tion as illegal and divorce as very difficult and expensive to attain. I am not sure that Archbishop Michael Ramsey (1904–88), under whose primacy this all occurred, would have agreed. For him, I suspect, compassion required otherwise even if it risked losing some effective political control. A world without deaths from illegal abortions and the poor imprisoned within destructive marriages was finally deemed preferable to one with them. Moving to recent times, it is even more difficult for me to be impartial since I was often a part of the ethical debates. Nowhere was this more the case than in the heated debates about homosexuality that ignited the 1998 Lambeth Conference Gill 9

of Bishops and received worldwide attention. I had drafted the preparatory report on sexuality ahead of the conference and had published an article effectively (but of course not explicitly) setting out its main points in Theology in July 1996 based upon consultations that I had had in Australia. Three years ahead of me, a fresh theologian, Michael Banner, had published a striking theological attack upon the Bishops’ influential paper ‘Issues in Sexuality’ in Theology in July 1993. In 1995, having been appointed in the previous year to the moral theology chair at Kings College, London – the chair Dunstan once occupied – he was a key co-author of the ‘St Andrew’s Day Statement’. This was quoted in the final Lambeth Conference report on homosexuality and widely used at the time by those critical of the pos- ition taken in my initial draft. To give some balance, I have included both of our Theology articles on this ethical issue that still deeply divides Christians in many denominations. All of this may give the impression that Theology has mainly been concerned with personal ethical issues and sexuality. So, to restore the balance, I have also included articles by four other current theologians who have contributed to Theology on broader social issues. The first is by Professor Nigel Biggar. In the last two years while I have been editor he has contributed significantly to Theology on both gay marriage and the relationship of the Church to the State. However I have chosen a much earlier article of his, published in November 1988. It is a careful but critical review article of the Church of England Board of Social Responsibility’s report Changing Britain (1987). The second is by Professor Michael Northcott who has done more than most to promote Christian ethical thought about the environment and climate change. The article reproduced here from July 2004 is a characteristically passionate piece on ‘the economy of the gift’. The third is by Professor Tim Gorringe and was published in Theology in July 2008. It is the most unusual of all of the contributions to this online issue as its title indicates: ‘Reflections on The Good Pub Guide’. He is, though, especially gifted at enabling others to see the theological implications of areas such as architecture and town planning. Finally I have chosen Professor David Horrell’s deeply informative article ‘The Ecological Challenge to Biblical Studies’, which was first published in Theology in May 2009. It nuances the widespread claim that Christian theism has resulted in human damage to the environment. I do hope that you enjoy all of these articles as much as I have done.