I take the terms ‘Christendom’ and ‘Jewry’ to mean the cultural and political embodiments of the Christian and Jewish religions. Christendom is the socially visible manifestation and product of Christianity, as Jewry is of Judaism. It is with these products of the two religions that I am concerned, not directly with the systems of religious belief and practice that constitute the two religions.

'Christendom', however, the concrete equivalent of the abstract ‘Christianity', is a much less definite term than ‘Church', which is so to speak the official and necessary embodiment of the Christian religion. Now it is in the almost Protean development of the indefinable, ill-disciplined, not always very Christian reality meant by ‘Christendom’ that I see much irony; not in the mysterious theological reality meant by ‘the Holy Catholic Church'. And I am presuming – I hope fairly enough – that as Christendom is to Church, so mutatis mutandis is Jewry to Israel. Jewry in its very different manner I find as ironical a reality as Christendom. My point, in fact, will be that in some ways Christendom would have been a much more suitable correlative to Israel than to the Church, and Jewry more suited to the Church than to Israel.

I take it as a starting point that some sort of visible embodiment in human society is of the essence of both religions. And that is why I cannot altogether agree with Dr James Parkes when he makes the generalization in one of his Parkes Library booklets (Jewry and Jesus of Nazareth by Maurice Eisendrath and James Parkes), that, whereas Judaism addresses man as a social being, Christianity addresses man as a person.

It may seem strange, now that the hierarchies of the world have begun to put the Council's recommendations into practice, to see an introductory article on a linguistic framework for discussing liturgical language. But there are several good reasons why such a perspective is necessary. First, any decisions licensing the use of certain forms and withholding others must always be kept under review, as language is in a continual state of change. In a hundred years time, the language of today may well seem as archaic as the (never-defined) ‘Victorian English’ which biblical translations are frequently accused of being in. One must beware of complacency. There is bound to be further modification, and much future discussion. Secondly, the perspective would be valuable as a therapy for much recent popular discussion, whose utility is lessened by using undefined or irrelevant critical terminology, when words are condemned for being ‘ugly', ‘un-English', ‘incorrect', ‘debased', and so on – all highly subjective and misleading criteria. Thirdly, a linguistically-orientated basis for discussion would provide a means whereby the public's suggestions and views could be of use to any committee working on the liturgy. At the moment, sporadic opinions sent to the Catholic press about the kind of language vernacularization should bring make interesting reading, but because of the haphazard, occasional origins of this information and the variety of critical principles on which views are based (everything from a vague impressionism to a precise logic), the resultant mass of data is unco-ordinated, of little generality, and hence of little assistance. But it is just this knowledge about popular attitudes to language which a committee needs.

It is ten years since I went along to Stanford’s in St James's to buy a map which would show me where Uganda really was. This was my first move towards becoming chaplain at Makerere, then the University College of East Africa, now a constituent unit in a fully-fledged university.

While my ship turned the corner of Africa off Cape Gardafui the Kabaka was flying back to Uganda from exile to be welcomed by a Governor, the notable Sir Andrew Cohen (whose seat at Entebbe he now occupies as Sir Frederick Mutesa). The train from Nairobi was protected by armed guards against a possible Mau-Mau raid. Jomo Kenyatta was imprisoned in the far north and Sir Evelyn Baring ruled Kenya. Sir Edward Twining governed Tanganyika. Today, under Kenyatta, Obote and Nyerere, it is East Africa which is travelling into an unknown and sparsely-mapped future.

I like to recall what I said when taking over my major teaching assignment at Makerere, the first Honours Class in Political Ideas. ‘I am aware,’ I said, ‘that I am speaking to the the leaders of three future republics'. Neither the class nor I realized how quickly that future would arrive. I do not think that even Dr Jowett's pupils at Balliol reached ministerial or near-ministerial level within three years of gaining their degrees. There have been a few cases of swelled heads as a result of this swift elevation, but in general I find it heartening, on their visits to this country, to observe how these men, recently undergraduates, are conscientiously shouldering their formidable tasks.

There wasn't much heard about Christian belief in the recent British election campaign, in spite of occasional Christian appeals to the candidates’ consciences; but then, with a renewed sense among Christians of the secular significances of the term ‘moral', this lack of directly Christian discussion ought not to be too disturbing: we were, after all, electing a government, not a parish council. What can usefully be looked at, however, is the degree of moral emphasis, in a general sense, in the parties’ programmes: how far was this a humane election ?

The Liberal Party is important here, because it focusses a complex of attitudes which have been dominant in British politics over the past few years. At the peak of its form, Jo Grimond's party stood for an impatient, dynamic streamlining of society, a tough concern with efficiency; Liberalism was a force to disperse the cobwebs, and the cobwebs included talk of class-warfare and socialization of industry as much as Tory old-boyism and bungling. There was an attractive radicalism about this, and it won over a good many people who failed to see that dynamism and efficiency are morally neutral terms which can shove out the central moral issues and reduce politics to technique and organization. At the Liberal Party conferences the hall was full of young men rearing to get industry off the ground and eliminate wastage and failure; the talk centred on expansion and cutting through red-tape, progress was the key-term.

If all the energy and ingenuity expended on criticizing television were diverted into creating for it, the face of the medium might well be transformed. At the highest level, television is a twentieth-century art form. At all levels, it is an artefact – but an artefact peculiarly subject to the limitations of time and money. Every producer and scriptwriter – cameraman and film editor too – knows the frustration of having to compromise because conditions (physical or economic) make it impossible to do otherwise. Three days of rain during filming and a whole plan must be re-thought. And they know, too, the second wave of frustration when critics, professional and lay, suggest the very things which would have been done if only television were the all-miraculous, ail-endowed medium which those who have little or no practical experience of it suppose it to be.

It is a mistake to say, as many do, that ‘television is primarily a form of entertainment’. Television is primarily a medium of communication. That is its alpha and its omega. But entertainment is the use to which it is generally put and it would be naive in the extreme to presume that people buy, or rent, their television sets for any other purpose.