The Decay of the Modern Church

Eliot on the snakes and dogs who inhabit our houses of worship

Photo by Gary Walker-Jones on Unsplash

In this next section of our study of T.S. Eliot’s “Choruses from The Rock” (see parts one, two, three, four, five, and six), we’re going to look at a stanza that focuses specifically on the Church and less on the City. Continuing the allusion to the story of Nehemiah, Eliot will consider the particular challenges facing the modern church and what it looks like to do the work of building:

O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian: were doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.

Preserve me from the enemy who has something to gain: and from the friend who has something to lose.
Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: “The trowel in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster.”
Those who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten: are like snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in the sun light.
And the others run about like dogs, full of enterprise, sniffing and barking: they say, “This house is a nest of serpents, let us destroy it,
And have done with these abominations, the turpitudes of the Christians.” And these are not justified, nor the others.
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home: and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.
The man who has builded during the day would return to his hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of silence, and doze before he sleeps.
But we are encompassed with snakes and dogs: therefore some must labour, and others must hold the spears.

Eliot begins with a prayer: “O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” which is an acknowledgement that many people who join in the work of building or care about the welfare of the city or the health of the church do so out of “excellent intention” and yet “impure heart.” That might seem like a contradiction. How can you intend something excellent if your heart is not pure? And Eliot’s answer is that our hearts are “deceitful above all things.” Our hearts are capable of intending excellent things for the church (evangelism, baptisms, discipleship, etc) but out of impure motives (ego, pride, envy, selfish ambition). Paul gives an example of this in Philippians chapter one:

¹⁵ Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. ¹⁶ The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. ¹⁷ The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. ¹⁸ What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

The next lines reference three biblical figures who fought against Nehemiah’s efforts to rebuild Jerusalem, Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian. And Eliot remarks that they were “doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.” In other words, these were men of “excellent intention and impure heart.” Like many politicians and civic leaders today, they advocated for their community and (thought) they cared about the common good, but their hearts were impure and they were set against God’s will. Eliot’s warning here is that “public spirit and zeal” and “excellent intention” are no guarantee of purity of heart. We can, on the one hand, acknowledge the good intentions of those working for a better community or a healthier church body, while still admitting that their hearts are not pure, that their desires are not God’s desires. This, I think, is particularly important to keep in mind because often it is the case that people will shield themselves from criticism by hiding behind the excellence of their intentions: “I’m advocating for the unborn. How can you criticize me?” “I’m advocating for evangelism? Are you against sharing the gospel?” And so on. The model we find in Paul’s letter to the Philippians is that we can both praise what is praise worthy and criticize what is wrong. He was thankful that these preachers were sharing the gospel but he still publicly chastised them for doing it out of selfish ambition.

The most interesting section in this stanza comes a few lines later when he begins talking about snakes and dogs. Eliot writes: “Those who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten: are like snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in the sun light.” This house is undoubtedly the house of God and its use is forgotten because in the wasteland of modernity people have abandoned belief in God. Some still sit in the church on Sundays, but it’s done pro forma. These Eliot describes as “snakes.” They are “content in the sun light.” They lie curled up, absorbing the warmth of the church without contributing anything or being changed by it at all. The fact that they are snakes suggests that they are unrepentant creatures who go to church merely because it is the proper thing to do.

Then there are the dogs, who are “full of enterprise.” They recognize the vapid, hypocritical, dead religion of the snakes, and they say, “This house is a nest of serpents, let us destroy it, / And have done with these abominations, the turpitudes of the Christians.” The dogs represent rationalist atheists who only see the languishing English church (now in our own time being echoed somewhat in the languishing American church) as an “abomination” to be gotten rid of. Eliot’s response is that both the snakes and the dogs are the problem: “And these are not justified, nor the others.” We need some other response. Dead religion and angry atheism will not do to build up the church and therefore the city.

We get a hint at what this other response might be in the following line. Eliot complains that “they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.” One of the problems for the snakes and (especially, I think) for the dogs is constant production and consumption of media. One shudders to think what Eliot would make of social media. The reason he is opposed to all these books is that it makes us vain and keeps us from silence. We “dodge” our “emptiness” by scrolling on social media and we build up our vanity and self importance by constantly posting.

Instead, we need humility and purity: “If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home: and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.” There is a progression here. Our individual hearts must be grounds of humility and purity (which is tied to the ability to be silent before God). Only then can our homes become spaces of humility and purity, and then our city.

Eliot concludes this stanza with an image of resting after a day of building: “The man who has builded during the day would return to his hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of silence, and doze before he sleeps. / But we are encompassed with snakes and dogs: therefore some must labour, and others must hold the spears.” I think the meaning of these lines lies in the idea of silence. The person who is building well, as opposed to the snakes and dogs who are tearing the church apart, can rest with a clear conscience. They accept that God is doing the work of building, ultimately (humility!), and therefore their task is to merely do their work during the day and rest when they get home. They can faithfully practice resting because they are not the ones holding the project of rebuilding the church or the city together, God is. Our building should be marked by humility and purity, a purity we attain in part through the ability to be silent before God.

But still there is the reminder, some must labor building, and others must hold the spears, because we are encompassed by snakes and dogs who seek to tear down the church.