In adjoining columns of The Times (May 12th), Dr. H. D. A. Major, Principal of Ripon Hall, Oxford, and Sir William Joynson-Hicks are reported to have said some interesting things about the doctrinal position of the Church of England. Their remarks are all the more interesting because they set forth entirely contradictory opinions on a subject that must be of the deepest importance to both speakers.

Dr. Major, realising that the English Church is faced with a crisis due to the ‘mediaevalising’ encroachments of Anglo-Catholicism, pleads for a simpler creed that will win the ready acceptance of the modern man. Most of the official theology of the Church of England, he maintains, is out of date in a number of ways, and needs drastic reformation. He believes that great numbers of people are kept out of the Church because of the ‘impossible character of the Church’s theology,’ which lays an ‘absurd and quite un-Christian emphasis upon the importance of assent to a number of intellectual propositions.’ What is wanted is a living theology that will grip the modern mind. This theological reformation, he continues, ‘must be mainly carried on by Christian clergymen, but there is to-day great scope in the undertaking for educated English laymen. Historians, philosophers, scientists of mark could all be of great help to the Church in the effort to achieve theological reformation if they would not only point out where the Church’s doctrines appeared to them to be in conflict with truth, but also how they thought any particular doctrine might be reformulated so as to be in agreement with modern knowledge.’