6 Traditionalism

Are we to understand that Christianity is no more than a

moral code based on total love, preached by a Christ who was
no more than the selfless, brilliant, illegitimate son of a poor
carpenter? Is only the Crucifixion an historical truth? Are the
Resurrection, the Ascension, the Holy Ghost no more than
myths? If so, what truths are they supposed to reveal? In a
world of shifting values and total insecurity, is there no divine
power on whom we can call to give us the strength and
courage to meet its menace? Is there no Christ of Atonement
to conquer for us the sin we cannot conquer unaided, no after-
life where we will be joined with those we love? . . . We feel
miserable and abandoned and more than anything in the
world yearn for the God who, it seems, was too good to be
true.
Having outgrown the God of our childhood, where do we
look for the God on whom we lean in our adult years? What
truths can we convey with complete conviction to our
children on the threshold of their lives? They are looking to
us for assurances we find we can no longer give with
confidence. (6)
I'm sick of the voice of the Church which gives men and
women the right to think and live as they please - surely this is
the reason the world is in the mess it's in. (701)
So far we have seen four contrasting ways of being religious.
They are so different from each other that they look almost like
four religions, although we must remember that they might not
look so distinctively different to someone from a non-Christian
culture. Each type of religiousness has been presented as having
80
 TRADITIONALISM

its own mode of belief, or cognitive style. A distinct focus of

concern has been identified for each: Jesus, the experience of
having been saved, God, and the spiritual world. The final type
of religiousness which I shall examine, and which I call
traditionalism, has no characteristic object of belief or experi-
ence. Its lack of any single, defining focus makes it appear at first
to be unlike the previous four types, but in fact this lack is its
own distinguishing feature. It is not a lack at all, but a positive
characteristic.
I shall use very few extracts from the letters to illustrate
traditionalism and therefore two quotations stand at the head of
the chapter. They should help to introduce this type of
religiousness. It would not have been difficult to find illustrative
quotations, but their inclusion would have helped the discussion
little since the sentiments would have been too familiar.
Traditionalism believes in everything conventionally included in
the Christian religion, and since the substance of its beliefs is so
well-known I shall not rehearse it, but concentrate on the style of
believing which, while it is not unknown, is less well appreciated.
Durkheim defined religion as a system of beliefs and practices
which unite believers into a community. 1 That is to say, he
disregarded the question of what beliefs and practices may
properly be called religious, and shifted attention to the question
of the function performed by those beliefs and practices which we
describe as religious. Religious beliefs, for him, were defined not
by what they are, but by what they do. Recognizing the variety of
objects regarded as sacred by different peoples, and the range of
religious attitudes, he proposed as the lowest common denomin-
ator of all religions the power of beliefs and practices to bind
together all those who share them. What struck him most forcibly
about religion was its obligatory character. Writing about the
France of his own day, in the midst of the Dreyfus Affair, when
the authority of Catholicism was much weakened and yet when
certain ideas and institutions could still command universal
respect among Frenchmen, he said:
We know today that a religion does not necessarily imply
symbols and rites in the full sense, or temples and priests. All
this external apparatus is merely its superficial aspect.
Essentially, it is nothing other than a system of collective
beliefs and practices that have a special authority. 2
Now this may or may not be an accurate account of what is 'truly'
religious, but it should be immediately apparent that most of
what passes for religion in our own day has exactly the opposite
quality. Each of the four types of religious attitude described so

81
TRADITIONALISM

far is voluntary, not compulsory, and so on Durkheim's view

none is properly regarded as religious. He himself suggested that
the religion which had emerged at the end of the nineteenth
century centred on the sanctity and inviolability of the individual,
whose rights and whose dignity were alone regarded as above
discussion.3 Thomas Luckmann, one of the few social scientists to
have restated Durkheim's position, argues that the religion of the
Churches is effectively dead, and, in a more pessimistic mood
than Durkheim ever adopted, he suggests that the notions which
in our culture are sufficiently obligatory to merit being called
'religious' are such things as individual autonomy, self-
expression, self-realization, the mobility ethos, sexuality, and
family centredness.4 I mention the Durkheimian perspective
because this fifth type of religiousness, unlike the previous four,
is experienced as having precisely this quality of obligatoriness.
In examining it in some detail what will be striking, I think, will
be the necessity of believing, rather than what is believed. A
similar quality was remarked upon in the discussion of conver-
sionism. I suggested that the insistence with which conversionists
will affirm the truth of a range of beliefs should be interpreted as
a series of re-affirmations of the central experience of having
been saved. In the case of traditionalism there is no focal point,
but the general tenor of affirmation is as striking as with
conversionism. Its significance will become clear in the course of
the discussion.
The essence of traditionalism as a style of religion is that it
cherishes the tradition which it has received. It may be simply
appreciative, wishing to affirm all it has known as good, or it may
be aggressive, defending belligerently its security. Although
superficially different, these are no more than moods evoked by
different external circumstances. They are the responses made by
one type of religiousness to a variety of situations, ranging from
defensive postures, through relaxed moods, to postures of attack.
Conservation is an idea which is in vogue at the present time,
but what it stands for is far from new. Long before anyone talked
of conservation the farmer, for example, was a conservationist.
Good farmers know every inch of their land: they appreciate its
needs and its potential, they care for it, and they are concerned
that when they hand on their farms they should be as good as
when they received them, and if possible better. Keeping a farm
in good order is an end in itself, worth doing for its own sake,
and although the value of a property may be increased or its
profitability rise, such things were incidental to the best
traditional farmer, whose main concern was conservation. The
craftsman, too, is a conservationist when he receives, guards, and
82
 TRADITIONALISM

passes on a skill, for craftsmanship demands patient respect for

traditional wisdom and skills. This spirit of conservation finds
ready expression in religion, for religious tradition accords well
with the pattern of receiving, cherishing, and handing on. Just as
it takes a lifetime for the farmer to know his land and how to care
for it, or the joiner to become a skilled craftsman, so a lifetime
may be spent learning for oneself the wisdom accumulated over
countless generations and enshrined in a religious tradition. In a
traditional culture, religion is the quintessence of the stable and
secure pattern of receiving, preserving, and handing on, and,
furthermore, it constitutes a framework within which the pattern
is accepted as universal and God-given. In more tangible ways,
too, religion stands as the epitome of the established order of
life. Church buildings have traditionally been intended to last for
ever, or at any rate for many centuries, and the rite with which
both buildings and their contents are consecrated sets them apart
and hallows them for ever. Even the organizational officers of a
Church, the bishops or ministers, are ordained or consecrated for
life. A secure and unchanging pattern of life, then, is the very
essence of religion. The absolute character of religious truths and
the changeless quality of religious buildings, the religious
organization, religious music and forms of religious worship, all
epitomize tradition and guarantee it.
Traditionalism is a style of religiousness which holds to the old
ways. What has been described as the essence of religion in the
preceding paragraph may seem quaint and out of date, but for
the traditionalist it remains the norm.
One can see readily enough that for this type of religious
attitude every single element in its tradition is important. Each
detail has a unique and familiar place in the pattern as a whole,
and so if any particular is threatened or called into question it is
the pattern itself which is put at risk, for it is the stability of the
whole pattern which is sacred; herein lies the peculiarity and the
distinctiveness of traditionalism as a type of religiousness. And a
distinctive cognitive style goes with traditionalism. The attitude is
one of unquestioning acceptance, of taking for granted, and yet
of sincerely appreciating the religious traditions. We understand
what traditionalists mean when they say, 'I believe', if we take
them to be saying T cherish and hold dear'.5 The cognitive style
involves no assertion of truth, and implies no doubt. Thus the
way in which traditionalists believe is distinctively different from
the ways in which the previous four styles of religiousness
believe.
As we normally encounter it, traditionalism expresses itself
with a self-assurance which is unable to conceive of doubt or of
83
TRADITIONALISM

contradiction. When traditionalists encounter unbelief they

regard it as sad, or bad, or mad, but they do not take it seriously.
You cannot ask traditionalists, therefore, to explain what they
believe, or why they believe it. They find that they simply cannot
tell you what they believe and the best they can do is to recite the
creed, or to quote a verse from the Bible, or to mention some
lines from a favourite hymn. The problem of why they believe is
more difficult still. They tend to treat the very question with
incredulity, and say, The same yesterday, today, and for ever',
or invoke some other such saying to express the conviction that
things just are so, and could not conceivably be otherwise.
When in England a bishop of the Established Church says that
he thinks it unlikely that Jesus physically ascended into the sky
and may not physically have risen from the grave, that a meal
shared with friends may be as holy as Holy Communion and that
fornication need not invariably be wrong, then even self-assured
traditionalists feel compelled to take seriously the implicit
questions, What do you believe? and, Why do you believe it?
When forced to express itself, traditionalism can be articulated in
more moods than one, as I have suggested. When one is
personally threatened there is not a straight choice as to whether
one will either capitulate or fight: some will sadly resign
themselves to injury, some will attack their assailant vigorously,
some will attempt forcibly to restrain the person who attacks
yiem as someone who must be deranged. Similarly traditionalism
responds in a variety of ways, and the traditionalism which is
represented in the letters addressed to Dr Robinson is expressed,
as one would expect, in tones of distress, disgust, and dismay. If
religion is seen as a symbol of changelessness and security then
any threat to religion will be regarded as an outrage which
threatens to undermine that security, and it will seem all the
more outrageous if the threat comes from a bishop - from one
who has been appointed to be a custodian of the religious
tradition. The first of the two quotations at the beginning of this
chapter expresses the sad distress experienced by some people
when doubts arise. What is striking about traditionalism, and
what is illustrated by that quotation, is that religion is a matter of
all or nothing. Life is at risk of falling apart altogether unless the
whole tradition is true.
While a religion is a total way of life rather than a set of ideas,
every religion does also contain a set of answers to certain
recurring questions. If religions differ from one another that is
because, amongst other things, some particular question may be
of predominant importance, and an answer to it may colour the
whole religious attitude. We saw, for example, that the limits
84
 TRADITIONALISM

imposed by death, disease and human perception may force the

question of what lies beyond those limits, and that gnosticism
answers the question by affirming a spiritual reality which is
opposed to material reality. Each type of religious attitude which
has been described has its own particular central question, and an
appropriately elaborated answer. In the last chapter I suggested
that gnosticism deals with the problem of evil by treating it as
part of a world which is sub-natural in comparison with the world
of the spirit. Its theodicy is based on a dualistic view of the
universe so that God cannot be accused of allowing evil to affect
us. 'Why should this happen?' is not a question which gnostics
address to God. Gnosticism prevents the question from being a
problem by making sure that it is never asked, and thus, in a
sense, it is an efficient form of religiousness. Given the right
social conditions, traditionalism is more efficient still, and is
much the most efficient type of religiousness of the five described
here, if we use 'efficient' in the same sense. It has an answer to
no question in particular, but in its own special way it is able to
prevent any troubling question from being asked at all.
Traditionalism consists of a series of beliefs and practices which
shield the believer from ever being troubled by questions by
defining the whole of experience as unproblematical.
There is a traditional way of doing anything one cares to think
of. In every stable culture there is a recipe for every situation and
a prescribed solution to every problem, be it great or small, and
in large part it is the ready acceptance of these recipes and
solutions which renders such societies stable. When a problem
leads unavoidably to the need to decide between two incompat-
ible courses of action (shall we wage war, or not?) there is a
prescribed way in which to decide, such as divination or the
drawing of lots, and there are no problems which do not have
their own traditional solutions. In a similar way there are no
questions which do not have their own traditional answers, and in
traditional, stable cultures it is difficult to draw a line between the
religious and the secular: all is a matter of tradition, and tradition
is all. Traditionalism, either secular or religious, makes life easy
by providing an exhaustive and definitive set of recipes for life,
but only - and this defines the 'right conditions' in which
traditionalism is so efficient a type of religiousness - in a society
which is highly stable.
Although few people in the western world today may be said
to live even in pockets of traditional culture, for most of us there
are segments of life, at least, in which we are traditional. In
theory, a traditional solution or answer is usually available to us,
but it is a real option only if it is self-evidently right, for

85
TRADITIONALISM

traditional solutions are convincing precisely because no alterna-

tive seems credible.6 The so-called ultimate problems of the
meaning of life and death, of good and evil, which conventionally
define the area of religious problems, constitute one of those
segments of life within whose boundaries traditionalism may
reign for some people, and the problems are thereby rendered
unproblematical. A whole structure of belief and practice will
exist which is a matter of habit and routine. When one of these
so-called ultimate problems is encountered it is, as it were,
referred to religion, which provides an answer. Because solutions
and answers are known to exist, however, the questions do not
actually pose problems in any serious sense. Rites of passage
provide the clearest examples of this mechanism at work. Some
degree of anxiety generally accompanies a person's coming to
adulthood and to marriage, the experience of a birth and of a
death, and whether the anxiety is resolved in happiness or in grief
there is always a tendency to look for an explanation. Religious
tradition takes these events and surrounds them with ritual, and
by endowing the ritual with supernatural meanings and expla-
nations which locate the experience of the particular event within
a larger story, it makes it part of a larger pattern of meaning. By
prescribing a marriage ritual, for example, the meaning of the
event is prescribed - for the couple, for all those present, and for
the couple again through their awareness that those present have
expectations which follow from the meaning of the event. The
rite provides answers to questions before they have even been
asked. It places the unique event in a larger context, thereby
assuring the people involved that the questions and anxieties
which inevitably accompany a unique event have been faced
before, and that it's 'alright'.7 The strength of traditionalism as a
style of religiousness is that it conveys the feeling that all
problems do have a solution, and it does this by rehearsing the
solutions in solemn fashion as though everyone, for all time, has
known them to be true.
What I am calling traditionalism is a true type of religiousness,
for although it has no specific content its distinctive feature is its
form. In the context of the West, however, and of England in
particular, traditionalism has its proper content as well as its
universal form. Even within England the content varies since
there are Roman Catholic and Methodist traditionalisms as well
as the traditionalism which holds dear the orthodox formulations
of the Church of England. Church-going is an obligatory practice,
though considerable laxity is readily tolerable; the Church as an
organization is indispensible and it is represented at a national
level by the bishops who sit in the House of Lords and are
86
 TRADITIONALISM

concerned with matters of state, as their subordinates are at the

civic and rural levels. It is of the greatest importance to
traditionalism that the Church's presence should be felt and that
constant reaffirmations of its role should be made in everyday
life, and the clergy are indispensible for this. The clergy are not
only the guardians of religion but are themselves religious
symbols every bit as palpably as are cathedrals and parish
churches. Christian morality also forms an integral part of the
pattern, not as a set of abstract principles but as clear and definite
rules which are easily grasped, and the traditionalist believes that
the law of the land should embody the teachings of the Church.
Other parts of the religious institution are similarly regarded as
important, though some of them may seem to be trivial in
themselves: traditionalism prizes Sunday Schools, and sets great
store by the compulsory provision of religious education in state
schools; it is even concerned when the BBC proposes to cease
broadcasting Choral Evensong on the Home Service at four
o'clock on Wednesday afternoons.8
The power of traditionalism as a religious attitude lies in its
completeness as a pattern of prescribed rules and beliefs. It
provides a total context in which decisions and perplexities and
pains are given a meaning. You do not have to search out the
meaning: your task is to receive and accept it. But the total and
all-embracing character of traditionalism is not only its strength,
it is its weakness as well, since the questioning of one particular
throws the whole thing into doubt. Tradition is the source of
certainty, but if the tradition should be wrong in any one
particular then the whole structure is shaken and it becomes
unreliable in all other particulars.
One letter has been quoted to illustrate the extent of the
distress which can be caused when the traditional pattern is
shaken. The train of thought runs thus: If Jesus was not God,
then how can I bring up my family and how can I live my life?
There is a converse train of thought which is no less important,
however, for there are some traditionalists who have a skeleton
in the cupboard, and if someone breaches the tradition in one
particular and then finds, contrary to expectations, that the rest
of the pattern remains intact, then that person is left with a guilty
secret. It may be that someone has been divorced and remarried,
or has secretly rejected the virgin birth of Jesus. The result is a
permanent perplexity which asks how it is possible that the pattern
of tradition can be breached, and yet that the whole thing has not
collapsed. So while many may find their entire world shaken by a
bishop who questions the proposition that Jesus ascended bodily
into the skies, there are others who, themselves having doubted
87
TRADITIONALISM

that very thing all their lives, find their world whole and intact
again when, on the authority of a bishop, they learn that there is
nothing wrong with having such doubts. Whether the tradition a
person cherishes is undermined by some doubt, or restored by
that doubt being made legitimate, the implications are the same:
the total pattern of beliefs, practices, and moral rules remains
intact as a type of religious attitude. Before considering other
aspects of traditionalism let us take one last look at the dismay
which doubt may cause, expressed in the following letter with a
simplicity granted only to the young and the old:
I am an old person of eighty-six, and my parents brought all the
family up to believe in the teaching of Jesus as told in the four
gospels. I have not read your book Honest to God in fact and
could not take it in if I did read it as I could not follow the talk
in Meeting Point on BBC when you were discussing it. I must
belong to that class that Jesus said - except ye become as little
children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But I would
like to ask you if you would truthfully say yes or no to the
following questions? Is it true that God so loved the world that
he sent his only beloved son that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish but have everlasting life? And that He said -
In my Father's house are many mansions, I go to prepare a
place for you? Do you believe that Christ was born of the
Virgin Mary? That he died and rose again? and do you believe
in the Day of Judgement? A lot of old people are very
worried over the controversy on religion, and would like
assurance from the heads of the church. (610)
A simple assurance is sought: that God and all that God stands
for are the same today as always, and that everything will remain
stable and secure.
I have argued that this type of religious attitude is vulnerable
to an attack on any aspect of its belief since it is the overall
pattern which is important. That proposition needs to be
somewhat qualified, however, for there are two points at which
traditionalism as a type of Christian religiousness may be
especially vulnerable. The first point is belief about Jesus Christ,
and the second is the authority of the Bible.
In the first letter to the Church at Corinth St Paul wrote, 'If
Christ be not raised, your faith is vain.' Without doubt this belief
is important in the Christian religion, but it is of special
importance to traditionalism as a type of religious attitude. It was
suggested above that traditionalism cannot easily state what it
believes or why it believes it. In a wholly traditional culture the
reasons for belief in the tradition need never be examined, but
88
 TRADITIONALISM

they must inevitably be pondered when traditionalism lives

alongside scepticism and, as a rule, one point gets singled out as
the linchpin of tradition and thereafter it becomes the symbol and
final authority for the tradition as a whole. The resurrection of
Jesus from the dead has been so treated in Christian traditional-
ism, and for some believers this historical fact has become the
crux of the whole tradition and the proof which is often given as
the reason for belief. Now it could be that there are reasons
internal to the structure of the Christian religion which make
the bodily resurrection decisive for the truth or falsity of
Christianity, but, whether this is so or not, it is clear that for
some Christians the belief has been accorded its preeminent
status for extrinsic reasons. It is clear because those who cite the
resurrection as irrefutable evidence clearly are convinced
believers anyway, and the evidence is produced for the benefit of
others. When confronted with the question, 'Why do you
believe?' there are some who, while not wishing to, feel
themselves constrained to make some kind of reply, and this
assertion of the historicity of the resurreciton has come to be a
common defence of traditionalism: it is a flag to wave and a
slogan to shout. The reasons why the resurrection should have
become so important a belief are not difficult to recognize. The
empirical tradition in British culture, and the respect for
empirically based ideas which makes the temper of British
intellectual tradition so distinctive, predispose the British to
appeal to something empirical even when explaining their
religious beliefs. The result has been what amounts to an
obsession with the idea that Christianity is an 'historical religion1,
in which the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the
dead has been made the key-stone. This belief, then, is especially
vulnerable to attack because it has been proclaimed as proof of
the truth of Christianity.
The authority of the Bible is the other belief to which
traditionalists appeal. 'Because the Bible says so' is a sufficient
reason for many people to give when asked to explain a belief or
a practice or a moral precept. The way in which this is another
symbol and guarantee of the authority of tradition is illustrated
by the following passage from a letter:

I was brought up in the Anglican faith and was a Soloist for

over 40 years and in all my years in the service of my great and
wonderful creator I have never heard such outright blasphemy
coming from the lips of those who should be striving to bolster
our faith in the Scriptures, instead of tearing the word of God
apart and trying to make us believe it a myth. . . . II Peter

89
TRADITIONALISM

i.20-21 tells us that all the Scriptures were inspired by God.

Jer. x.10 tells us the Lord is the true God. He would not
mislead his people by myths. . . . I wonder, does modern
science discredit the flood in Noah's day also? Is it any wonder
that our young people have gone haywire over the Beatles and
people of questionable character such as Christine Keeler etc.
Our young people just don't know what to believe in any more
(1643)

Biblical fundamentalism is a belief which can appear in many

contexts. It is embraced by the kind of religiousness which I have
called conversionism, for example, but there it is of subsidiary
importance since the grounds for belief are in the experience of
conversion. Its paramount significance for traditionalism is
symbolic: as with belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the
final authority of the Bible is expressive of a whole traditional
pattern of which it is a part.
Traditionalism as a type of religious attitude is marked by a
certainty which is unquestioning. It is not only certain, it is
delighted by its certainty, for the stable and secure order which it
knows is something to guard and cherish. It affirms and
reinforces the present structure of society, resisting every
innovation. It is unconcerned with abstract principles and
interested only in applications. Principles are a positive hind-
rance, indeed, for they exist to justify particular beliefs, practices
or precepts, which need no such external authentication, and
therefore principles constitute a threat to traditionalism, whose
very essence is unquestioning acceptance. The spirit of conserva-
tion which characterizes traditionalism is ipso facto conservative.
Unlike theism, from which social conservatism follows as a con-
sequence, traditionalism actually entails social conservatism,
of which it is part and parcel. In so far as traditionalism is
prominent as a type of religious attitude in the Churches, religion
is a simple expression of conservatism. It is not its spirit, as
theism may be argued to be, but its solemn expression. Nor is it
simply the mechanism of inertia which checks particular changes,
for since the main thrust of traditionalism is to keep a whole
religious tradition intact it is necessarily opposed to any change
and is always on the alert to press any attempt at innovation back
into the established mould.
The ways in which, when it cannot suppress change, tradi-
tionalism manages to meet specific changes, disarm them and
make allies of them, are many and complex. There are numerous
examples of this in religious history and there is no reason to
doubt that radical changes in belief, if they were not effectively
90
 TRADITIONALISM

prevented, would meet the same fate again at the hands of

traditionalism. Referring to the way in which radical theology
was being received by the traditional religious institutions, Peter
Berger wrote in 1967:
We strongly suspect that this process of neutralization is
already taking place as these 'challenging new insights' are
integrated in various ecclesiastical programs. In this process
there is nothing to prevent the 'death of God' from becoming
but another program emphasis, which, if properly adminis-
tered, need not result in undue disturbances in the ongoing life
of the institution.9
That process within the religious institution has its equivalent in
the religious attitude, for the most striking feature of a certainty
which is shaken by one conscientious doubt is the integrity of its
total structure. The implicit plea which underlies traditionalism is
not for questions to be answered, but for all questioning to be
taken away and put under the lock and key of a trustworthy
authority.
It is no accident that each of the few letters quoted in this
chapter has contained some mention of the confusion and
disarray of contemporary society. Traditionalism as a type of
religious attitude is intimately connected with a conservative
attitude towards social and personal affairs, and here, as in
matters of belief, the basis of certainty is found in the willingness
to accept tradition, to respect it, and guard it jealously. A letter
from a clergyman expressed this point explicitly:
It seems to me that the worst feature of Honest to God and also
of your television appearances is the appalling harm they have
done to pastoral work in this country and the immensely more
difficult burden they have put on parish priests.
From the pastoral point of view Lady Chatterley's Lover has
done immense harm. You did a great deal in bringing about a
sale of 3*2 million copies.10 However you may try to pretend it
is a good book, yet the effect on ordinary people has been
bad.
Your book Honest to God and the newspaper article which
gave your interpretation of it have given people the impression
that the old ideas of God are only fit for the scrapheap. I am
not saying that this was your intention, but what I am saying
about the effect is only too true. Indeed I consider you to have
done more harm to the pastoral work of the ordinary parish
priest than anyone has ever done before. You have given the
impression that you despise the ordinary old-fashioned
91
TRADITIONALISM

Christian. To show contempt for the ordinary Christian and

the ordinary parish priest is about the worst thing that a bishop
or parish priest can do.
Worst of all in my opinion was your short appearance in
that BBC Sunday television programme in which you started
off by once more commending Lady Chatter ley's Lover as
giving the true attitude to sex, then praising Vidler's television
appearance and finally saying how much you enjoyed That
Was the Week That Was (where the most sacred beliefs of
Roman Catholics and Jews were held up to ridicule). I saw
Vidler's television performance and it was really nasty. He
said he had no use for parsons and his voice was horribly full
of contempt. He also had no use for ordinary services. For a
priest to have contempt for his fellow-clergy, who have
parishes, is about as low as a priest can descend. . . .
It is not so much what you have written that is bad, but
what appears to me the most horrible and evil attitude of
contempt and superiority to ordinary decent Christians. (1230)
The 'ordinary', of course, is what is traditional; and contempt is
the opposite of the attitude which traditionalism demands.
Concern with morality is of the deepest importance for
traditionalism. The overriding need is for a fixed set of rules, and
their absolute necessity is more vital than anything else. The
point can be made by quoting another letter:
You say that the Church's attitude to homosexuality has
undergone the same transition as that to capital punishment. I
do hope that the government will not catch up with the Church
- if she has altered about homosexuality. Also I do not agree
with the abolition of capital punishment. It would be alright if
the people sentenced were in for life. We had a case here of a
man who murdered a girl about 17. Then he went to a country
town and shot and killed another girl and wounded a school
mistress while they were in the Chapel at prayers. He was let
out of a mental hospital, after the first murder. With regard to
homosexuality it is a perversion. Many small boys have
probably been coerced or even just raped like little girls these
days. After all Sodom was destroyed because of that sin.
I know you keep coming back to Love being stronger than
the law. But what do you mean by love? It seems that your
idea of love is to give people things, regardless of whether it is
right or wrong. Love is caring for people. And divorce is not
caring for your partner. It is a pity the divorced were received
at Buckingham Palace. I feel that so many marriages would
have been saved if it was not so easy to get divorced. Many
92
 TRADITIONALISM

children saved endless mental agony. To do that it is

sometimes kinder to resist giving in to them.
I know what you are trying to get at. To me your ideas
seem so muddled and wooly. I do not like capital punishment
myself, but if that man had been hanged the school girl would
have been alive today. The teacher and the rest of the girls are
probably scarred for the rest of their lives in their minds.
I do think that something should be done about the Church
of England. The priests are allowed too much latitude. We
have men here who preach against the miracles. If you don't
believe in miracles you can't be a Christian, I feel, as Christ's
birth was a miracle and he said, 4If you can't believe in me
believe in my works.'
PS When if ever do you think Fornication is right? Don't you
believe that Christ is God? (1669)
While particular offences may cause disgust and horror it is the
fear of uncertainty which is most powerfully conveyed in the
letter quoted above, and in the second quotation at the beginning
of the chapter. What differentiates traditionalism from all other
styles of religiousness is the obligatory nature of the prescribed
beliefs. Even when appeal is made to the authority of the Bible
or to the conclusive proof of the 'empty tomb' it is the same kind
of certainty which is thereby established. The whole corpus of
beliefs, practices and values have about them the quality of the
sacred. There can be no question of degrees of belief in this type
of religious attitude: it is all or nothing.
Yet again we have seen a style of religiousness here which
deserves to be identified as something distinctive. To describe the
traditionalist as being 'very religious' would be inadequate and
misleading.

93