Ministers of Change
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 1978
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Reverend Dr Edward Norman, Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge, explores who the 'Ministers of Change' are in society in his second Reith lecture.
Speaking from the series entitled 'Christianity and the World Order' Norman investigates the effect of the secular states' political values on Christianity. Christianity preaches love thy neighbour but do Christian countries follow their own doctrine? Reverend Norman considers the link between religion and politics by investigating the increased influence of The World Council of Churches in developing countries.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series |
| 0:05.7 | Change in British Society, given by A.H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. H. was originally |
| 0:10.5 | broadcast in 1978. I find myself, unlike the contemporary church, thinking more and more about |
| 0:17.7 | the next world, and less and less about the third world. |
| 0:23.3 | These words were written shortly before his death last year by Alexander Drew, the author |
| 0:28.4 | and journalist. It must be said, however, that his inclinations were indeed against the |
| 0:33.5 | trend. Christianity today is preoccupied with political and social change throughout the world. |
| 0:41.0 | But Christianity today is also notable for its lack of a distinctly Christian attitude towards the world it wishes to see changed. |
| 0:50.2 | It's increasingly borrowed, its political outlook and vocabulary, |
| 0:57.5 | the issues it regards this most urgently requiring attention, |
| 1:04.2 | and even its tests of moral virtue from the progressive thinking of the surrounding secular culture. |
| 1:14.9 | The radical Christianity of the developing world, to which appeals are now so often made by Western churchmen in their call for change, is very familiar. |
| 1:26.4 | For radical Christians of the third world are not the wretched of the earth, but members of the bourgeois elite, emotionally attached to the idealism of social change. |
| 1:33.4 | Their radicalism is itself a class characteristic of disaffected elements within the intelligentsia. |
| 1:42.1 | Dr. Sheila Cassidy, the British doctor imprisoned in Chile for failing to report medical treatment she'd given to a fugitive, |
| 1:47.3 | has recorded that the revolutionaries she met in detention were, as she put it, |
| 1:54.3 | not desperate oppressed peasants, but university students or young professionals from middle-class families. |
| 2:01.5 | It's likely that all political change ultimately derives from the agitation of elites. |
| 2:07.0 | The World Council of Churches certainly exemplifies such a process for its officials and the expert opinion it consults |
| 2:10.8 | are clearly more advanced in their politicisation |
| 2:14.0 | and their preparedness to identify Christianity with political change than the members of the constituent churches. |
| 2:22.2 | What's needed, according to the 1975 report of one of its commissions, entitled to break the chains of oppression, |
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