I went recently to the Hampstead Library to hear Louis Wolpert talk about the origins of belief. I knew in advance that as a human scientist he has many views in common with Richard Dawkins and is often called upon by the radio to express them. As he began by dismissing the work of all philosophers except David Hume (though he subsequently expressed some appreciation of Aristotle) I quickly gathered that the evening was likely to be entertaining, exasperating, and only mildly informative. At one point he trotted out the standard line that people of faith should keep it to themselves and leave him alone. It would have been undignified when the time for questions arrived to trot out the standard reply; “Would you hold the same view if you’d been beaten up and the only person available to help was a Muslim /Sikh /Jew/ Christian?”
Both he and Richard Dawkins have already expressed their views on religion’s involvement with education and perhaps we shall hear even more from them as politicians of all parties begin to take further the idea that faith communities might begin to play an even bigger part in welfare provision as the pressures on the Welfare State grow ever greater. Whereas the church used to be the main provider of welfare and was deeply involved in social reform, so when the state nationalised compassion’ after the Second World War, the church’s involvement in society began to shrink. Now, ironically, as serious questions can be raised about how Christian this country really is, the government begins to look again at the church as a partner in welfare provision.
While all faith communities are to be involved in this initiative, the Church of England, as the Established Church with its 12,000 parishes and all their buildings, its roots in the community and its episcopal links with government through the House of Lords, is bound to be at the centre of this initiative. It might seem to be an ideal opportunity, but it needs to be addressed with care. Is it the Church’s role to collaborate with government or to maintain a prophetic distance’? To what extent would religious organisations be paid to carry out government policy? Whatever we may think about the point at issue, Catholic adoption agencies found themselves deprived of funding because they could not agree with government policy. The hospice movement has been another focus of secular and religious tension. The Church of England has in the past been severely critical of government policy in its Faith in the City report. So though this initiative is an interesting one and deserves careful consideration it needs to be approached with caution. Those who feel that we are essentially still a Christian society will perhaps be less cautious than those who don’t, so that may be the first issue to examine. And yet secularisation is a difficult process to understand. It might be gauged in terms of church attendance or in terms of the influence of religion in the public space, or in terms of the transition between a culture in which religious belief is part of the furniture’ to one where it is debateable and optional.
The Church of England has been worried about church attendance since the first national census of 1851 showed it was much lower than people thought especially in the cities (overall something like 40% of the population). In comparative terms that figure may have been reasonably high, better than in the previous fifty years and partly to be accounted for by the slowness of urban church building. From that time onwards, however, decline set in, until we reach the present day where attendance figures are so very much lower than that proportion of the population that claims to believe in God and describes itself as Christian. This leads to the secularist protest that the Church of England has a national position and influence disproportionate to its active membership. To which the reply is usually made that British law and culture is still profoundly shaped by Christianity. That is, however, a much more important claim to test than the numbers game. Our society maintains a complex plurality of religious and spiritual beliefs which presents a much more varied picture than statistical analysis can give.
To understand secularism we have to look at the conditions out of which it arose. The rise of science seemed to provide an alternative explanation of the world which with greater courage and knowledge all of us ought to be able to accept. Is it that religion has failed as an explanation? Or is the problem more moral and spiritual? As science began to show the universe to be more vast and less stable than we had imagined so our view of ourselves and our place in the world began to change. In simple terms the world became a less enchanted place, we became separated from and more in control of nature, and faith became privatised and excluded from politics. The human self came to be seen as both more isolated and more autonomous. Society is now constituted by self centred, self creating, self responsible subjects who live together as a result of collective agreements and contracts, exchanging goods and services for mutual benefit. We are all seen to be equal with equal rights to be protected by the democratically elected state. If religion is seen as useful from a secular perspective it is solely in terms of the moralising of human behaviour. Because of an accompanying belief in progress and basic human goodness and benevolence this is seen as a personal and manageable goal. We no longer fear divine judgement or our own personal and communal potential for sinfulness and depravity.
Of course Christian values contributed in many ways to the rise of the secular state at the same time as it was being generated by a critique of Christianity. This means that our society offers a much more complex condition than a simple contrast between declining theism and rising atheism might suggest. We can never hope to go back to the conditions of the past to a new age of faith. We may have to live through a period of considerable conflict between the evolving faith of “Western” culture and its more traditional expressions, which are still strongly maintained in the developing world (though not exclusively). In the West’ we are confronted by two main tasks. The first is to explore what Charles Taylor has called a capacious’ theism one that is open to the spiritual aspirations, confusions, longings and insights of a culture which is still looking for a more subtle and inspiring story than humanism seems capable of providing. The second is to maintain a prophetic and critical stance towards political community, particular at the level of what we take for granted. This is especially important at a time when we seem more and more disengaged from political processes, paying lip service to a democracy in which things seem increasingly beyond our control. At the same time those who do have political authority seem less aware of their limitations and more confused about where they can and should seek to intervene in a free market economy or engineer public welfare. Which brings us back to where we began. If our own political parties are looking for a closer relationship with the Church of England and all the faith communities of this country it could lead to a much more fundamental questioning of who and what we are than either side initially imagined. With my love and prayers,
Father Stephen