Arthur Neville Chamberlain, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, disgraced for his policy of appeasement in dealing with Hitler, died on this day in 1940.
What is more immediately of interest to me is that Chamberlain was a Unitarian. At least he was raised a Unitarian and while he never joined a church in his adulthood (and was in fact buried from Westminster Abbey), was generally seen by his friends and his enemies throughout his adulthood as a Unitarian.
It is arguable that his world-view was very much in line with his Unitarian upbringing. And it is worth asking what that meant in his policies, particularly in dealing with the rising threat in Germany. Historian Robert Self’s evaluation is perhaps more balanced than Chamberlain is usually given. “Neville Chamberlain was neither the inspired hero so extravagantly lauded in the immediate aftermath of Munich nor the foolishly misguided amateur so viciously denigrated after his fall.” Nonetheless…
The question hangs, at least for me. Was there something in his religious perspective that led Chamberlain to make what most historians seem to feel was one of the great blunders of the twentieth century? Maybe. Maybe not.
But as contemporary Unitarian Universalism flirts with pacifism, it is probably worthwhile thinking about the real-world consequences of our spiritual ideals. I personally draw short of embracing pacifism, but also feel the pull of its call… Deeply…
I find myself confronting what feels like contradictions, where the pursuit of one good so easily falls into an evil. For me the tumble is to a place of not knowing. And here I suspect if there is going to be a way through, it is being revealed.
I have great faith in not knowing.
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