"A Third Testament": Malcolm Muggeridge's six-part video series, fifty years later

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Malcolm Muggeridge (1903 - 1990), whose memory and popularity have somewhat dimmed in the decades since his death, could — if for no other reason — be remembered for the remarkable and mercurial life he lived. Today, unfortunately, he tends to live on in a few awkward video clips, which one can find on YouTube, scolding John Cleese and Michael Palin about The Life of Brian (alongside the then Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, whose presence doesn’t improve the overall discomfort of the sight). It was not Muggeridge’s finest hour. But setting aside that oft-replayed reminder that one should exercise judiciousness in public, Muggeridge was also a man of brilliance, wit, and insight, as well as a study in contradictions. Jonothan Van Maren wrote the following in what was, in essence, a review of Gregory Wolfe’s superb 2003 biography of Muggeridge (one of three biographies, incidentally, since the latter’s death; one can read the entire review by clicking here):

Wolfe’s case for a reappraisal of Muggeridge’s legacy is compelling. His contemporaries, from Orwell to Greene, have received their due. Muggeridge has not, despite his astonishing record of prescient predictions. This is in part because Muggeridge was a journalist and television presenter rather than a philosopher, theologian, or successful novelist. He was also a profoundly modern man: hard-edged, satirical, and possessing a profound sense of absurdity that frequently bordered on cynicism. Despite what he called his “Niagara of words,” many now remember him primarily as an omnipresent fixture on the BBC rather than as a writer.

As a journalist, Muggeridge managed to be nearly everywhere. He spent time in India, corresponded with Gandhi, and correctly predicted that the days of the British Raj were numbered. He was one of only a handful to report on the Holodomor in Ukraine, covered the League of Nations from Geneva, and was one of the few who saw war with Germany coming. As an MI6 agent, he engaged in daring escapades in Mozambique, made it to France for the Liberation, and toured the scorched remains of Hiroshima with a delegation that included Emperor Hirohito. He covered the segregation battles in Little Rock, Arkansas, politics in Washington, D.C., and even bumped into the Beatles in a small bar before they went big. As a BBC host, he interviewed every major figure of his time, from Solzhenitsyn to Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana.

Wolfe identifies several reasons for Muggeridge’s descent into relative obscurity. Much of what he correctly predicted is now so widely accepted that most have forgotten his prescience…

Muggeridge’s relatively late-life conversion to Christianity, however, does give some the impression that he was merely a committed contrarian, once again bucking the trends of his times. Indeed, there is a perverse symmetry to his life: he was a Communist before becoming an anti-Communist (after visiting the Soviet Union and seeing the socialist experiment for himself); a personal libertine before he became a public moralist; and a TV talking head before he trashed his own set and excoriated the medium, most notably in a series of lectures collected into a short but powerful book, Christ and the Media. He was also, in many ways, a traitor to his class—a member of the media elite who, as Wolfe put it, argued that the elites “had become alienated from traditional values, and had launched a sustained assault on the Western tradition, shielding themselves behind the rhetoric of tolerance and free speech.” Muggeridge was maddening, but each passing year emphasises just how right that analysis was.

Wolfe believes that, in addition to his social commentary, Malcolm Muggeridge deserves a place amongst the great Christian apologists of the 20th century, alongside C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton (who incidentally also insisted that he was, first and foremost, a journalist). Over an almost unbelievably storied lifetime in which he occupied a front seat to most of the century’s key events, Muggeridge was drawn slowly but inexorably to a single, all-encompassing conclusion: “It is Christ, or nothing.”

Wheaton College, which has Muggeridge’s collected papers among its archives, provides a concise online biographical sketch that can be read here. Whatever else might be said about Muggeridge, no one can deny that he was a fascinating individual or that, late though his conversion was, his dedication to his Christian faith from the 1960s on was real and abiding.

One aspect of the latter was his practice of reading the Christian mystics. Among his late writings, A Third Testament, based on the television series of the same name, is a small book I cherish. Even more so, I cherish the original six episodes of the program, all of which are available on YouTube (see below). I recall watching it with family and friends on PBS when it first aired (on Sunday afternoons on the Baltimore or Washington TV station — I can’t recall which) in the United States in 1974 — so, hard as it is for me to believe, this year marks the series’ fiftieth anniversary. In my opinion, upon rewatching them, the episodes still hold up, Muggeridge’s presentation and incisive comments still have power to stimulate the mind, and the content still edifies and convinces the viewer that authentic and imaginative Christian thought is sinewy, resilient, and vital.

The series provides the viewer with short introductions (each episode is an hour long) to six great intellects of Christianity, not all of them impeccably “orthodox,” but all of whom displayed what I would deem “mystical” tendencies: Augustine of Hippo, Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Søren Kierkegaard, Leo Tolstoy, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So, without any further rigmarole from me, let me simply say that one could spend six hours doing far less interesting things than renewing or beginning an acquaintance with Muggeridge (at his most enjoyable) and his six great subjects.