Preface

Summary

The subject of this work is doctrine, and the doctrines it will discuss are the public doctrines which have been propagated in England in the last century and a half. A public doctrine adumbrates the assumptions that constitute the framework within which teaching, writing and public action are conducted. In England all participants in the public realm have had a doctrine, whether they have known it or not. Almost all of them have had a doctrine about England, whether the subjects they have written or talked about have been English or not. They have all had a message, whether they have wished to or not, and they have all implied views about the direction which the public mind ought to take. In England, public doctrine has emerged from a national consciousness, and the intention is to write its history since 1840.

Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England will be an extensive work of which only one volume is being published at present. Volume I is a preliminary, an examination of the author's relation to the events of which the main work will provide a history, and a discussion of thinkers who have helped him to understand the significance of that history. This will not be either reminiscence or autobiography. On the one hand, it will describe the contours of a narrow mind. On the other, it will celebrate the enmities of some Christian Conservatives who have written in England in the twentieth century.