Saints and Heroes
by Frank Field
About the book
Every politician needs inspiration and ideals in this cynical age. Frank Field’s Anglican faith provides his inspiration, and a foundation for a set of ideals known as English Idealism, put forward by T. H. Green. These ideals built on Christianity to form a widely shared public ideology. As a leading politician and churchman, Field illustrates such ideals through the life and work of six people who have inspired him in his political career.
‘Frank Field brings [these people] very much alive, writing with honesty and conviction. The book . . . will be an inspiration to many’
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You can buy Saints and Heroes here.
About the author
The Rt Hon. Frank Field MP is the former welfare reform minister and one of the most famous backbenchers in the House of Commons. He campaigns continually and fearlessly for justice and for intelligent ways of ensuring the welfare of the poor.
Questions about Saints and Heroes
1. Which biography did you find most inspiring and why?
2. Who inspires with a combination of Faith and Politics today?
3. How do you define a ‘Saint’?
4. In the introduction Frank Field writes that ‘Britain now has no agreed public ideology’ and of his hope that ‘we might yet be stirred to write a new hymn sheet for our times’. Can you see how this might happen and how it might emerge from our multi-layered and diverse society?
5. William Temple wrote of ‘…the mind of Christ wherein alone is to be found the true basis of human life.’ (Page 31) What do you understand this to mean and how does it relate to your own faith?
6. Writing about Conrad Noel and George Bell, Frank Field concludes that ‘…it is through our frail bodies that we are messengers of the Kingdom, and these frail bodies are nurtured by that worldly beauty which gives us but a faintest glimpse of God’s face.’ Where do you find beauty and do you agree with the author’s assertion that in beauty we are glimpsing something of God? (Page 110)
7. Do you agree with Frank Fields assertions about ‘the pivotal role of motherhood in producing the kind of citizens necessary for a peaceable kingdom’? (Page 130).
8. He sees in the life and beliefs of Eleanor Rathbone reasons for optimism about overcoming ‘yobbish and anti-social behaviour’. What do you make of this argument and how can it practically be pursued.
9. ‘Although Eleanor Rathbone was always a feminist, she was not limited by her feminism.’ (Page 115). What do you make of this assertion? Can labels and identification with particular causes limit human endeavour?
10 Concluding his book and commenting on the legacy of Beveridge, Frank Field writes of ‘… a government that has still seriously to embrace welfare reform’. What would be the shape of a society that took the Beveridge ideals into the 21st Century and how could this be achieved?
11. What single change would you make to the way our society is structured if you had the power to do so?
12. What would you urge the churches to do to bring about a more equitable society?
