Beacons of light
“WALK to Auschwitz? You’re mad!” was the verdict of my family. But walk there I did; and this week I completed the final edits to The Path to Light, the book about it.
It is a sequel to The Path to Peace, which was about establishing “The Western Front Way” for those looking to find both greater peace in their own lives and peace between nations. That first walk went from the North Sea to the Swiss border via the First World War’s no man’s land. My dream is that the path will eventually link Canterbury Cathedral at one end with Freiburg Cathedral, just inside the German border, at the other.
I started the walk for this new book, about the Second World War, at the Swiss border. Along the way, I was in search of stories about good women and men who resisted Nazism and strove to protect others. Many of the books published this summer on the 80th anniversary of the war’s end have been about the Nazis, not about the heroism of those who resisted them and protected the vulnerable. The sovereignty of good is what attracts me.
Both the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches had, at best, a mixed war record. The Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller initially supported Hitler and anti-Semitism; Martin Luther was the theologian most referred to by the Nazis; and Lutherans generally supported an accommodation with the Party. By 1935, however, Niemöller had seen the light and understood that his duty was to protect all who were being persecuted — above all, the Jews. He survived the war, and spent the rest of his life educating the world about what had happened.
Unlike Niemöller, two of the other figures of light in the book, Maximilian Kolbe and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (both ordained), did not survive the war. In Auschwitz, Kolbe stepped forward in place of a prisoner who had been randomly chosen to be starved to death: he led his fellow condemned prisoners in prayers and singing until he, too, met his end.
The book is dedicated to Bonhoeffer and to the lesser-known Jewish hero Etty Hillesum. Like Bonhoeffer, she prayed to God ceaselessly: “My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, O God, one great dialogue.” She chose not to flee to safety, but to remain with those who needed her infectious spirit; and yet she refused to think ill of the guards.
Her last words, written on a card thrown out from the cattle truck on the journey to their deaths, was “We left the camp, singing.” These irrepressible God-inspired figures of light are inspirations to us today in our anxious world.
Spanning division
JONATHAN SACKS, the former Chief Rabbi whose biography I am writing, was, like Hillesum, a bridge-builder between Judaism and Christianity. In 2008, Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury, imaginatively invited him to speak at a plenary session of the Lambeth Conference. Both Rowan and John Sentamu (then Archbishop of York) had a close relationship with Sacks, as they were telling me recently in interviews for the biography.
For Sacks, who spoke at Lambeth about the nature of Covenant, the invitation was profoundly moving — as was the warmth of the reception from all those present. He relished the deep significance of the event: a warm hand of friendship to Jews after so many centuries of hostility, and an example of Sacks’s preference for the “side-by-side” rather than “face-to-face” approach to interfaith dialogue.
George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury before Rowan Williams, was another I have spoken to for the biography, and another to delight in so much shared ground. I first encountered George 30 years ago when writing a biography of Sir John Major. Their lives had much in common, and it was wonderful that they could give support to each other in their work. Both had to contend with corralling challenging flocks.
Doing God
TALKING about bishops of Canterbury, I have huge respect for Justin Welby, and we had talked of co-writing a book. It was another Prime Minister who first brought us together: Winston Churchill, no less. Justin’s mother, Jane Williams, was the last surviving secretary of the great man when he was Prime Minister.
Ten years ago, I invited her to Downing Street as part of a series for current staff to listen to figures from bygone administrations. Never had I heard the Pillared Room in No. 10 so quiet as when, for an hour, she talked. Utterly spellbinding.
As a lifelong student of the British Prime Minister, I’ve been intrigued by those PMs who have a commitment to faith. This subject is beautifully explored in a book by Mark Vickers, God in Number 10: The personal faith of the Prime Ministers from Balfour to Blair. Unsurprisingly, I’ve reached the conclusion that Prime Ministers — who have the loneliest job in the country — are stronger if they are blessed with faith. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and Theresa May were all powerfully shaped by their strong Christian beliefs. Boris Johnson, who appeared to believe in nothing, bobbed about like a cork in the ocean.
Sir Keir Starmer, whose biography I’m destined to write, has just completed a difficult first year. Although he s not a person of faith himself, I hope it is a comfort to him to celebrate Friday-night supper with his Jewish wife and family. Sacks greatly enjoyed hosting senior Church of England figures for shabbat dinner in his home.
To see or not to see
SINCE my days as a student of philosophy, it has always struck me as strange that the onus should be on the need to prove the existence of God. Surely this is the wrong way round? The book I really want to write one day will be called Atheism Explained, examining the seven reasons that non-believers have no intimation of the omnipresence of God. Could it be, as T. S. Eliot puts it, because faith is “a condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything)”? Who wants to give up “everything”? It is incredibly difficult to renounce.
A fellow baffled philosophy student at university, the magical Bahram Dehqani-Tafti, conducted the orchestra for plays I directed. Utterly charming and brilliant, he belonged to a close and loving family. After leaving Oxford, he was murdered by government agents in Iran, where his father was the Anglican Bishop.
I have no idea who will be appointed as the new Archbishop of Canterbury; but one of the possibilities, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, is Bahram’s dearly beloved younger sister.
The end in sight
NO BOOK in the Bible is more mysterious than Revelation. A series of sermons on the topic, in our local church — St Michael’s, Fulwell, in south-west London — sadly came to an end this Sunday. Our Vicar, Ed Kendall, and Associate Vicar, Simon Pedley, opened my eyes to this treasure at the end of the Bible which I’d always regarded as too strange and difficult to handle. Week by week, they took the congregation through the chapters, revealing the symbols, patterns, and meanings, until all became clear.
Ed’s initial advice was to regard Revelation as more like a picture gallery, with themes regularly repeated, than a film with a clear beginning, middle, and end. He finished by highlighting the choice that the book poses: the city of Jerusalem the Bride, or Babylon the Prostitute?
It was an inspiring climax to a stunning year at the church, to send us off on our summer holidays.
Sir Anthony Seldon is an author, educator, and walker.
