Four years after the Primate of All England’s death in 1944, F. A. Iremonger published his biography of William Temple. “The only sixpenny object in a penny bazaar,” Winston Churchill quipped on nominating Temple for the See of St Augustine in 1942.

Despite the Prime Minister’s blandishments the Bench was not without its giants, not least the scholarly Bishop Barry of Southwell and the prophetic Bishops Bell of Chichester and Hunter of Sheffield.

The Times Literary Supplement published an extensive review of Iremonger’s book on August 28, 1948, entitled “Unity in Diversity”, quoting the aphorism that the Archbishop of Canterbury together with the Prime Minister, the Editor of The Times, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chairman of the Governors of the BBC were among the half-dozen men who had most influence in shaping British national life.

Born into the Establishment, his father Frederick being Archbishop of Canterbury from 1896-1902, Temple was both a national and international figure.

Appointed Bishop of Manchester in 1921 at the age of 40 and then in 1929 Archbishop of York, Temple and his ministry came to epitomise the face of a renewed Church engaging with society in the midst of a nation in social and political turmoil, coping not only with the aftermath of one war but also another dangerously looming on the horizon.

A philosopher of deep spirituality with an insatiable appetite for hard work and ability to communicate with all classes, Temple’s Oxford University Mission addresses of 1931 entitled Christian Faith and Life to the packed University Church influenced a whole generation of future leaders: “People are always thinking that conduct is supremely important, and that because prayer helps it, therefore prayer is good. That is true as far as it goes; still truer is it to say that worship is of supreme importance and conduct tests it.”

Conscious of the deepening divisions within Europe, he was determined that if the Churches were to have any future credibility they should present a united front spiritually and socially. In 1942 he co-founded the Council of Christians and Jews. From the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 to the foundation of the World Council of Churches he helped to steer the ecumenical ship, and the success of the first General Assembly of the WCC in Amsterdam in 1948 was in no small part a credit to him.

Together with his keen interest in education and his collaboration with Rab Butler on the 1944 Education Act, Temple’s contribution was decisive in Labour’s landslide victory in 1945. A not uncritical supporter of the Labour Party and following in the Christian Socialist tradition of F. D. Maurice and Henry Scott Holland, it was Temple who coined the phrase “the Welfare State”.

Working with his Rugby contemporary R. H. Tawney, the seminal Labour thinker, and William Beveridge, the architect of the welfare reforms which sought to banish the five giants of want, idleness, squalor, ignorance and disease, Temple’s book Christianity and Social Order, published in 1942, provided a challenging theological gloss to this vision: “. . . there is no hope of establishing a more Christian social order except through the labour and sacrifice of those in whom the Spirit of Christ is active, and that the first necessity for progress is more and better Christians taking full responsibility as citizens for the political, social and economic system under which they and their fellows live.”

After Temple’s death at the age of 63 after being Archbishop of Canterbury for only 30 months, Bishop Barry of Southwell asked angrily in The Spectator: “Is the Church so rich in prophets that it can afford to squander the gifts of God?” A contrasting view, expressed by Hensley Henson, was that he died just in time “for he had passed away while the streams of opinion in Church and State, of which he became the outstanding symbol and exponent, were at flood, and escaped the experience of their inevitable ebb”.

Although a much different world than that of 60 years ago, the weight of Temple’s greatness is still felt. Once described as “a man so broad, to some he seem’d to be Not one, but all Mankind in Effigy”, his wide informed vision checks our growing narrowness and self-obsession, his realism our Utopian perfectionism, his generosity of heart a worthy riposte to the mood of cynicism and anger epitomising the age and his statesmanship a powerful reminder of what it is to serve as the national church.

Peter Townley is the Archdeacon of Pontefract