CAT MAN:

T.S. Eliot's Political 'Middle Way' (Michael R. Stevens, Religion & Liberty)

Anglicanism has made its mark on ecclesiastical history, in large measure, by filling the void between the poles of Roman Catholicism and Reformation Protestantism. The notion of pursuing a via media, a "middle way," has meant less a third alternative than a comfort with the ambiguity and resistance to the dogmatism that defines both extremes. Anglican theology, however, is not void of content by any means but is, rather, a coalescing of the "middle ground" into a place of theological mooring. Transposed to the socio-political sphere, this precludes a grouping of Eliot with the weak, compromising demeanor of many of his British fellows during the 1930s. Just as the theological via media has content, so does Eliot’s fundamental schema for culture: a "neo-medieval vision" for society. Certainly this is not a call for a historical reprise, since Eliot’s understanding of the Middle Ages was quite idealized. But he was after a model of order and faith. What this came to mean, in Western society between the two world wars, was that Eliot’s pursuit of a political via media differed radically from the other political options brought to the forefront of intellectual life. Eliot’s was a transcendent "middle way," hearkening both backward and forward toward a medievalism that might effect healing precisely because it is not bound to a humanistic view of man and society.

Since Eliot made precious few explicit pronouncements regarding the outworking of his faith, one must find other sources for exploring the exact nature of his socio-political thought. Such a forum is readily provided by the journal The Criterion, which Eliot edited from its founding in 1922 (the first publication of The Waste Land appeared in the first number) until its closure in January of 1939. Certainly The Criterion was not founded with such a sweeping motive as thorough cultural transformation; it was intended as a cosmopolitan review of literature and intellectual discourse. But there was present, even in Eliot’s early championing of the literary function of a review, a sense of political mission: the healing of Europe’s intellectual wounds, which were perhaps more deep-seated than even the physical destruction of the First World War, through the avenue of an international concourse of minds.

This project of healing Europe by means of a quarterly review, though it produced in The Criterion an amazing and cosmopolitan expanse of literature and criticism in the mid-1920s, proved ill-fated for two reasons. First, the closing down of international communication at the end of the decade, as totalitarian regimes began to flex their muscles in the sphere of culture, destroyed the idealism that the "mind of Europe" could be salvaged through cooperation. This imposed silence alone would have dealt a great blow to Eliot’s hopes for The Criterion were it not for the confluence of a second, very different factor, which immediately gave the journal a new set of possibilities: Eliot’s spiritual awakening to Christianity, which he formalized in 1927 with his baptism and confirmation into the Church of England. Again, the guiding ethic of Anglicanism, his chosen route, is important; the pursuit of the via media in matters of theology seemed to hint at a path through the socio-political melee as well.

It's impossible to imagine Eliot remaining loyal to the modern Anglican church. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 3, 2003 12:01 PM