Christendom should be one: the form of organisation and the locus of powers in that unity are questions upon which we cannot pronounce.
But within that unity there should be an endless conflict between ideas--for it is only by the struggle against constantly appearing false ideas that the truth is enlarged and clarified, and in the conflict with heresy that orthodoxy is developed to meet the needs of the times; an endless effort also on the part of each region to shape its Christianity to suit itself, an effort which should neither be wholly suppressed nor left wholly unchecked.
The local temperament must express its particularity in its form of Christianity, and so must the social stratum, so that the culture proper to each area and class may flourish; but there must also be a force holding these areas and these classes together. If this corrective force in the direction of uniformity of belief and practice is lacking, then the culture of each part will suffer.
We have already found that the culture of a nation prospers with the prosperity of the culture of its several constituents, both geographical and social; but that it also needs to be itself a part of a larger culture, which requires the ultimate ideal, however unrealisable, of a "world culture" in a sense different from that implicit in the schemes of world-federationists.
And without a common faith, all efforts towards drawing nations closer together in culture can produce only an illusion of unity.
T. S. Eliot, Christianity and Culture, p.157
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