The Henson Journals

[126]

Friday, October 19th, 1928.

Meeting of Archdeacons & Rural Deans

A brilliant but rather cold day. The leaves are coming down very quickly. I celebrated the Holy Communion in the Chapel at 8.15 a.m. We numbered 15 cts. viz. 12 rural deans, the Bishop of Jarrow, Lionel, and myself.

After breakfast we resumed our conference at 10.15. I prefaced it with a brief statement "for information not for discussion" on the subject of "Synods". I read Dr Watson's letter on the subject, & announced my intention not to hold a synod in this diocese. Our conference was more discursive than practical, but it was intimate & friendly. After it had been ended, we lunched together, & then everybody went away.

Dr Jackson told me that the Royal Visit to Chester–le–Street was rather badly mismanaged. Some 200 police in plain clothes were drafted into the town, their Majesties were driven rapidly through the streets in a closed car, so that they were seen by nobody, &, in short, 'the visit of the King & Queen had undone all the good effected by the visit of the Duke & Duchess of York'!

[127]

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I finished reading for the second time the disgusting but powerful novel by Sinclair Lewis, "Elmer Gantry". It is a vile and violent caricature, but it has so much fidelity to fact as every caricature, recognized as such, must have. The anti–nomian hereticks described in the 2nd Epistle of St Peter have their modern counterpart in these revivalist preachers, who figure so prominently in the English–speaking world. Libidinous, greedy, and swollen with pride they can count on the credulity and fanaticism of vaster multitudes than have ever been accessible to evangelistic experiment before. The conditions under which these multitudes grow up and continue to live stimulate them in everything that is neurotic, credulous, excitable, and sensual. They have enough education to stimulate curiosity, kindle fancy, and breed a gaping receptiveness: but they have never been brought under any moral discipline, nor do they live under conditions stable enough to admit of any domestic or neighbourly habit. Individual virtue is inadequate to withstand the temptation to which the popular evangelist is subjected, so much money to be gained, so much, homage to be enjoyed, so much notoriety to be secured. Hence the horrifying paradox pictured in Elmer Gantry.

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