> Orwell's notion that "Chesterton ... expresses in a simplified ... form,
> certain tendencies that exist in every Christian reformer" is remarkably
> narrow
One could even make the case that this was actually the subordinate current in Christian reformism so far as the anglo-American experience was concerned.
There is an excellent review in the May 22 LRB of a biography of George Lansbury that makes a very persuasive case that, for better or worse, Christian socialism was one of the dominant forces shaping the labor party from Lansbury through Tony Blair. (I emphasize "for better or worse." The point is that it was this current of thought eventually became the common sense of the majority British left voter. It didn't just give rise to lost grouplets on the right.) And I would be willing to argue in that in America there was a similar direct line of succession from the Christian socialists of the turn of the century through progressivism and the New Deal into the mainstream of anti-communist liberalism. A large set of defining beliefs stayed remarkably constant throughout.
Lastly, there is something off about Orwell accusing other people of a nostalgia for a simpler past. Nostalgia for small communities and outrage at all this deracinating modern crassness play a central roles in his novels of British life.
Nonetheless, Shane's excerpt makes his essay sounds interesting despite, or perhaps even because, of those weaknesses.
Michael