The Kingdom of Free Men (Cambridge, $3.75) by Kitson Clark, Reader in Constitutional History in the University of Cambridge, will mean more to Americans than to the author’s countrymen, for here reaction against the political Salvationism of the 1930’s has not driven the intellectuals into skepticism, verbal analysis or existentialist despair to anything like the extent which has been the case in Europe. Anyone who is conscious of the mess dumped by our pride on our own doorsteps, who is concerned to see politics restored to its not insignificant function, and religion to its proper placer, and who would avoid both despair and sentimental optimism will find these sensitive lectures most helpful.
Father Brown once remarked that he didn’t care much for spiritual power; he had more sympathy for spiritual weakness. Dr. Kitson Clark, who writes as an historian and an unselfrighteous Christian, would agree. Although he makes no appeals to authority, his views are in the mainstream of thought which runs with broad consistency from Augustine to Voegelin, Niebuhr and Maritain: here we have no abiding city; men cannot find salvation by their own efforts; political institutions are necessary because of sin and, although they provide opportunities for the good life, they cannot enforce it; and political obligation is dictated and limited by Divine and Natural Law. These are difficult principles to apply, and lest we indulge in complacency, Dr. Kitson Clark points out “that in Western Europe and the United States we have been the spoilt children of Christendom … normally living under governments which have either been Christian or liberal.’’ His chapter on “Religious Persecution since 1945” is a grim reminder of the necessary place in the Christian scheme for patient submission in the face of political evil. The intricacy of the Christian position is revealed in such passages as this:
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