Bishop Gore has always shown an earnest sympathy with the aspirations of the working class to improve their material condition.  He is also profoundly impressed by the apparent discrepancy between the teachings of Christ about wealth and the principles which His professed disciples wholly follow and in part avow.  These anxious questionings form the subject of a fine sermon which he preached at the Church Congress of 1906, on the text about the camel and the needle’s eye.  Jesus Christ chose to be born of poor and humble parents, in a land remote from the centre of political or intellectual influence, and in the circle of labouring men.  He chose to belong to the class of the respectable artisan, and most of the twelve Apostles came from the same social level.  In His teaching He plainly associated blessedness with the lot of poverty, and extreme danger with the lot of wealth.  All through the New Testament the assumption is that God is on the side of the poor against the rich.  As Jowett once said, there is more in the New Testament against being rich, and in favour of being poor, than we like to recognise.  And is not this the cause of our failure to win the masses?  Is it not because we are the Church of capital rather than of labour?  The Church ought to be a community in which religion works upward from below.  The Church of England expresses that point of view which is precisely not that which Christ chose for His Church.  The incomes of the bishops range them with the wealthier classes; the clergy associate with the gentry and not with the artisans.  We must acknowledge with deep penitence that we are on wrong lines.  For himself, the Bishop admits that he has ‘a permanently troubled conscience’ in the matter.  Then, with that admirable courage and practicality which is the secret of much of his influence, he proceeds to indicate four ’lines of hopeful recovery.’  First, the Church must get rid of the administration of poor relief.  Where the charity of the Church is understood to mean the patronage of the rich, it can do nothing without disaster.  All will be in vain till it has ceased to be a plausible taunt that a man or woman goes to church for what can be got.  Secondly, we must give the artisans their true place in Church management, and must consult their tastes in all non-essentials.  Thirdly, the clergy should ’concentrate themselves upon bringing out the social meaning of the sacraments,’ and giving voice to the spirit of Christian brotherhood.  Lastly, we ought to free the clerical profession entirely from any association of class.

The Bishop is not a Collectivist, but he has great sympathy with some of the aims of Socialism.  In a ‘Pan-Anglican Paper’ just issued, he discusses the attitude of the Church towards Socialism.  Christianity, he says, must remain independent of State-Socialism, as of other organisations of society.  Socialism would make a far deeper demand on character than most of its adherents realise.  ’An