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KPI Description

Title W. D. McClelland: Draft article - "The Christian Left: The Introductory Sequence", 1984.
Author McClelland, W.D.
Description File contains a typed draft article by W. D. McClelland titled "The Christian Left: The Introductory Sequence". 5p.
URI http://hdl.handle.net/10694/777
Archive Date 2010-09-10

Contents

[1] […] … itself “The Social Redemption Group” …

Norman Ridyard and held its week-end meetings at his home in Bricket Wood, …

… the underlying purpose of the Group was an examination of those forces in contemporary society that contributed to what was seen as the breakdown in the “community spirit”. It was from this point that the wide-ranging nature of the discussion within the Group took place.

… Members were asked to introduce discussion by 20 minutes papers (the only rule kept to).

[2] […]

A measure of the Group's success was that, when it started, it involved an average of 16-20 people spending one week-end a quarter in discussion … […]

The next effective link for me was “Q Camp”. This represented a substantial, intellectual, step. It involved exposure to a wider range of ideas, set against a more purposeful, active, “executive” background. The S.R. Group was exploratory and educational and fun in its own right; Q Camps introduced the need to take specific action.

[…]

[3] For me the emphasis was on the political solutions offered, quite separate from any religious beliefs. I expect the reason for this was that Christianity and Christian thinking were linked to the established and formal patterns of one's upbringing, impossible to associate with the need for social change. […]

[…] Someone said, Bernard Shaw I think, that there was no confidence to compare with that generated by the belief that one was the instrument of historical destiny. At that time and at that age that was how one felt! […]

[4] […] John Macmurray used the term ”the super-organic factor”. […]

[5] could result. But this world was viewed by individuals, in isolate and in aggregates, from the point of view of their own development: the development of their own personalities if you like. […]

At this stage I found the seminars at Pyecomb Corner and, later at St. Pancras, stimulating. (Interestingly, I did not find the conference at St. Asaph's stimulating; enjoyable, yes, but not stimulating).
The much discussed “basis” of the Christian Left talked of religion being essentially about human community and that, therefore, the struggle to change society was at base a religious struggle. The dominant consideration for me was the transformation of society and it was the all-embracing nature of the of the outlook - the religious basis - of the Christian Left that was the attraction to me.

W.D. McClelland.

January, 1984