Faith & Spirit Quote by Lionel Blue

A clergyman admitting he once “deserted religion” is already a small act of heresy, and Lionel Blue knows it. The verb “deserted” carries moral heat: it’s the language of betrayal, the kind you’re supposed to reserve for vows. He uses it anyway, then softens the blow with a disarmingly practical rationale. Marxism, in this telling, isn’t a teenage fling with ideology; it’s an attempted shortcut to decency.

“The republic of goodness” is the pivot. Blue chooses a civic, administrative metaphor for virtue, something you could draft, vote on, build with committees and housing policy. Against it stands “the Kingdom of God,” grand, promised, and infamously deferred. The subtext is a complaint many believers won’t quite say out loud: religion can feel like an emotional economy that asks for patience while the world stays brutal. Marxism, at least in its moral sales pitch, offers timelines.

Blue’s wit is gentle but pointed. Calling goodness a “republic” also slyly demystifies it: goodness becomes public infrastructure, not private piety. At the same time, he’s not writing a victory lap for Marxism. “Seemed more attainable” is a phrase of hindsight, suggesting seduction and disappointment, the way political faith tends to dim when it meets history.

Context matters: a 20th-century British Jewish cleric shaped by war, welfare-state idealism, and the long argument between secular justice and sacred hope. Blue’s real subject is divided loyalty: the human need for a world repaired now, and the religious habit of waiting for one that never quite arrives on schedule.