Enduring the Public Nuisance

Britain's Defense Minister Lord Alexander was lolling on a front bench reserved for, but seldom occupied by, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who ranks as the first peer of England next to the royal family. There was a sudden stir: Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, was entering the House of Lords.

With the embarrassed grin of a school boy, Old Soldier Alexander leaped to his feet and clambered clumsily over four other lords to his proper seat. Britain's primate smiled graciously and took his place.

He had come to discuss the antics of the Red Dean of Canterbury, who returned from Communist China with tall Canterbury Tales, including one about Chinese schoolchildren with chopsticks picking up American-sown germs. All Britain was roused by the latest irresponsible utterances of the pro-Communist Hewlett Johnson, 78-year-old Dean of Canterbury Cathedral. The Archbishop's measured words combined a defense of the Dean's tenure with a scathing denunciation of his behavior. "I am particularly affected by the Dean's activity," the Archbishop reminded his peers, "for the reason that many people believe that no Dean of Canterbury could speak in public as he does except as the mouthpiece of the Archbishop . . . Indeed, there are many people on the Continent who believe, oddly enough, that the Archbishop and the Dean are one and the same person." Blind & Stupid. However, the Archbishop went on, "there are some who, in revulsion from the Dean's utterances, become -- dare I say it -- as blind, as unreasonable and as stupid about the Dean as the Dean is himself. We should try to help them to escape from that kind of fanatical disease. There is no charge against the Dean because he holds certain political and sociological views . . . he is fully entitled to hold these, however mistaken they may be . . . He has broken no law, civil or ecclesiastical."

Dr. Johnson, the Archbishop continued, "has seriously misused and compromised his office . . . He has lost all sense of the right proportion of things . . . He has allowed himself to be exploited by the managers of the political system which he supports for their own ends . . . [But] he is not an official member of the Communist Party . . . he denies no Christian doctrine. He sincerely believes that Christian principles of peacemaking and social justice are better applied in Communist countries than they are here. That in itself is no heresy. It may be wildly wrong, but we all have a right to be wrong.

"But by throwing himself into what is a partisanship ... he is inevitably regarded as sharing the atheism on which Communism is based . . . By that inevitable influence, he blurs the Christian witness against atheism, and shocks those who know the suffering and persecutions which Christians have had to bear at the hands of Communists." What then could be done about him? "The church," said Dr. Fisher, "has no power to proceed against the Dean. If he is guilty of unreason and delusion to a remarkable degree, these faults do not, short of certifiable lunacy, expose anyone to legal consequences."

Lumping It. Some of Britain's peers, seething with righteous indignation, were for taking action themselves. "We cannot afford to have clowns in gaiters in the Church of England," cried Tory Viscount Hailsham. "The Dean has borne false witness not only against his neighbor but against his country and his country's friends," added aged Liberal Lord Teviot. The Marquess of Salisbury, Leader of the House of Lords, agreed that the church cannot proceed against the Red Dean ("he has not been drunk in the pulpit . . . and he has not been guilty of flagrant immorality"); he considered it "extremely doubtful" whether the state could proceed either.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was not so sure. "There is no limit to the powers of Parliament," he said. "But I personally hope that Parliament would not be so ill-advised as to try to remove the Dean or restrict his freedom of utterance . . . It is a tragedy that the abusers of freedom thereby jeopardize other men's freedom, but it is wisdom to bear with folly and unreason and delusions . . . as a price worth paying to preserve this freedom . . .

"The Dean is a public nuisance to the church and to the state, but I believe firmly that he is to be endured with such patience as we can command . . ."

In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill gave the state's endorsement to the church's plea. "Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant and venomous things that are said," declared the Prime Minister, "but on the whole we would rather lump them than do away with it."

. . .

Four days later, the Red Dean, with his new freedom, repeated his germ warfare charges from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral itself. A handful of Americans in the congregation walked out.

*Sample of the Dean of Canterbury's own test of Christian faith: once, on returning from Moscow, he was asked whether Stalin is a Christian. Replied the Dean: "I didn't ask him, but he was very friendly, and where there is friendship there is Christianity."

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