Back in the early 1960s many people considered Harrry Blamires, a budding Anglican theologian and literary critic, to be a younger C.S. Lewis. In his incisive book The Christian Mind (1963) Blamires explores the question of how one’s Christian convictions ought to change the way one thinks. Like all great books, The Christian Mind has aged gracefully and its analysis continues to provide novel insight into the world around us. On this, the fiftieth anniversary of this classic book, I offer the following memorable passage where Blamires considers who, from a Christian perspective, may be the most sinful man in the room:
“the Christian mind cannot accept the facile distinction made by the secular mind – reflected in public society – between the nation’s criminals and libertines on the one hand and her good men on the other. For the discerning Christian knows that a cunning or intelligent man may lead a life of almost diabolical pride, in which he strives in every moment to minister to the desires and vanities of his own inflated self—and yet may pass for a respectable, law-abiding citizen. Indeed he may rise to a position of eminence in the world by the persistent and subtle practice of the most calculated self-service. He may become a judge, packing off poor men to gaol with words of stern condemnation ostensibly reflecting the indignation of righteous men, and yet he may be, by virtue of a cancerous inner self-centredness, the greatest sinner, essentially the most evil man, ever to have entered the courtroom in which he sits—though its dock has accommodated a stream of murders, thieves, and perverts for the last fifty years. The Christian mind cannot overlook this possibility.” (The Christian Mind, 90)
