View source for VII THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE

<CENTER><b>VII<br><br>

THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE</b></CENTER>

<br><br>THERE has been a great deal of talk since the war began of
&quot;the Church's opportunity.&quot; It is one of those vague
phrases which are the delight of the man who has no responsibility
in the matter, and the despair of those who have. It suggests
that &quot;somebody ought to do something,&quot; and in this case
the &quot;somebody&quot; darkly hinted at is obviously the unfortunate
chaplain. I have seen letters from chaplains complaining bitterly
of the phrase. What did it mean? Did it mean that there was an
opportunity of providing soldiers with free notepaper and cheap
suppers? If so, they agreed. There was an opportunity, and the
Church had risen to the occasion. But if it meant that there was
an opportunity of bringing the erring back to the fold, they wished
someone would come and show them how it ought to be done. They
had tried their hardest, and it seemed to them that men were as
inaccessible as ever. They admitted that they had hoped that the
war would make men more serious, and that when confronted daily
by the mysteries of death and pain they would naturally turn to
the Church of their baptism for comfort and ghostly strength.
But this had not happened to any marked extent. The men still
appeared to be the same careless, indifferent heathen that they
had always been.

<br><br>To sit at a typewriter and tell a man how to do his job is
a despicable proceeding, and yet I suppose that it is more or
less what I am attempting in writing this article. To avoid being
offensive, it seems best to begin by explaining how I came to
think that I ought to be able to shed some light on the subject.

<br><br>It all began with a Quest. It is quite legitimate to call it
a quest. It was the Romance of the Unknown that enticed us, just
as it enticed necromancers and alchemists and explorers in former
days. Only our Unknown was quite close to our hand. It looked
up at us from. the faces that we passed in the street. As we stood
on the Embankment it frowned at us from across the river, from
that black mass of factories and tenements and narrow, dismal
streets that crowns the Thames' southern bank. The very air that
we breathed was pungent with it. It was simply humanity that was
our Unknown---the part of humanity which earns its daily bread
hardly, which knows what it is to be cold and hungry and ill,
and to have to go on working in spite of it. Just as the Buddha
left the sheltered life of his father's palace to become a vagabond
in the quest of truth, so we, who had been guarded from hardship,
and who were confused by the endless argument &quot;about it and
about,&quot; thought that we might gain a truer perspective by
mingling with men whose minds had not been confused by artificial
complications, and whose philosophy must have grown naturally
from their naked struggle with the elemental realities. We thought
that we could learn from them what were the truths which really
mattered, what really was the relative value of the material,
the mental, and the spiritual.

<br><br>To cut a long story short, we went and lived in a mean street,
opened clubs where we could meet the working man or boy, enticed
him to our rooms and regaled him with buns and Egyptian cigarettes,
and did our level best to understand his point of view. The venture
was not a complete success. We did get some value out of our experiences.
We did sometimes see our vague ideals reappear as consummated
heroism, while what had been termed pardonable weakness in a milder
atmosphere was seen to be but an early stage of sheer bestiality.
This was certainly stimulating. But all the time we had an uncomfortable
feeling that we only knew a very small part of the lives and characters
of the men whom we were studying. They came to our clubs and played
games with us, until suddenly the more vital matter of sex took
them elsewhere, and they were lost to us. They came to our rooms
and talked football, but when we got on to philosophy they merely
listened. I think that we mystified them a little, and ultimately
bored them. We did not seem to get any real grip of them. We were
always starting afresh with a new generation, and losing touch
with the older one.

<br><br>Then came the war, and for a moment it seemed as if the quest
would have to be abandoned. The men enlisted and our clubs became
empty. Several of the followers of the quest felt the imperious
summons of a stronger call, and applied for their commissions.
Suddenly to one or two of us came an inspiration. The war was
not the end, but the beginning. We had failed because we had not
gone deep enough. We had only touched the surface. To understand
the workingman one must know him through and through ---live,
work, drink, sleep with him. And the war gave us a unique opportunity
of doing this. We knew that we could never become workingmen;
but no power on earth could prevent us from enlisting if we were
sound of wind and limb. And enlisting meant living on terms of
absolute equality with the very men whom we wanted to understand.
Filled anew with the glamour of our quest, we sought the nearest
recruiting office.

<br><br>In the barrack-room we certainly achieved intimacy; but the
elemental realities were distinctly disappointing. We were disappointed
to find that being cold and rather hungry did not conduce to sound
philosophizing. It was merely uncomfortable. Cleaning greasy cooking-pots,
scrubbing floors, and drilling produced no thrills. They simply
bored us. Life was dull and prosaic, and, as we have said, uncomfortable.
No one ever said anything interesting. We never got a chance to
sit down and think things out. Praying was almost an impossibility.
It is extraordinarily hard to pray in a crowd, especially when
you are tired out at night, and have to be up and dressed in the
morning before you are properly awake.

<br><br>These were first impressions; but as time went on, and life
became easier through habit, we were able to realize that we had
actually been experiencing the very conditions which prevent the
workingman from being a philosopher. We grasped the fundamental
fact that he is inarticulate, and that he has no real chance of
being anything else. We perceived that if you wanted to find out
what he believed in you must not look to his words, but to his
actions and the objects of his admiration. And, after all, it
did not necessarily follow that because a man was inarticulate
he therefore had no religion. St. James compares those who state
their faith apart from their works with those who declare it by
their works, and his comparison is by no means favorable to the
former. Actions and objects of admiration, these were the things
that we must watch if we would discover the true religion of the
inarticulate.

<br><br>I have said that the life of the barrack-room is dull and rather
petty. In point of fact, it bears somewhat the same relation to
ordinary working-class life as salt-water baths do to the sea.
We used to read that Brill's Baths were &quot;salt as the sea
but safer.&quot; Well, barrack life is narrow and rather sordid,
like the life of all workingmen, and it lacks the spice of risk.
There is no risk of losing your job and starving. Your bread-and-margarine
are safe whatever happens. As a result the more heroic qualities
are not called into action. The virtues of the barrack-room are
unselfishness in small things, and its vices are meanness and
selfishness in small things. A few of the men were frankly bestial,
obsessed by two ideas---beer and women. But for the most part
they were good fellows. They were intensely loyal to their comrades,
very ready to share whatever they had with a chum, extraordinarily
generous and chivalrous if anyone was in trouble, and that quite
apart from his deserts. At any rate, it was easy to see that they
believed whole-heartedly in unselfishness and in charity to the
unfortunate, even if they did not always live up to their beliefs.
It was the same sort of quality, too, that they admired in other
people. They liked an officer who was free with his money, took
trouble to understand them if they were in difficulties, and considered
their welfare. They were extremely quick to see through anyone
who pretended to be better than he was. This they disliked more
than anything else. The man they admired most was the man who,
though obviously a gentleman, did not trade on it. That, surely,
is the trait which in the Gospel is called humility. They certainly
did believe in unselfishness, generosity, charity, and humility.
But it was doubtful whether they ever connected these qualities
with the profession and practice of Christianity.

<br><br>It was when we had got out to Flanders, and were on the eve
of our first visit to the trenches, that I heard the first definite
attempt to discuss religion, and then it was only two or three
who took part. The remainder just listened. It was bedtime, and
we were all lying close together on the floor of a hut. We were
to go into the trenches for the first time, the next day. I think
that everyone was feeling a little awed. Unfortunately we had
just been to an open-air service, where the chaplain had made
desperate efforts to frighten us. The result was just what might
have been expected. We were all rather indignant. We might be
a little bit frightened inside; but we were not going to admit
it. Above all, we were not going to turn religious at the last
minute because we were afraid. So one man began to scoff at the
Old Testament, David and Bathsheba, Jonah and the whale, and so
forth. Another capped him by laughing at the feeding of the five
thousand. A third said that in his opinion anyone who pretended
to be a Christian in the Army must be a humbug. The sergeant-major
was fatuously apologetic and shocked, and applied the closure
by putting out the light and ordering silence.

<br><br>It was not much, but enough to convince me that the soldier,
and in this case the soldier means the workingman, does not in
the least connect the things that he really believes in with Christianity.
He thinks that Christianity consists in believing the Bible and
setting up to be better than your neighbors. By believing the
Bible he means believing that Jonah was swallowed by the whale.
By setting up to be better than your neighbors he means not drinking,
not swearing, and preferably not smoking, being close-fisted with
your money., avoiding the companionship of doubtful characters,
and refusing to acknowledge that such have any claim upon you.

<br><br>This is surely nothing short of tragedy. Here were men who
believed absolutely in the Christian virtues of unselfishness,
generosity, charity, and humility, without ever connecting them
in their minds with Christ; and at the same time what they did
associate with Christianity was just on a par with the formalism
and smug self-righteousness which Christ spent His whole life
in trying to destroy.

<br><br>The chaplains as a rule failed to realize this. They saw the
inarticulateness, and assumed a lack of any religion. They remonstrated
with their hearers for not saying their prayers, and not coming
to Communion, and not being afraid to die without making their
peace with God. They did not grasp that the men really had deep-seated
beliefs in goodness, and that the only reason why they did not
pray and go to Communion was that they never connected the goodness
in which they believed with the God in Whom the chaplains said
they ought to believe. If they had connected Christianity with
unselfishness and the rest, they would have been prepared to look
at Christ as their Master and their Saviour. As a matter of fact,
I believe that in a vague way lots of men do regard Christ as
on their side. They have a dim sort of idea that He is misrepresented
by Christianity, and that when it comes to the test He will not
judge them so hardly as the chaplains do. They have heard that
He was the Friend of sinners, and severe on those who set up to
be religious. But however that may be, I am certain that if the
chaplain wants to be understood and to win their sympathy he must
begin by showing them that Christianity is the explanation and
the justification and the triumph of all that they do now really
believe in. He must start by making their religion articulate
in a way which they will recognize. He must make them see that
his creeds and prayers and worship are the symbols of all that
they admire most, and most want to be.

<br><br>In doing this perhaps he will find a stronger faith his own.
It is certainly arguable that we educated Christians are in our
way almost as inarticulate as the uneducated whom we always want
to instruct. If we apply this test of actions and objects of admiration
to our own beliefs, we shall often find that our professed creeds
have very little bearing on them. In the hour of danger and wounds
and death many a man has realized with a shock that the articles
of his creed about which he was most contentious mattered very,
very little, and that he had somewhat overlooked the articles
that proved to be vital. If the workingman's religion is often
wholly inarticulate, the real religion of the educated man is
often quite wrongly articulated.
<hr>

<center>Return to '''[[A Student in Arms]]'''</center>