 In 1937 the Oxford Conference on Church and Society , which later gave birth to the World Council of Churches , produced what was according to the church historian Adrian Hastings " the most serious approach to the problems of society that the Church had yet managed " , but without Lang 's close involvement . By this time Lang 's identification with the poor had largely vanished , as had his interest in social reform . In the Church Assembly his closest ally was the aristocratic Lord Hugh Cecil ; Hastings maintains that the Church of England in the 1930s was controlled " less by Lang and Temple in tandem than by Lang and Hugh Cecil " . However , Lang got on well with Hewlett Johnson , the pro @-@ communist priest who was appointed Dean of Canterbury in 1931 . 
