This note is provoked by some recent discussions in New Blackfriars and elsewhere, which have been about making the presence of Christ effective in the world in terms of social justice. It is not enough, we are rightly told, to preach in a vacuum; a pointless activity if no-one is listening. Social action means, if it is to go beyond isolated individual benevolence, political action: the point is made both in the Editorial and in Mr Eagleton’s article in the December 1965 number. In a general way, I agree with this position, but there seem to me several implications in it that need to be examined.

In the first place, should we not be careful to avoid the kind of implicitly totalitarian attitude that gives supreme importance to the political order at the expense of every other kind of human activity? One recalls Nkrumah’s amiable motto: ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom . . .’ On the whole, one would have thought Christians would avoid this particular trap, but I can imagine some eager Christian radicals, so intoxicated with the discovery that in battling in the political arena they are doing Christ’s work, that they exaggerate the importance of that particular way of doing it. On a basis of respect for persons, one needs to recognise that there are many admirable people in this world, who contribute a great deal to society, but to whom politics means nothing at all: many, but by no means all, of them are women.