J.D.B. News Letter

The Vote on the Church of England Prayer Book and its Repercussions in the Jewish Community (By Our London Correspondent)

A very interesting question came up in Anglo-Jewish life little while back when the Revised Prayer Book submitted by the House of Bishops to Parliament was defeated in the House of Commons and among the members who voted against it were several Jews, like Mr. Hore Belisha. There were also among them several Catholics and Non-Conformists and a Communist Parsee, Mr. Saklatvala. Lord Birkenhead and others made great play of that fact. For Anglo-Jewry the question was whether a Jewish member of Parliament was within his rights is voting against or for a measure which is primarily of concern to the members of the Church of England.

At the meeting of the Board of Deputies of the British Jews, which followed the vote in the House of Commons, the question was raised by a member who thought that some danger to the Jewish Community was involved. It occurred to him that there was a possibility that the Revised Prayer Book might have been defeated by a majority numbering less than the Jewish members who took part in the debate, and he thought that it might have been detrimental or dangerous to the Jewish Community had the supporters of the book been able to say that it had been defeated by the Jews.

In the "Jewish Chronicle," one of the regular contributors, Benami, gives it as his opinion that it was bad taste for Jewish members of Parliament to vote on the Bishoo’s proposal. But the "Jewish Chronicle" itself in an editorial takes the view that not only did the Jewish members of Parliament have every right to vote on the question, but that it was actually their duty to their constituents not to disfranchise them on a question on which many of them might be vitally concerned. If Jews, it says, are to be barred, even morally barred, from voting upon questions in which Christians are particularly concerned, they could not be regarded as capable of being efficient representatives.

And the paper puts forward another point also. A great deal of the debate, for instance, it says, turned upon the question whether the new form of prayers devised had a tendency to what is termed Romanising. There can be no question, the "Jewish Chronicle" concludes, that an English citizen who is a Jew might be very considerably interested if in fact the church established were to veer back to its pre-reformation religious loyalty, Moreover, we are not sure, it adds, that Jews standing aside as they do from all the complexities and bitternesses which the prayer book controversy aroused were not in a better position to offer an unbaised opinion upon it.

It is certainly a very pertinent question. But the most pertinent answer to it is obviously that the paradox is with the Church of England and not with the Jewish members of Parliament for the Church of England being an Established State Church subject to the authority of Parliament its affairs as the State Church are the affairs of the entire population, Anglican, Roman Catholic, Nonconformist, Jewish and even Agnostic and Atheist also. Are we, for instance, to say that a Jewish member representing an overwhelmightly Anglican constituency, as Sir Herbert Samuel once represented a constituency with scarcely a single Jew resident there, has no right to vote on such a question because he is a Jew and that a Christian member representing an overwhelmightly Jewish constituency, as Mr. Harry Gosling, for instance, represents Whitechapel, has such a right?

The rejoinder that the Church of England is the State Church and that all citizens and their representatives in Parliament have a right to a voice in its affairs necessarily carries with it the other side of the same argument, which has been put forward in fact in several quarters–Disestablish the Church and reserve all say in its affairs to the members of the Church.

Together with this question goes another, which although it is more restricted in area and numbers has aroused considerable controversy in its time–the question of a Jew who has the patronage of a Living in the Church of England appointing a Christian clergyman to that Living. Again the fault, if fault it is, rests with the system in the Church itself, which bestows the right of appointment to the patron of a Living, who is a property owner and not necessarily a member of die Church.

No one in connection with this controversy has thought of suggesting that the logical way out would be to revert to the days before the abolition of the Test when membership of Parliament was limited to those who could be sworn in on their oath as true Christian gentlemen and Jews and Roman Catholics and Athelist for Catholic and Jewish emancipation and that which Bradlough conducted for the right of atheists to sit in Parliament does not seem likely to have to be fought again. The only question which the division has really brought up in acute form is whether in England as it is at present constituted there is any room for a State Church and whether it would not be for the ultimate good of the Church itself to release itself from the shackles which bind it to the State.