'The Moot' was a lay Christian ecumenical society formed during 1939 largely on the initiative of the ecumenist, Joseph Houldsworth Oldham (1874-1969),an Oxford graduate who was converted under the preaching of D.L. Moody. In 1939 Oldham had established the short-lived Council on the Christian Faith and the Common Life with a view to encouraging the adoption of a Christian sociology in Britain, but, as he explains in the introduction to his Christian Newsletter Book The Resurrection of Christendom, published in 1940, he was prevented from pursuing that particular venture by the outbreak of the Second World War. 'The Moot' initiative was closely allied to the Council idea and attracted a number of prominent persons as members, including T.S. Eliot, who had become a convert to the Church of England in middle life, but it, too, was apparently short-lived. Oldham, however, later went on to help to establish the major ecumenical movement, the World Council of Churches, of which movement 'The Moot' was thus a precursor.
From the guide to the Papers and letters concerning the lay Christian ecumenical society 'The Moot', 1939, (Leeds University Library)
