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Vocation, Hypocrisy and Secularization: Iris Murdoch and the Clergy of the Church of England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2024

Peter Webster Open the ORCID record for Peter Webster [Opens in a new window]
Peter Webster*
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Chichester
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*E-mail: peter@websterresearchconsulting.com.
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Abstract

This article examines the treatment of Anglican clergy in the novels of Iris Murdoch, setting this discussion in the context of Murdoch's own engagement with Christianity: one of sympathy without assent, yet with detailed knowledge of the secularizing theologies of the period. Clerical interventions in pastoral situations, politely tolerated in the earlier novels, are openly and robustly rejected in the later books. That pastoral care is, for Murdoch, vitiated by a desire for control, against which Murdoch set her ideal of self-emptying attention. Murdoch also dramatizes the loss of faith which forced, on some of the clergy, an inconsistency between outward speech and inner conviction. For some, the apparent hypocrisy is resolved by suicide or exile; for others, their vocation must continue as a witness to something absolute, even if they themselves can longer articulate its nature with any conviction. The Church remains necessary even if God himself is not.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 60: THE CHURCH, HYPOCRISY AND DISSIMULATION , June 2024 , pp. 511 - 532
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Ecclesiastical History Society

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Footnotes

I am indebted to Jem Bloomfield and Miles Leeson for their comments on draft versions of this article.

References

1 On Murdoch's engagement with theology at large, see Fiddes, Paul, Iris Murdoch and the Others: A Writer in Dialogue with Theology (London, 2021)Google Scholar.

2 Hawkins, Peter S., ‘Iris Murdoch (1919–1999): Anglican Atheist’, in Maltby, Judith and Shell, Alison, eds, Anglican Women Novelists from Charlotte Bronte to P. D. James (London, 2019), 161–73Google Scholar.

3 See, for instance, the relationship between Benjamin Britten and Walter Hussey, Anglican patron of the arts: Webster, Peter, Church and Patronage in Twentieth-Century Britain: Walter Hussey and the Arts (London, 2017), 60–1, 69–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See, for example, Robjant, David, ‘As a Buddhist Christian: the Misappropriation of Iris Murdoch’, Heythrop Journal 52 (2011), 993–1008CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Burns, Elizabeth, ‘Murdoch and Christianity’, in Panizza, Silvia Caprioglio and Hopwood, Mark, eds, The Murdochian Mind (London, 2022), 382–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Conradi, Peter, Iris Murdoch: A Life (London, 2001), 64, 306Google Scholar.

6 The early locus classicus for Murdoch's metaphysics is The Sovereignty of Good (London, 1970; repr. 2001). On Murdoch and Plato, see David Tracy, ‘Iris Murdoch and the Many Faces of Platonism’, in Maria Antonaccio and William Schweiker, eds, Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (Chicago, IL, 1996), 54–75; Miles Leeson, Iris Murdoch: Philosophical Novelist (London, 2010), esp. 86–109. On Murdoch's understanding of God, see also Stephen Mulhall, ‘“All the world must be ‘religious’”: Iris Murdoch's Ontological Arguments’, in Anne Rowe, ed., Iris Murdoch: A Reassessment (Basingstoke, 2007), 23–34; Andrew Gleeson, ‘Iris Murdoch's Ontological Argument’, in Nora Hämäläinen and Gillian Dooley, eds, Reading Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (Basingstoke, 2019), 195–208.

7 Murdoch, Iris, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 2nd edn (London, 2003; first publ. 1992), 474Google Scholar.

8 On the self-narration of the religious characters in The Bell, see Bran Nicol, ‘The Curse of The Bell: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Narrative’, in Rowe, ed., Iris Murdoch: A Reassessment, 100–11.

9 The paragraphs that follow build upon the observations of Hawkins, ‘Anglican Atheist’, 161–3.

10 Dooley, Gillian, ed., From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction: Conversations with Iris Murdoch (Columbia, SC, 2003), 43, 211Google Scholar.

11 Interview with Jonathan Miller (1988), in Dooley, ed., Tiny Corner, 215.

12 Interview with Harold Hobson (1962), in Dooley, ed., Tiny Corner, 7.

13 Interview with John Haffenden (1983), in Dooley, ed., Tiny Corner, 136.

14 See Dooley, ed., Tiny Corner, 209–17; quotations at ibid. 211, 212, 213.

15 Untitled article, PN Review 6/5 (1979), 5; see also Dooley, ed., Tiny Corner, 213. Italics mine.

16 Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 307.

17 Dooley, ed., Tiny Corner, 217.

18 Gillian Dooley, ‘Introduction’, in Dooley, ed., Tiny Corner, xvii–xxx, at xxii.

19 Webster, Peter, ‘“Poet of church and state”: C. H. Sisson and the Church of England’, in Talbot, John and Moul, Victoria, eds, C. H. Sisson Reconsidered (London, 2023), 159–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Martyn Percy, ‘Sociology and Anglicanism in the Twentieth Century’, in Jeremy Morris, ed., The Oxford History of Anglicanism, 4: Global Western Anglicanism, c.1910–Present (Oxford, 2017), 137–59.

21 On the portrayal of the clergy on film and television, see Yates, Nigel, Love Now, Pay Later? Sex and Religion in the Fifties and Sixties (London, 2010), 44–5Google Scholar.

22 Russell, Anthony, The Clerical Profession (London, 1980), 278Google Scholar; Prochaska, Frank, Christianity and Social Service in Modern Britain: The Disinherited Spirit (Oxford, 2006), 148–61Google Scholar.

23 For Carel Fisher in The Time of the Angels, see Conradi, Peter J., The Saint and the Artist: A Study of the Fiction of Iris Murdoch, 3rd edn (London, 2001; first publ. 1986), 174–8Google Scholar; Hawkins, ‘Anglican Atheist’, 166–8; Fiddes, Murdoch, 49, 60; Leeson, Miles, ‘Morality in a World with God’, in Scott-Baumann, Alison and Roberts, M. F. Simone, eds, Iris Murdoch and the Moral Imagination (Jefferson, NC, 2010), 221–36Google Scholar; Byatt, A. S., Degrees of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch, 2nd edn (London, 1994; first publ. 1965), 251–60Google Scholar; Browning, Gary, Why Iris Murdoch Matters (London, 2018), 49–51Google Scholar; Spear, Hilda, Iris Murdoch, 2nd edn (Basingstoke, 2006; first publ. 1995), 56–62Google Scholar. The other characters I examine have attracted less attention. On the bishop, and on Angus McAlister, see Fiddes, Murdoch, 26, 54–5, 65. See also Askew, Reginald, ‘The Occasional Clergyman’, Iris Murdoch Newsletter 12 (1998), 7–9Google Scholar.

24 See the contrasting approaches in Peter Clarke and Charlotte Methuen, eds, The Church and Literature, SCH 48 (Woodbridge, 2012).

25 Throughout this article, I adopt whichever form of address Murdoch uses: in this case, Mr Enstone; later, Fr Jacoby.

26 Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man (London, 1973), 44–9.

27 Ibid. 49–51.

28 Ibid. 427.

29 Iris Murdoch, Henry and Cato (London, 1977), 38. Italics original.

30 See, inter alia, Maria Antonaccio, Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch (Oxford, 2000), 3–24 and throughout; see also the several essays in Antonaccio and Schweiker, eds, Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness; other relevant collections of essay are Scott-Baumann and Roberts, eds, Iris Murdoch and the Moral Imagination; and Anne Rowe and Avril Horner, eds, Iris Murdoch and Morality (Basingstoke, 2010).

31 On the legislative programme in general, see Peter Webster, Archbishop Ramsey: The Shape of the Church (Farnham, 2015), 65–90; Yates, Love Now, Pay Later?, 88–108.

32 See the chapter on ‘The New Morality’ in John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (London, 1963), 105–21.

33 On Murdoch's engagement with Tillich, see relevant references throughout Julia T. Meszaros, Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch (Oxford, 2016).

34 Iris Murdoch, An Unofficial Rose (London, 1964), 14.

35 Ibid. 53.

36 Ibid. 51.

37 Ibid. 110–11.

38 Ibid. 225.

39 Ibid. 228.

40 Iris Murdoch, The Philosopher's Pupil (Harmondsworth, 1984), 50, 108.

41 Ibid. 494.

42 Iris Murdoch, The Book and the Brotherhood (London, 1987), 487.

43 Ibid. 282.

44 Ibid. 488.

45 Ibid. 507.

46 John A. T. Robinson, The New Reformation? (London, 1965), 103–4.

47 Mark D. Chapman, ‘Theology in the Public Arena: The Case of “South Bank religion”’, in Jane Garnett et al., eds, Redefining Christian Britain (London, 2007), 92–105.

48 Murdoch refers to Honest to God in her later Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 452.

49 Ibid. 455.

50 Murdoch, Sovereignty of Good, 77.

51 Iris Murdoch, The Time of the Angels (Harmondsworth, 1968), 72.

52 Ibid. 172.

53 Ibid. 79.

54 Ibid. 174–5. Italics original.

55 The phrase of A. S. Byatt in Degrees of Freedom, 260.

56 Conradi, Murdoch, 301; Anthony Kenny, A Path from Rome: An Autobiography (Oxford, 1986), 191–203; idem, Brief Encounters: Notes from a Philosopher's Diary (London, 2018), 175–7.

57 Kenny, Path from Rome, 205.

58 Russell, Clerical Profession, 265.

59 Paul A. Welsby, A History of the Church of England 1945–1980 (Oxford, 1984), 234–5, 143–6.

60 Archbishops’ Commission on Christian Doctrine, Subscription and Assent to the 39 Articles (London, 1968). Murdoch's copy of this report first belonged to Scott Dunbar, then a graduate student in the philosophy of religion, with whom Murdoch became friends in 1967; Kingston, Kingston University Archives and Special Collections [hereafter: KUAL], Iris Murdoch Papers, IML296.

61 On the similarity between Robinson's views and those of Murdoch's bishop in Time of the Angels, see Fiddes, Murdoch, 53–4, 55.

62 Murdoch, Time of the Angels, 91. Italics original.

63 Murdoch, Time of the Angels, 90–4.

64 Rowan Williams, ‘Honest to God and the 1960s’, in idem, Anglican Identities (London, 2004), 103–20, at 106.

65 Murdoch, Time of the Angels, 95; Grace Davie, ‘Vicarious Religion: A Response’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 25 (2010), 261–6.

66 Sam Brewitt-Taylor, ‘Inspiration and Institution in 1960s Anglican Radicalism: The Cases of Nick Stacey and John Robinson’, in Charlotte Methuen, Alec Ryrie and Andrew Spicer, eds, Inspiration and Institution in Christian History, SCH 57 (London, 2021), 318–40, at 334–7.

67 Her copies, both of them heavily annotated, are at KUAL, Iris Murdoch Papers, IML59 and IML322.

68 Murdoch to Scott Dunbar, 19 October 1977, in Avril Horner and Anne Rowe, eds, Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 1934–1995 (London, 2015), 450–1.

69 Murdoch's annotated copy is at KUAL, Iris Murdoch Papers, IML1105; Murdoch, Metaphysics, 452–5.

70 Don Cupitt, Radicals and the Future of the Church (London, 1989), 118.

71 On Cupitt's engagement with Murdoch, see Don Cupitt, ‘Iris Murdoch: A Case of Star-Friendship’, in Anne Rowe and Avril Horner, eds, Iris Murdoch: Texts and Contexts (Basingstoke, 2012), 11–16; Fiddes, Murdoch, 57–8.

72 Don Cupitt, Radicals and the Future of the Church (London, 1989), 121.

73 Murdoch, Philosopher's Pupil, 156, 190. On Murdoch and the magical nature of religious symbols and ritual, see Fiddes, Murdoch, 26–7.

74 Ibid. 229–30.

75 Murdoch, Book and Brotherhood, 488.

76 Ibid. 493.

77 Ibid. 539–40.

78 Ibid. 516.

79 Ibid. 539.

80 Ibid. 516.

81 Ibid. 540–1.

82 Rowan Williams, ‘Writing Morally’, in Hopwood and Panizza, eds, Murdochian Mind, 376–81, at 378.

83 On this, see Peter Webster, ‘Poet of Church and State’, 174–5.