Thursday 28 October 2010

Only religion can make you good...

Canon Raven paid tribute to George Garrett (whose writings greatly impressed George Orwell) thus:

"Few men of my acquaintance are so Christ-like, so marked by suffering, so patient, so free from bitterness, so generous to those who for years have persecuted him. Blacklisted and deprived of any possible employment, imprisoned, driven from the country, forced to leave wife and children, never secure, almost starved, miserably clad, he yet speaks and acts like a Christian gentleman. And his only crime is that he cannot endure in silence the oppression and the wastage, the demoralising insecurity and the soul-destroying squalor, in which his fellows have to live.

For me to preach to such a man would be an impertinence...it is a pity his views are so unsuited to his character; a bad creed, even if it has no influence, is an obstacle...but I have a feeling that Jesus is much more manifestly incarnate in this man and his kind than He is in me."

Garrett was a labour activist, for a time a member of the (godless) Communist Party and also involved with the Industrial Workers of the World (The Wobblies) when in America.

http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/prose/garrett.htm
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve9/george_garrett.php (picture here)
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve15/september.htm (and here)
http://www.workershistory.org/by_subject.html (quote from journal here)

mrsb