Richardson Transcripts (CT35)

(The very Reverend Richard Thomas HOWARD, Provost Emeritus of Coventry, was born in 1884, and was Provost for Coventry from 1933 to 1958. He talks about the Christian Church and personalities in the City during that time.)

The Christian Church - by which I mean all the Christian Churches, in spite of their divisions, united in their common loyalty to Christ and in their combined influence on the community - the Christian Church holds an outstanding place in the history of the City of Coventry during the pre-war and post-war periods. The influence of the Church by its very nature was largely hidden from public notice and public mention. This hiddenness is actually the Church's natural milieu; when the Church seems publicly to be doing least it is often actually doing most; when it is most self assertive and self advertising it's often least effective. Because the fact is that the history of the Church does not take place primarily inside the Church buildings, or, even at the normal abnormal act of worship, but in the practical daily Christian - repeat Christian - practical daily life of Christian men and women who happen t o be City Mayors, Lord Mayors, Councilors, educationalists and teachers, industrialists and workers, housewives, members of voluntary associations, who don't vocally parade their Christianity but express it practically in their daily lives in Christian compassion and insights and service and policies. And it's all this which makes it so difficult to assess and state and write up the history of the Church, side by side with the public history of a great active city like Coventry. However, it can be done, and I would say, best done by describing the activities of certain movements and certain personalities through which the Church presses out of its hiddenness in anonymity into visible action and notice.

Well now, I have been asked to describe what I personally know of this history during my 25 years as Provost of Coventry, 1933-1958. Let me then, describe these public Church movements and personalities over the course of those memorable years.

In the immediate pre-war period the City of Coventry had the inestimable benefit of having resident in its midst, as Bishop of Coventry, Dr Mervyn Haigh, a great man of extraordinary intellectual power and personal ability.

From time to time he would make public speeches about civic, national, or international matters which went deeper than politics to the very heart of peoples' consciences. They were printed word for word in the press and made all the citizens think hard. Though shy and reserved in manner he had a great capacity for friendship. He made it his business and pleasure to make friends with the public men of the City at all levels and in this way he

became well loved and greatly respected. When in 1942, after an episcopate of twelve years, he left to become Bishop of Winchester, he was given a Civic farewell by the City of Cov. Corporation in full session, and a public farewell in the Central Hall attended and addressed by members of all the various Churches of the denominations.

When I arrived as Provost in 1933 there was already in existence a Council of Churches called the Coventry Christian Social Council such as had already come into being in most big towns and cities since the first World War. In our case this Council was all the better for being a small body consisting of six Anglican Clergymen, and six Free Church Ministers, and, if I remember rightly, an equal number of laity , representing all the Churches of the City. Manifestos and pamphlets were carefully discussed, drawn up, and published which went as far as possible in proclaiming what we believed to be the practical application of the principles of Christian justice and love in the industrial and social problems of the times. In those days there were some people who thought we

had no business to interfere in matters not strictly confined to the Church. How old fashioned that sounds today! Others thought we didn't go far enough. That perhaps is more up to date. But, by and large we did make a definite contribution to that tide of public opinion which eventually came in like a flood bearing upon it the new Welfare State.

One of the greatest and most public accomplishments of that original Christian Social Council was the organisation in 1942 of a Religion and Life Week with famous speakers on various subjects relating to the relation between religion on the one hand and the ordinary life of the people on the other. The star speaker was undoubtedly Archbishop William Temple who has been classed with Churchill and Roosevelt as one of the three greatest men of this century. After this Week the small Christian Social Council was enlarged to become the

Coventry Council of Christian Churches, composed of a number of lay and minister people, representatives of all the churches of the City. This larger body naturally worked mainly through elected sub-committees and commissions for bringing the influence of the Christian faith to bear upon various departments of City life . At this point to avoid confusion, it may be explained that this body is different in constitution, personnel and purpose from the Joint Council of the Cathedral Christian Service Centre to be described later.

To me, personally, the chief value of that originally small Christian Social Council, was the opportunity which it gave me of forming intimate personal friendships with the leading personalities among the Free Church Ministers of that period. I could say much about that most beloved of men Ingli James, Minister of the Queens Road Baptist Church, who spoke out with fierce and prophetic courage about war and the injustices and ungodliness of the times. But I must single out above all others Leslie Cooke, the Minister of Warwick Road Congregational Church who came in about 1938 and left in about 1945? We became fast mutual friends. No friend of his would ever forget him. He was the most loving and lovable and Christian of men. He was a brilliant and moving preacher, an orator by nature, whose powers of oratory [were] dedicated to preaching the gospel, not only the gospel of personal salvation but the gospel of Christian social justice. He blazed his way through Coventry

life and left his mark upon the personal character and attitudes of many in the city before he was called out of it into international service in the World Council of Churches. Before describing his part in the formation of the

Christian Service Centre I must, as it were, bring onto the stage Bishop Neville Gorton who followed Bishop Mervyn Haigh in 1943 and served another remarkable episcopate for l2 years.

Neville Gorton was a great contrast to Mervyn Haigh - there could hardly be a greater. He was unconventional, uninhibited, a passionate lover of people, and especially of the underdog, a hater of constitutions and of hindrances to the free practical expression of the Christian faith. He came to be Bishop knowing that a new Cathedral was about to be built and that he would have a leading part, along with the Provost, in the fashioning, not only of the new building as such, but still more of its purposes. He believed that a Cathedral should exist for the purpose not only of the worship of God in the building but of practical Christian service to the community of the people of the city and diocese of Coventry.

Here let me say this much about myself, that, by this time in the mid forties I had been an ordained Minister of the Anglican Church for nearly 40 years, and had served, not only overseas in India, but for the last 30 years in

England in great -urban centres of population a t Birkenhead, Luton and Coventry. There had grown up within me during this whole period, with ever increasing urgency, an intense desire for Christian unity and for the practical expression of the Church's faith in worship by means of service to the people. It thus came about, I cannot but believe that it was under the divine providence, that just at this moment when a new Cathedral had to

be built for a new age to come, there were three men brought together in ardent fellowship and common conviction who could co-operate together in a new venture of Christian unity and Christian social service. Bishop

Neville Gorton in close collaboration and willing agreement with Leslie Cooke and myself promulgated the plan that came to be called the Scheme for a New Coventry Cathedral with a United Christian Service Centre

and a Chapel of Unity.

Notes

CT0351