(Please note you need to guess the speaker and the date before clicking the link–KSH).
These three leading present-day scholars and writers give their testimony clearly and definitely for the Christian Faith, and the notable thing is that they represent a distinct movement. A large number of influential writers are giving the same testimony; poets and writers such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Williams, Richardson Wright, and Jacques Maritain. And it should be noted that the writers here mentioned are all of them laymen, that four of them, including C. S. Lewis, were formerly avowed secularists, and that they turned from secularism not to a humanistic and “non-miraculous” Christianity, but to the Christian Gospel as Revealed, and as declared by the Church and the Scriptures. The influence of secularism in our life is still widespread and powerful. As Mr. Lewis says, the 19th century materialist philosophy still permeates the popular mind. Naturalistic assumptions still “meet us on every side–even from the pens of clergymen.” But the tide is turning. There have been evidences of this for some time…but the movement is now clear and unmistakable, and it is especially evident on the highest levels of thought and knowledge.
This turning of the tide, the turning of men such as those above named from Secularism to full and definite Christian belief is of great significance, and it brings a clear call to us as a Church. It tells us that we need in the Church today a great renewal of evangelical faith and power. It tells us that if the Church is to do her work for God, and for the help of men, she must stand fearlessly and uncompromisingly for the reality and truth and glory of the supernatural. It calls us to make our present campaign of Evangelism a bolder and clearer call to men for full belief in Christ and His Gospel. This is the very meaning of evangelism. Evangelism is bringing men and women personally to the knowledge and the love of Jesus Christ, and so to repentance, faith, and “newness of life.” Archbishop William Temple’s Commission told us that “To evangelize is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Ghost that men shall come to put their trust in God through Him, to accept Him as their Saviour, and to follow Him as their King, in the fellowship of His Church.”
The vital question in the life of the Church today is not whether we are called “high church” or “low church,”…not whether we use certain ritual forms and acts, but whether we believe in Jesus Christ as “God manifest in the flesh,” the Second Person of the Eternal Trinity, the Christ of the Scriptures Who has “all power in heaven and in earth” and Who is Saviour, Lord, and God. It is the full, clear teaching of the Christian Faith that is needed, and it is this to which men are now turning.
My guess without peeking: William Temple, circa 1938.
I agree it could have been William Temple (I peeked, so I can’t say anything!)
I guessed either Billy Graham or George Carey. 1050s vintage. I was pleasantly surprised at the answer. Would that the Diocese of New York thought even half of this. A pox on them.