This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series Change in British Society, given by A.H. H. Halsey, was originally broadcast in 1978.

The present form that the politicisation of Christianity is taking in the world is a particularly hazardous one,

from the point of view of its survival as a distinct body of supernatural belief, with a unique view of the place of mankind in the creation.

The danger arise in some measure because of the collectivist nature of modern politics, from the politicisation of all values,

so that Christianity, in identifying itself with versions of liberal or socialist collectivism,

will become absorbed within their view of the moral purpose of social order.

This is a danger heightened by the decline within the churches themselves

of confidence in the past modes of religious understanding of man and of the world.

The content of contemporary Christianity is becoming progressively secularised.

Lacking a supernatural basis to their worldview, furthermore,

church leaders who argue positively for a political dimension to Christianity

are also lacking political knowledge.

The call for the church to be associated with the human struggle for a better society

is actually made by those with very little understanding, either of political theory,

or of the real dynamics of social structures.

They tend to adapt their Christianity to the prevailing political enthusiasms in ways which are strikingly amateur,

and upon terms of association which are not even their own.

Thus churchmen may be found throughout the world vigorously asserting the essential Christianity

of political ideas which to the trained political theorist or the active politician

are either plainly

incompatible with religious faith, as formerly understood among men, or are otherwise notable

...