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Presences Felt: Encounters in a Lost Century

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

This is one of the most fascinating, captivating and moving books I have read in a long time. The author is Director of the George Bell Institute and Senior Research Fellow of the Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham, but this book came to life originally as the 1999 Lent lectures at Westminster Abbey, London. In the preface, he states his purpose as being to reflect on “the power of the institutional landscape to incarcerate the individual, and to see how that power defines choices, relationships and expressions.”

This he does with extraordinary perception and power. He focuses on the two overarching political systems of the 20th century, namely totalitarianism and democracy, and explores the tension between states and individuals which embraced one or other of these philosophies. In particular, Chandler focuses on individuals who behaved in ways which the totalitarian state deemed ‘irresponsible’ and became in their very being a critique of the very philosophy which sought to make them conform. Many of these ‘irresponsibles’ were Christian, behaving as they did because they were convinced that conformity to the requirements of the state was antithetical to the way God has made the world.

This, it seems to the present reviewer, is a vital ingredient in Christian ethics, as we are faced with ‘democracies’ in America, Britain and Europe which are moving inexorably towards a greater and greater degree of control over the lives of their citizens on the grounds that, ‘if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to fear’. The question which Chandler’s analysis raises for me is that of who decides when I have done something wrong, and when my behaviour in some way threatens the well-being of the system. At what point does the individual cross the boundary of ‘irresponsibility’? When I refuse to carry an ID card? When I refuse to support the war on terror? Who knows and who decides?

Rarely for me, although I began reading with pencil in hand ready to underline and make notes in the margins, I reached the end of the book with scarcely a mark. Was nothing worthy of underlining? On the contrary, I was carried along by the narrative and the reflection that I forgot to use my pencil.

In a totalitarian state, this book would never get published. Buy it while you may.