Gledhill: "Soul of Britain is dying"

The question is: have the British failed Christianity, or has Christianity failed the British.

The cost of keeping a small church's infrastructure up is is my opin ion hopeless. We recently left a church the minister said aloud if anyone can not give they should not be here. I am still a Christian I still follow god but you can bet I will not go back to this church, If the minister would say in good faith i will cut my salary to help with this deficit I'd be impressed (won't happen) he makes more than the average husehold in our town, I also found out that no money has been going to missionary as all and plus is needed to attempt to keep this small club together, what would jesus say? Are these self fulfilling churces missing the boat? There are a lot of people who can not make their rent and their groceries but my guess is he'd say give anyway.
what a rig he has going

The British peoples (Celtic, Saxons, Angles,) were Christianized before the German people. So I think it is still possible for some rekindling to happen, especially with people of Celtic lineage.

Nonetheless, as Philip Jenkins points out, Christianity is heading to the "South". Christianity was not always centered in Western Europe. Before Islam it was more dominant in the Eastern Mediterranian and Northern Africa. So the point of dominance has moved before and it is moving again in our time. But as a believer I know it will be with us until the trumpets blow.

"People will still live in the British Isles, obviously, but they won't be the people of the Book. They will be some other people."

No, they won't be some other people, if you are implying they will no longer be British. They will be British people. (Or perhaps more accurately, English people, Scottish people, Welsh people, etc.) They just may not be Christian British people, and the definition of what makes a person British will change accordingly. That's unfortunate for Christians, but not a big concern to anyone else. This isn't something I'll be losing any sleep over. The pubs, theatres, castles and nightclubs will still be there.

And if you think I'm being flippant, it's obvious that the care and preservation of British Christianity isn't of much concern to the British people, and to be clear, I'll just limit that group to the Anglo-Saxon/Celtic inhabitants of Britain whose families have lived there for many generations, so why should this be seen as worrisome to us? Their society seems to be humming along pretty well (certainly as compared to other, more devoutly religious parts of the globe), and if the British people are for the most part comfortable with this development, why should others complain about it, unless the issue of concern is not so much a concern for Britain than a concern for a particular religious viewpoint?

I'll agree that the rise of Jihadist Islam is a problem in the UK (if that is one of the big issues of concern here), but there's lots of ways of dealing with that separate (and probably more effective than) telling British people to go back to their old churches.

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If you're not bothered by it, perhaps you don't think that Western Culture is worth preserving?
Posted by: Mike Brown | May 12, 2008 12:04 AM
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Or perhaps, like myself, one has an attitude of 'sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof' and just can't get all that worked up about what might or might not happen 300 - 500 years from now.

And just so you know...I'm not celebrating Christianity's likely eventual demise in the U.S., but you know...time marches on.

Lets consider an even more radical possibility...that some of it is true, enough to make it viable for a long time, but some of it isn't...so it won't be viable forever. On the basis of my experience I feel this is most likely the case. If Christianity is 100% true then why on earth does it take so much effort to demonstrate that it might be true to an educated and informed audience? Shouldn't it be easy?

I don't know...my time as an Evangelical was spent in constant fear and anxiety...just trying to answer one argument against it after another...and being angry at God for making such arguments possible. I don't miss those days.

There seem to be several issues conflated here:

1. Is Christianity true? Give some evidence for or against.

2. Can a society operate without a spiritual basis of some sort? In other words; should people accept religion as a noble lie? I'm sympathetic to this sort of position, and there are obviously a lot of things wrong with British society that could be blamed on irreligion, but US society doesn't seem to be any more healthy, despite its religion.

3. Would a non-Christian England (or Scotland or Wales) be England? Unless you define England as Christian, I find it hard to argue otherwise.

4. Was the UK ever really Christian? This is doubtful. As soon as Christianity ceased to be effectively compulsory, many people stopped practising. Those sides of my ancestry who were urban-proletarian, rather than middle-class or poor-rural, were solidly irreligious.

5. Is the UK going to become Muslim? This is something that concerns me much more. Actual Muslim conquest is a separate issue, but, with respect to the Muslim minority in the UK, there are two hopeful signs: (i) there is a high level of apostasy, mostly to apathy, but in significant numbers to active atheism or Christianity; (ii) the latest wave of immigration is non-Muslim, being from Africa and eastern Europe.

There's a possibility other than the collapse of Christianity in Britain or the renewal of Anglican, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and other traditions of the last millennium: Orthodox Christianity with a capital "O", the Christianity of the first millennium.

Fascination with the person, life and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not likely to die out. Though Orthodoxy is not better suited to modern society - nobody can out-do the Evangelicals when it comes to scratching the itching ears of religious consumers - it's better suited to human nature, truer to the Bible and, in its self-understanding (and with considerable historic support), it's the Original from which Rome became schismatic but to which, sadly, the Reformers did not return.

That's small consolation to either secularists, who salivate at a world un-haunted by the Nazarene, or to Romantics, who just want things back the way they remember or dream. An Orthodox Britain would look much different than the Britain of recent memory. But as r.r. rivers says, time marches on.

"Equating the demise of Christianity with the demise of of civilization is silly, really really silly. There was civilization before Christianity. There will be civilization after Christianity."

Harvey, you miss the point, which is that Western culture, of which British culture is a part, is rooted in Christianity, whether you like it or not. Cut off the root and/or dig it up and the culture suffers. Of course there will always be 'civilization,' but of what sort? You should read the British philosopher and cultural critic Roger Scruton on this, who, by the way, was an agnostic of sorts until relatively recently, but has been saying this stuff for years.

"If Christianity is 100% true then why on earth does it take so much effort to demonstrate that it might be true to an educated and informed audience? Shouldn't it be easy?"

If you were an evangelical, and familiar with the NT you should know better than to ask this question. Don't you recall the bits about "foolishness to the Greeks," and "not many wise..."? The Church has been dealing with 'intellectual' opposition since day one. But the opposition isn't really so much intellectual as it is moral. The faith isn't rejected primarily because it requires intellectual capitulation but because it requires moral capitulation.

"I don't know...my time as an Evangelical was spent in constant fear and anxiety...just trying to answer one argument against it after another...and being angry at God for making such arguments possible. I don't miss those days."

I'd argue that some of the problems you describe may be with Evangelicalism and not with Christianity per se. But even if that's not the case, having a constant 'apologetic' stance and attempting to answer all questions and rebut all attacks doesn't make for a satisfying approach to a world view, no matter what it is.

It's impossible to really project things like this. Just because the current generation has low church membership doesn't mean the next won't. In 30 years, I'd be surprised if levels of Christianity in Europe aren't quite substantially higher than it is now, both because of people looking for meaning and because of people rebelling against their elders. Plus, kids have been growing up for almost 20 years without the cold war, so who knows how that's affected how people view the world.

"Christianity today is not the same Christianity of the time of Christ. That is because people have modified Christianity, relativism alive and well, to fit their perceptions of their world."

While this is true to a certain extent with peripheral matters, the irreducible nub of the religion, the actual 'stuff' of the the faith hasn't changed, and indeed cannot change, or the religion described will then be something other than Christianity.

"Christianity and Islam have both flourished for the same reason. They both bring a message of a personal god with very simplistic explanations for the questions that cause religiosity. That works as long as the believer sees it all being about themself. But when the believer embraces instead an us the personal god stuff doesn't work."

I'll pass by the comparison of Xianity and Islam. As for the rest, the idea that the former poses a faith that's all about the individual is simply false, and is based on a relatively recent interp of the thing. You won't find it in traditional Orthodoxy or Catholicism, for instance, where great weight is placed upon the corporate nature of belief. As an old Russian saying goes, "The only thing you can do by yourself is go to hell."

The question is: have the British failed Christianity, or has Christianity failed the British.

Well, Daniel, when Britain was strongly Christian (and had a strong missionary impulse), it came to control a fifth of the globe. Now that it has all but abandoned Christianity it can't even stand up to invasion and dissolution from within. So I think the answer to that question is pretty clear: The British failed Christianity.

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So you're saying that Christianity helps people to be effective imperialists?
Posted by: rombald | May 12, 2008 10:12 AM
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Without a doubt, that is true.

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Ha! Try convincing a secularist of the need to abstain from sex before marriage...
Posted by: Rob G | May 12, 2008 9:49 AM
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Anecdoctal evidence suggests that a large percentage of Christians aren't all that convinced either - just saying ...

"When emerging Christianity confronts emerging Islam in the the third world, it will not be pretty."

Could someone please explain WHY faiths must "confront" each other? What's up with that?

World wide domination? Empire building?The joy of conquest?

"The reality is that those things [pubs, theatres, castels and nightclubs} grew out of a Christian culture."

Pardon me while I GUFFAW with laughter.

It sounds like another aboriginal culture is dying off...who knows what will replace it?

Yes, there is certainly some sadness here. But, as someone who feels that identity politics have been very harmful I think more work needs to be done to figure out what the core identity should be. I tend to think citizenship first, then religion.

I agree with Rod that the religious crisis in Britain is very real -- I just don't know how one goes about reversing it when the pub and the soccer stadium seem to have replaced the church as the core institutions of British life.

Just to echo Mark in Houston and Harvey on one point: the Celt, Norse (Anglo-Saxon) and Germanic cultures that invaded/infused/informed the civilization as it developed in the British Isles is not the culture they have today. It is an amalgam, with interesting (and odd) combinations and tensions. The pre-Christian forms of each are gone, have been for a long time, but elements of them live on and are integral components of the current Christian culture of today and the historically recent past. There are distinct elements of Roman culture still there, both pre- and post-Christian.

The current "crisis" is the most recent incarnation of change. It's source is Islamic, but diverse within that as well. If one's POV is strictly Christian, by all means experience and express one's angst over it. In the meantime, though, be aware that the ghosts of the pre-Christian Celts and Norse are chuckling with great irony.

My cynical POV on it, Tammy, is that the UK is both easier to get to and a tourist draw for other reasons. I see it as cross marketing... um, as it were, all puns intended. ;-)

If trends persist, secularism or humanism won't last in the long run because it doesn't reproduce. In addition to being an untrue and vacuous belief, secularism is sterile as well. Not one nation in Western Europe today has replacement level birth rates. Not one.
The decline of Christianity in Europe is just part of the decline of Europe. By 2050, Christian churches in Europe may be at death's door. But if demographic trends continue, Europe itself will be a declining backwater with a strong Muslim population.
Christianity isn't doing well in Europe. But by its very nature, the current form of secularism cannot prosper because its adherents don't have many children and hence don't have a self-sustaining population. Of course things could turn around, but I'm not so optimistic that they will.

rr

Proof that Britain is dying: Those "soldiers" who were taken hostage by Iran. They acted like little children. Not one of them showed backbone.

Maybe the Brits need to start reading Kipling again.

"You're seriously ignorant if you think Paul had a harder time convincing the greeks than you would have convincing an anthropology or philosophy professor today."

That's not the point. Paul dealt with the intellectuals of his time, Irenaeus with his, Augustine with his, etc., etc., and Christian philosophers of today -- Benedict XVI, Alvin Plantinga, David Bentley Hart, Alasdair McIntyre -- deal with contemporary agnostics and atheists. Whether they deal with them to your satisfaction is another issue. But please disavow yourself of the silly notion that all the valid arguments and intellectual firepower is on the side of unbelief.

"From my point of view it requires intellectual capitulation before moral capitulation. The moral claims are only valid if I accept the existence of that specific God."

This implies that one can analyze the intellectual component apart from the moral one. That may work if you wish to reason your way to the god of the philosophers or some sort of general all-purpose deity, but without a certain amount of humility and (dare I say it) obedience, you will get no further than that, and certainly not to the Christian God.

"In the meantime, though, be aware that the ghosts of the pre-Christian Celts and Norse are chuckling with great irony."

I doubt it, as those pagans would have fared considerably worse under Islam, and if those ghosts are sentient, they undoubtedly realize this by now.

Bob,

Except Christianity isn't fading. The areas of the United States ("red states") where Christianity is more prevalent are the ones with the highest birth rate. Christians aren't without their problems (and many Christians such as myself aren't dispensationalist), and certainly materialism is rampant all over the West. But demographic numbers are a stubborn thing, and they show that secularist aren't reproducing. Unless the future is one of overall social and economic decline that comes with population decline, the future doesn't belong to secularists.
Demographics throw a big monkey wrench into the assumptions that secularists stuck with the old postivist narrative left over from the nineteenth century about "science" and "progress" relegating religion to the past and the secular future being a better one.

rr

If you mean Bronx cheers, I'll vouch for that. ;-)

The areas of the United States ("red states") where Christianity is more prevalent are the ones with the highest birth rate.

Except for Utah, they are also the poorest states with the lowest education levels. Study after study have shown that beyond Mormons, Christians don't have more babies; poor people have more babies.

John E, thanks for your offering of the A.E. Housman poem. I've heard parts of it before, of course, but it's quite appropriate to the subject, I think. (Can't help but picture A.E. Housman as looking like the late, great John Houseman.)

My pleasure, Alicia - glad you enjoyed it.

"Given Christendom's miserable environmental record, give me humanists any day."

The miserableness of this record has been much exaggerated. See, among others, Wendell Berry on this, specifically his essay "Christianity and the Survival of Creation."

Bob, You're equating fecundity/fertility with spirituality.

Yep. That's what the data shows.

If that's the case, put a fork in it. Christianity's dead. And so are all the rest of the 'birth rate' religions. Anyone can and will reproduce. You've put sexual intercourse and procreation as the ultimate goal. Not one careless thought for planetary stewardship. He who has the most children is the most holy. How vain and short-sighted.

P.S. By the most widespread form of "secular humanism" in the twentieth century I'm referring to something like one-third of the earth's population living under a Communist government during a good portion of the twentieth century, 1949-1989.
I should have also noted that Mao and Communist China also have an especially horrid environmental record.

rr

"Evangelicals are breeding at rates of poor people. Is their birth rate a product of their faith or their economics?"

This seems to imply that most evangelicals are poor, which isn't true. But in any case, imagine what a difference it would make demographically if the evangelicals (and other Christians) stopped buying into the error of the contraceptive culture.

Yep. That's what the data shows.

You don't reconcile that with the facts of church membership stagnation and decline. If Mormons are so prolific, why are their numbers stagnant? Why is the percentage of American population that calls itself Christian falling?

I can tell you why. In my mother's side of my family, where there's a lot of Christian identification, there's pretty abrupt generational difference in what Christian means. The oldest generation is all rockribbed reactionaries. The youngest are all social and nominal/passive Christians. When the social enforcement by the oldest generation ends, they'll admit to being for practical purposes agnostic. Of course, in statistical surveys they'll all register as Christian, high birth rate, and whatnot.

P.S. By the most widespread form of "secular humanism" in the twentieth century I'm referring to something like one-third of the earth's population living under a Communist government during a good portion of the twentieth century, 1949-1989.

If that's your definition of "humanism" then my definition of Christianity is John Hagee, Jim Jones and Robert Tilton. I'm referring to humanists like Neil Postman, Isaac Asimov, Lewis Mumford, Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Dawkins, Arthur C. Clark and countless other lesser-known humanists.

It's not my definition of humanism, but Communism was certainly the most prevalent form of self-described "secular humanism" in the twentieth century. Communism was officially atheistic, claimed to be "scientific," "enlightened," and had a view of "historical progress" that was quite similar to nineteenth century Postivism. Communists also had an ethical system that wasn't based on religion, and they believed that Communism would lead to a better, freer society by bringing down capitalism and ultimately creating a classless society.
Many if not most atheist in the twentieth century world were in fact Communists. There really is no way of getting around this. The group of intellectuals you cite and their followers are minor secular humanist players in comparison to the impact of Communism. Hagee's views by contrast are held by a small minority of Christians. Most Christians today aren't dispensationalist and don't drive SUVS.

rr

"contemporary humanist thought has very little, if nothing to do with 20th century Communism as practiced in USSR, China, et al."

No doubt due to a certain amount of desire for damage control. The most demonstrably atheistic regimes of the 20th century were also the most bloodthirsty. And please, none of the nonsense about communism not being inherently atheistic. Another name for communism is dialectical materialism. That second word implies atheism.

Bob,

"Contemporary humanists" as you describe them as such a tiny group, and the focus on the environment is a very recent one. They simply aren't very representative of the vast majority of "secular humanists," people on this earth in the last century or more who 1) were atheists and/or denied the existence of the supernatural 2) exalted "science" and "reason" to a high level, pointing to it as the solutions to mankind's problems 3) believed in "historical progress" via science 4) had an ethical system not based on religion.
The vast majority of people operated under said assumptions in last century were Communists. Sorry, but if Communists weren't "secular humanists" then "secular humanists" are simply a small group of Western intellectuals. Of course THOSE group of "secular humanist" wouldn't have much of a negative environmental impact, because they are too small to be of much importance at all. Either "secular humanism" includes Communism, which means it has a pretty awful environmental and human rights record, or it doesn't and it is just a movement among intellectuals, perhaps comparable to Dadism or existentialism.
The high levels of pollution in Communist nations wasn't a coincidence. It was the result of a command economies run by officially atheist regimes. And even if you continue to deny that Communism was a form of "secular humanism," it clearly was atheistic.

rr

P.S. I may not be able to comment here again today because of time restraints.

England's non-Christianity is not news. It was true when I lived there in 1989 and was probably true a generation or two before that. Most accounts I've read said the church basically lost it around the turn of the 19th-20th century when the church lost the working class.

I can attest that walking to church in 1989 on a Sunday morning was lonelier than being out on the street at 4 a.m. There was literally no one else about and you were always amazed to get to Mass and find the church actually 3/4 full. The situation among Catholics was better than among Anglicans ... still, I remember the "pro-life vigil" the Catholic Church announced. I went to find ONE person there.

I worked in a factory where church attendance was uncontemplated, unknown. I guess you'd say the general attitude towards believers was "well, everyone needs a hobby."

Muslims are People of the Book.

The most popular form of atheism and secular humanism in the last century was shaped by works like Mao's "Little Red Book" than by anything Dawkins or Hitchens every wrote.

And the most popular form of Christianity in the last century elected George Bush to office.

Bob, drawing a moral equivalence between George Bush and Mao doesn't exactly enhance your credibility.

Gee, I'm crushed. Who knew there were so many Bush loyalists hangin' at CC? See, from my perspective, the Bush administration has done more damage to the United States, Christianity and the concept of democracy than any other person or institution in the history of our fair country. The Bush administration, a Christian administration, told more lies and killed more innocent people than Mao ever did.

Come to think of it, comparing Bush to Mao is an insult to Mao.

I think Bush has a way to go before he catches the Great Helmsman.

Yes, hyperbole got the best of me there. It'll be a while before Bush's legacy for death and deceit is fully realized.

Bob,

I think Bush has on the whole been a pretty bad president. But your hatred of him and wild exaggerations of his administration, as well as your projection of the environmental indifference of a small group of American christians (small at least in comparison to the world total) is pretty telling. If you even remotely think that the Iraq war, or even Bush's environmental record, is anything near Mao's environmental record and death toll, you really need to go read up on all this a bit more.
One would think that the ocean of blood (something like 85 million killed in the 20th century) shed by atheistic Communist government and the massive pollution they caused just might make Bush's many idiocies not seem as bad. A little perspective would be nice here.

rr

The body count in Iraq is only what, 250,000 or so?

To be honest, American actions might account for 50,000 of that. Iraqis themselves see Americans killing Iraqis as an unnecessary addition and intensifier to the basic fact of Iraqis killing Iraqis.

America is still the world's number one polluter though. We use more energy than China, Russia and India COMBINED and our god-given right to consume at that voracious rate is non-negotiable, just ask Dick Cheney.

Well, that may be, but some group of people will always be the world's greatest polluters some will be the greatest consumers of material resources.

We could provide some level of excuse for being one (or both) of those groups by uniquely having things of universal value to show for it. This has been the USA's line of argument, really. We had to consume lots of materials to prevail in WW2 and the Cold War. Presently, we claim to have to consume inordinately because we produce the great advances in science and technology, and providing of aid and democracy and higher standards of civilization and creativity and hope and other Good Things in the world.

Except that during the Bush/Cheney era the USA has flagrantly failed to hold up our end of the bargain in the eyes of the world- and those leaders and their colonialist ethos Party have claimed natural entitlement to own and use up the resources of the world.

The soul of Britain appears to be flourishing in at least one respect -- Britain produces the greatest actors (male and female) in the world.

I love actors, and there are a lot of good American actors. But, Britain has an embarrassment of riches in this regard, thanks largely to the Bard.