Archbishop William Temple and the British welfare state : anglicanism, idealism, and the common good

William Temple (1881-1944) was the Anglican Bishop of Manchester when he published Christianity and the State in 1928. He was Archbishop of York when he published Citizen and Churchman in 1941. In both works we find some of the earliest occurrences of Welfare-State in English. Very soon afterwards, Winston Churchill selected Temple to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury. For Temple the Welfare-State rested on Christian presuppositions. It had a moral and spiritual function because its citizens were spiritual beings. Temple defined the State as an organ of the community which existed for the welfare of the community.

Drawing on T.H. Green's notions of positive freedom and the common good, this early vision of the welfare state was very different to the bureaucratic and functionalist models which came later. I argue that there have been not one, but two distinct usages of welfare state in Britain, the first instilled with Christian-Idealist virtues of good citizenship and fellowship, the second framed in terms of economic intervention to support those in financial or social need. The secular version of the welfare state now obscures its own Christian origins, leaving a spiritual vacuum which is waiting to be filled. [Publisher's text]