This article is about the discussion group active in Britain from 1938 to 1947. For the Moot in Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy fictional universe, see The Empire (Warhammer)

The Empire (Warhammer)

In Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy fictional universe, The Empire is one of the human political factions and armies, and is featured in many games and novels. In terms of location, language, culture, and society, it bears a strong resemblance to the Holy Roman Empire...

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The Moot was a discussion group concerned with education, social reconstruction, and the role of culture in society. It was convened by J. H. Oldham

J. H. Oldham

Joseph Houldsworth Oldham , known as J. H. or Joe, was a Scottish missionary in India, who became a significant figure in Christian ecumenism, though never ordained in the United Free Church as he had wished.-Life:...

, editor of the Christian Newsletter, and its participants were mainly Christian intellectuals. Karl Mannheim

Karl Mannheim

Karl Mannheim , or Károly Mannheim in the original writing of his name, was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology and a founder of the sociology of knowledge.-Life:Mannheim studied in Budapest,...

 was a central figure in the group. Others who attended included T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, John Middleton Murry

John Middleton Murry

John Middleton Murry was an English writer. He was prolific, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime...

, Sir Fred Clarke

Frederick Clarke

Professor Sir Frederick Clarke or Sir Fred Clarke was the Director of the Institute of Education in the University of London between 1936 and 1945. During the 1930s and 1940s he was also a strong advocate for educational reform in England and Wales...

, Michael Polanyi

Michael Polanyi

Michael Polanyi, FRS was a Hungarian–British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and the theory of knowledge...

, Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich

Paul Tillich

Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher. Tillich was one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century...

, Sir Walter Moberly

Walter Hamilton Moberly

Sir Walter Hamilton Moberly, GBE, KCB, Kt, DSO was a British academic.-Life:The son of Rev. Robert Campbell Moberly and the grandson of George Moberly, he was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford...

, Professor John Baillie, Sir Hector Herrington, Geoffrey Vickers and Adolph Lowe

Adolph Lowe

Adolph Lowe born Adolf Löwe was a German sociologist and economist.- Major publications of Adolph Lowe :*Arbeitslosigkeit und Kriminalität, 1914....

.

The discussion group grew out of a Conference on Church, Community and State held at Oxford in 1937

More than anything else, the discussions of the Moot revolved around the topic of order and, more particularly, around the problem of how order might be restored in British society and culture in the context of a ‘world turned upside down’. (Mullins and Jacobs, 2006)

The discussions influenced T.S. Eliot's works of cultural criticism The Idea of a Christian society and Notes towards the definition of culture.