11 Higher Education Reading Group
Eliot, T. S. (2014). The idea of a Christian society. HMH. (first given as a three lecture series, in March 1939)
Eliot’s text remains strikingly relevant despite being written in a vastly different historical context. While some of his conclusions feel dated or unconvincing, his diagnosis of social and moral failure is remarkably prescient and appears to speak to enduring features of human societies.
Three of Eliot’s observations stand out in particular. First, his claim that an educated mob is still a mob challenges the assumption that education alone produces moral discernment. Advanced societies, he argues, are often more vulnerable to shallow tolerationism precisely because they have lost contact with tradition, rhythm, and lived moral formation. Knowledge and technical sophistication do not guarantee ethical depth.
Second, Eliot’s insistence that not all members of a Christian society need to be Christian is both pragmatic and generous (albeit elitist). Christianity, for him, functions less as a demand for universal belief than as a moral framework that provides dignity, protection, and structure for all, including non-believers. The responsibility of Christianity lies in sustaining social order, not enforcing doctrinal conformity.
Third, Eliot’s account of “distributed evil” anticipates modern critiques of institutional and systemic harm. Some of the most serious moral failures, he suggests, arise not from individual wickedness but from feedback loops embedded in institutions and social systems. These evils are difficult to attribute to single actors and are rooted in human nature itself.
As a group we were less persuaded by Eliot’s proposed solution of a consciously Christian society, the problem diagnosis remains compelling. His concerns feel timeless: as they could be applied today, or centuries ago, with little loss of relevance.
A particularly important contemporary parallel lies in the role of intellectual elites. Eliot addresses a clearly educated audience and places heavy responsibility on moral authority. In modern societies, academics increasingly occupy a space once held by the priesthood. In a system that claims to be governed by reason, evidence, and transparency, scholars cannot abdicate social responsibility without risking the very technocratic dehumanization Eliot warns against. This concern is sharpened by modern “impact” regimes, which measure academic value through societal contribution without necessarily addressing moral depth.
Eliot’s understanding of priesthood is instructive here. He is not concerned with surface-level moral instruction but with deeper relational structures: how authority is judged, how communities are organized, and how societies resist totalitarian tendencies. These questions map closely onto debates about the mission of the university, which increasingly functions as a legitimating institution, as the de facto “cathedral of modernity.” Underpinning all of this, is our current post-truth epistemic crisis, and here, in a way Elliot’s proposition offer A solution, despite its own flaws.
We concluded with a self-aware observation, that we simply can’t seem to get past concepts and questions that relate to truth and knowledge, at this level of abstraction. Furthermore, here the modern lack of confidence to inquire about the positive affirmation of these ideas may be part of the problem. Where a modern functional equivalent to the social class of the Clergy/Clericy/Clerisy/priesthood thereby fails to fulfill their social responsibilities for wider society. Less, society is just dominated by totalitarian exploitation emergent from complex systems.
