The Responsibility of a Christian Thinker: T. S. Eliot, World War II, and Post-War Reconstruction

This essay will examine T. S. Eliot's contribution to the pre-war and wartime debates on “planning for freedom” and post-war reconstruction. On the eve of World War II, Eliot joined a group of Britain's leading intellectuals, including J. H. Oldham, Fred Clarke, Michael Polanyi, Karl Mannheim, and John Middleton Murry, who formed the Moot, committed to finding alternatives for social and cultural revitalization. The outbreak of war provided them with a stimulus for a debate on social organization, political order, and educational reform, at the heart of which was religion and the role of Christianity. Having diagnosed the social order as flawed, they considered the possibility of what Eliot called “the conversion of social consciousness.” They drew on leading contemporary theologians: Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Jacques Maritain, and Charles Williams. Considering Eliot's participation in the Moot, the Chandos group, the Joint Standing Committee of Religion and Life, and the Sword of the Spirit, as well as his contributions to Theology, the New English Weekly, and The Christian Newsletter, this essay will evaluate Eliot's engagement with Christian theology and sociology. It will also explore its impact on Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.