Conclusion

Abstract

In the chapters above is a continual juxtaposition of two orders of history. At one level, this study has referred to some of the great institutions at the heart of late-modern societies, most especially Church and State, the democratic polity and liberal civil society. The great cultural formations to which it has referred are of a similar magnitude, all deeply rooted historically and ever present among the cultural archetypes and intellectual traditions of western societies: religious belief systems and political ideologies; the identities of national, faith and cultural communities. Beyond its interest in the myths, narratives, utopias of Britain at the sunset of its imperial epoch, of Christendom and of Europe, the preceding pages have also touched on a more personal history, of the lives of bishops, historians, ecclesiastical statesmen, politicians and other men and women. The socio-economic, cultural, political and historical circumstances of any moment precedes and overshadows the will of individuals, but as leaders, intellectuals and activists, and collectively through elite networks of discourse, power and influence, they may draw on the cultural and institutional reservoirs of power, and channel the historical potential of the moment.

‘Let the leaves perish, but let the tree stand, living and bare. For the tree, the living organism of the soul of Europe is good, only the external forms and growths are bad. Let the leaves fall, and many branches. But the quick of the tree must not perish. There are unrevealed buds which can come forward into another epoch of civilisation, if only we can shed this dead form and be strong in the spirit of love and creation’.

D.H. Lawrence, 1 November 1915¹