‘The land question’: William Temple and environmentalism

Christianity and Social Order is rightly positioned within the historical movement towards establishing a welfare state, but less emphasis is given to its position in the trajectory of land reform in post-war British government policy. If Temple’s Christianity and Social Order was part of the wider influence of Christian social ethical principles in shaping Attlee’s post-war Labour government and a pretext of the National Insurance Act of 1946, we might, I would argue, also add a footnote to the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. In 1948, the journal Nature described this Act as a ‘revolution in the British system of land tenure’, and, in turn, asserted its ethical values: ‘It represents, indeed, a great experiment in social control. Old individual liberties are put in trust for the common good; but few as yet understand the methods of community planning or the discipline which planning requires of them.’ ¹ This legislation would soon be followed by the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949 (amended by the 1990 Environmental Protection Act and the Environment Act of 1995). These actions for the ‘common good’ in land tenure were championed by Temple in his ‘suggested programme’ in the appendix of Christianity and Social Order and the subsequent policy developments remind us of the remarkable astuteness of his ethical thinking in 1942.

Temple’s recommendations for land management continue to be relevant to contemporary land management and conservation. Temple, for example, briefly highlighted coastal erosion, afforestation and issues of land ownership, in both rural and urban contexts. ² Temple was at least in tune with the discussions on these themes in the 1940s, and examining his work from the perspective of land allows us to uncover the philosophical and theological basis of what I shall call, echoing the equally prophetic insights of Aldo Leopold’s 1949 A Sand County Almanac, ³ his ‘land ethic’ and, as alluded to in my title, Tawney’s historical assessment of the ‘land question’. ⁴

While Temple’s land ethic is framed within a consideration of the economic analysis of wealth and ownership of land, his discussion introduces a wider theological perspective into the ethical relation to land. This draws on V. A. Demant’s 1941 Malvern Conference call for ‘respect for the earth’ and concern for ‘the spur of capitalist aggressiveness’. ⁵ Temple, in turn, opened up a wider theological horizon for understanding the earth and nature beyond capital. In setting out his social principles, he reasserted the 1941 Malvern Conference declaration that ‘we must recover reverence for the earth and its resources, treating it no longer as a reservoir of potential wealth to be exploited, but as a storehouse of bounty on which we utterly depend’. ⁶ Temple, in Christianity and Social Order, brought together the concepts of land, nature and earth and even underlined the phrase ‘mother earth’ as the ‘deep truth’ of the relation of humanity to the earth. ⁷

While a few scholars have selectively touched on aspects of Temple’s so-called ‘early ecotheology’ and have affirmed his idea of the ‘sacramental universe’ set out in his 1932–4 Gifford lectures, Nature, Man and God, ⁸ they have neglected to explore his ‘land ethic’ in Christianity and Social Order. ⁹ These studies rightly see the value of Nature, Man and God for environmental thinking, but Temple’s reflections in Christianity and Social Order are important because the land ethic brings a new focus. What I am suggesting is that Temple’s discussion of land balances the evolutionary romanticism of Nature, Man and God with the political realism of land in relation to capitalism and war, which also provides unique insight into the ‘unclear’ relation of Temple to idealism and realism. ¹⁰

Land and wealth: profit

To draw out the central focus of Temple’s concerns with land in Christianity and Social Order we need to consider the development of these comments in a related speech from 1942. The themes relating to the land from Christianity and Social Order are repeated and extended in his speech delivered at the Royal Albert Hall in London, on 26 September 1942, which formed part of a series of talks entitled ‘The Church Looks Forward’. In both Christianity and Social Order and the Royal Albert Hall speech, land for Temple is always discussed in relation to the question of money and the question of profit and ownership.

We can group Temple’s statements on land ethics in Christianity and Social Order and ‘The Church Looks Forward’ into three main areas:

Land is God’s gift and source of life.

Land should be in public ownership, but with exceptions for rural land because it serves the public good.

Land should be regulated in a number of ways, including fines for misuse, fair rents, land values, tax and being purchasable by the state.

This land ethic holds together the common good ideals and social order in the value and management of land, but the strongest underlying assertion is that natural resources should not be framed solely by the profit motive. As Temple asserts: ‘Land is not a mere “material resource”.’ ¹¹ In ‘The Church Looks Forward’ speech, Temple – following Christianity and Social Order – reflected again on the ‘four requisites for life’ given by God: air, light, land and water. Temple pointed out that they existed before ‘man’s labour is expended upon them’ and that, with air and light, we can do little but ‘spoil them’. ¹² He went on to jest that, if it were possible, ‘property rights in air’ would have been established and there would have been a demand by the person claiming ownership for payment ‘if we wanted to breathe his air’. ¹³ His words, however, were a direct echo of the words of the idealist T. H. Green, from his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, ¹⁴ and a sign of his idealist influence. The ‘The Church Looks Forward’ speech is an important supplement and it enables us to see how the distinct focus on the ‘profit motive’ (profit is not seen as bad in and of itself but only when it is the main motive) and the regulation of profit is related to the problem of private and public ownership. ¹⁵

Land and property: ownership

As I have indicated, it is important to remember that the ethical concerns about land in Christianity and Social Order were made in the wider context of nature preservation. For example, the National Trust was set up in 1895, and supported by the National Trust Act of 1907, to preserve ‘land and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest’; under the guidance of Charles Rothschild, the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR) was established in 1912. ¹⁶ In June 1941, Hebert Smith, the secretary of the SPNR, on the advice of the minister responsible for planning post-war reconstruction, set up the Conference on Nature Preservation in Post-War Reconstruction, which set out principles for ‘the use of land after the war’, submitting six reports by 1945. ¹⁷ This momentum in land use and preservation was also linked to two key reports published in 1942: the Scott Report (on land utilization in rural areas) and the Uthwatt Report (on compensation and betterment in respect of the public control of land use, which led to the Town and Country Planning Act). Temple directly supported the Uthwatt Report in his 1942 Royal Albert Hall talk, claiming that we should ‘greatly welcome’ it and its ‘combination of the advantage of public control and private initiative’. ¹⁸

Temple’s Royal Albert Hall speech and his engagements at Malvern were reported in Nature under the title ‘The Church as a social force’, ¹⁹ fulfilling Temple’s ambition for the Church to be socially engaged, in this instance in conservationist policy. The linking of land and money and support for the Uthwatt Report were also championed by Nature: ‘The traditional Christian principle still holds good that the right of property was a right of stewardship – never exclusive use.’ Temple was slightly more nuanced, as he clarified:

I am not myself at all persuaded that the solution of this problem is to be found in the nationalization of land; but I am persuaded that we need to find ways of asserting the rights of the public over the interest of private owners. ²⁰

This ethical view was supported by reference to the ‘great Christian principle, that the right which attaches to ownership is a right of administration, but should never be a right to exclusive use’. ²¹

In these reflections, Temple was echoing previous theological work on property from the idealist tradition, not least as seen in Charles Gore’s 1913 collection Property: its duties and rights. ²² These ideas were also carried forward in what Temple called the ‘great’ 1924 Conference on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship (COPEC) at Birmingham, set up under the chairmanship of Temple. ²³ Volume 9 of the COPEC reports, Industry and Property, explored ‘The Christian conception of property’ and raised the ethical question of whether ‘natural resources ought to be bought and sold unconditionally’. ²⁴ The powerful ethical insights in this volume provide a stronger realism about land and resources to balance the ideas on nature and evolution in the first COPEC volume, The Nature of God and His Purpose for the World ²⁵ – a work shaped strongly by the Quaker Lucy Gardner and Anglican naturalist Charles Raven, and one that would inform Temple’s Nature, Man and God.

Land and state: invasion

While the influence of T. H. Green’s idealism is evident, Temple’s deeper and more explicit commitment in Christianity and Social Order is to Plato. There is a constant echo of Plato in Temple, as we see from the numerous references to Plato in Christianity and Social Order and in the challenge of ‘transforming our own society’ from the ideal state. ²⁶ As is shown by both Temple’s 1916 lectures (Plato and Christianity) and Christianity and Social Order, Plato and Christianity hold together both the ideals (the good) and the realism (social order) through ‘principles’ of government. ²⁷ For Temple, Plato understands how the ‘ideal state’ is constructed ‘to embody the principle of justice’; notably, in the ideal state the ‘guardians’ would not own property. ²⁸ Ideals require the reality of ethical principles for action. It is this recognition, as Temple makes clear in his Plato and Christianity lectures, that ensures that politics is ‘entirely subordinate to ethics’, putting ‘fellowship’ first and the social before self-interest. ²⁹ It requires the state system to embed these values through education and social order.

Significantly, Temple’s Christianity and Social Order highlights Books 8 and 9 of Plato’s Republic on types of government, sections that discussed despotic leadership and the consequent tyranny. ³⁰ These specific allusions to despotic leaders in the Republic bring Temple back to the immediate context of war, invasion, Nazi Germany and managing the values of a state system that gives ‘great prominence to military leaders’. ³¹ The reality of war in Christianity and Social Order is clear, and while Temple’s land ethic largely focuses on the post-war reconstruction, the more ‘horrifying’ territorial invasion of a sovereign state’s land is ever present. These thoughts appear more overtly in his collection Thoughts in War-Time, ³² where praying for God’s will and peace on ‘earth, in Europe’ and the recognition of ‘moral obligations in dealing with other States’ are central. ³³ Post-reconstruction land politics always rests on the aggression of war and the invasion of land. The ethical temperament required for Temple’s land ethic applies at all levels: the individual, the state system and the international political order. Temple understands that the evil of war in Europe is the evil of exploiting land through possessiveness and tyranny.

Conclusion: contemporary exploitations of land

What I have tried to show is that Christianity and Social Order holds a distinct land ethic, which successfully negotiates a line of thinking through the idealist tradition towards a strong social realism. It is this realism of Temple’s land ethic that has renewed traction for today in the exploitations of neoliberal capitalism and the return of the horrors of war, replacing the common good and the international moral governance of land. Brett Christophers, for example, has highlighted the selling off of public land in neoliberal Britain, some 2 million hectares or 10 per cent of Britain since Thatcher’s 1979 government, with increased land speculation and excessive profit motivations. ³⁴ Even more alarming, on the eightieth anniversary of Temple’s Christianity and Social Order, is the re-emergence of the tyrannical invasion of lands, this time in Ukraine, returning parts of Europe to landscapes of destroyed buildings and human devastation. Temple’s land ethic is a morality for state systems and is built on the effective stewardship of land according to the common good, not on individual or state self-interest. It is, above all, a call to understand that ‘land in a special sense belongs to God’. ³⁵