Vincent Strudwick

This book examines the influence of members of the Society of the Sacred Mission at Kelham Hall on T. S. Eliot’s poetics, cultural criticism and his search for identity. It focusses particularly on Eliot’s friendship with Br George Every SSM, and the correspondence between them that led to a deep intellectual and spiritual relationship. The author builds his study on his own conversations and correspondence with Every, the archive of Society of the Sacred Mission papers in the Borthwick Institute in York, and the collection of papers and other material left to the author by Every on his death. The result is a delicate journey through the growing personal and spiritual relationship between a great theologian and Christian writer, and one of the greatest modern poets and essayists.

Every generation puts 'clothes' onto God to help their understanding, but the underlying reality of God still lies beneath those garments. If we go on clothing God only with garments that are suitable for medieval Christendom, or any other age, then we can hardly expect that God will be understood in the twenty-first century. We live in an age in which many people are interested in spirituality but have been disillusioned by the Church and are unaware of what lies behind institutional religion. There is little knowledge of historical attempts to understand and to clothe God, and it is more difficult for twenty-first-century generations to find the tools with which to wrestle with the big questions about who we are and how we relate both to God and to each other. Vincent Strudwick--in collaboration with theologian, historian, and priest Jane Shaw--invites all readers to become wrestlers: to explore difficult questions about God, the Bible, spirituality, and the Church.