The Making of Christian Toryism: The Public Faith of Harold Macmillan

Abstract

This article considers the significance of the public Christianity of the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (1894–1986). By excavating the socially conscious faith of the Edwardian upper classes, it locates Macmillan as the advocate of a unique synthesis of Disraelian Toryism and Christian Socialism. The discussion opens with an exploration of the origins of Macmillan’s politics. Drawing on the medievalism of William Morris, the Anglo-Catholicism of Ronald Knox, and Augustinian pessimism, Macmillan arrives at a sin-sensitive politics which seeks to tame capital and the state. The argument then considers how Macmillan’s rich articulation of Toryism has the capacity to challenge contemporary British Conservatives to recover and deepen their traditions of community-spirit and social justice. In an effort to contest a narrow description of British Toryism as a purely economic theory, I argue for a generous reassessment of a profoundly religious Toryism