Britain and the church God in austerity Britain Dec 8th 2011, 18:33 by Bagehot
BEFORE a fresh tidal wave of Euro-news breaks over us all, this week's print column looks at religion (and specifically the Anglican faith) in austerity Britain. The Church of England looks suprisingly central to the national debate just now, with bishops making front page news by criticising government spending cuts and protestors camped out on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. But in reality, I suggest, this moment of national crisis poses a tough test for the established church, whose position is weaker than it looks. Here's the column:
CONSIDERING that Britain is a deeply secular country, there is a lot of God about this Christmas. Austerity is a part of the explanation. With the core cultural activity of modern Britain—shopping for stuff—losing its lustre, there are hints of a nation groping for something more profound.
For millions, austerity Christmas will include a dose of carols. The trend has been noticeable for a couple of years. The great cathedrals expect to be packed on Christmas Eve. Charity services, family services, carols by candlelight and sing-along concerts abound. A London church, St Martin-in-the-Fields, is offering “carols for shoppers”, while across town the grand organ of the Royal Albert Hall, a 9,997-pipe monster, will pound through some two dozen carol concerts in December.
Anglican voices are prominent in less cosy contexts, too. On December 6th the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, made front-page news with a commentary on the riots that gripped English towns last August. Too many young people feel they have nothing to lose, the archbishop argued, decrying consumerism and government cuts to youth services. A fortnight earlier, 18 Anglican bishops wrote a joint letter condemning plans for a per-household benefits cap (intended to ensure that welfare recipients do no better than the average working family). This risked being “profoundly unjust” to poor families with children, said the bishops.
The Anglican church has become rather proprietorial about anti-finance protesters camped in the City of London outside St Paul’s Cathedral, after a muddled initial response that saw two senior clergymen resign. Yes, the protesters’ demands are vague, but that just shows that the Church of England is used as a place to air society’s “unspoken anxieties”, suggested Archbishop Williams last month. The Bishop of London has organised meetings between Occupy London protesters and the chief financial regulator, Hector Sants. On a homelier note, a priest reports that two protesters have started attending cathedral services.
It is possible to see why some Anglican clergymen are bullish about their church’s relevance in austerity Britain, despite decades of falling attendance and gibes about woolly, waffly priests wringing their hands at how complicated life is. The decade after the second world war witnessed a “new seriousness”, and a corresponding high point for the Church of England, says Lord Harries, a former bishop of Oxford and long-standing BBC broadcaster. The beginnings of a similar seriousness can be felt today. The Bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, points to the headlines generated when church leaders question government policies. If bishops can make the front page, is the country as secular as all that, he asks?
Actually, yes. The latest British Social Attitudes Survey shows just 20% of the British public calling themselves members of the Church of England, down from 40% in 1983. Roman Catholicism (about one in ten of the population) is more stable. Half of the population say they have “no religion”. More than half “never” attend a religious service. Non-Christian faiths are growing but small (6% of the population).
Come all ye faithful, and not
The evidence that the Church of England is returning to the centre of public life is ambiguous. True, religious music is popular. In some places that shows a yearning for faith. But if cathedrals are increasingly popular, it is in part because they are anonymous, admits a priest: there is no danger of being asked to visit a sick parishioner afterwards. Business is also booming for commercial carol concerts in non-church settings, where a mince pie and nostalgia are as much the lure as harking the singing of herald angels. Across the country, Raymond Gubbay, an impresario behind several shows at the Royal Albert Hall, is putting on 200 such Christmas concerts.
Nor is the St Paul’s Cathedral camp as flattering as it seems. The protesters wanted to surround the London Stock Exchange. Thwarted, they ended up at St Paul’s largely by accident. Headlines about bishops chiding the government are also double-edged. Too often, what is striking is not the daring of Anglican prelates but their lack of self-confidence. Time and again, bishops sound like shop stewards for the welfare state, taking to the airwaves to demand the preservation of specific benefits without mentioning the church, the role of faith or Christianity.
Welfare utopianism is an Anglican tradition. In the 1940s the church embraced the welfare state as a modern, professional alternative to charity, willingly dismantling voluntary relief networks and signing over thousands of church schools, hospitals and other bodies to the state, notes Linda Woodhead of Lancaster University. In a 1985 report the church attacked Margaret Thatcher for putting economic efficiency ahead of welfare. She retorted that church-going is not about wanting “social reforms and benefits” but about spiritual redemption and, indeed, God.
The church has a perfect right to comment on politics, says Lord Harries. If you love your neighbour, you must have a view on policies that affect his welfare. At the same time, he argues, the English have always been reticent about religious language. The clergy must use religious imagery “very shyly”, otherwise the English immediately back away.
Fair enough. England is an odd place: a secular country where an established church still has a role in public life (and, on the ground, does much unsung good). But the economy may be about to fall off a cliff. That poses a huge test for the Church of England and its claims to be a source of national strength. If the church cannot offer a message more spiky and distinctive than social democracy in a clerical collar, it will fail that test.
Update on December 13th. Lord Harries, the former bishop of Oxford interviewed above, subsequently responded to this column in a BBC broadcast, Thought for the Day, carried by Radio 4's morning news programme, Today. With his kind permission, the bishop's script is reproduced below:
Thought for the Day
9th December 2011
Good morning. An article in this morning’s Economist speculates what role the Church of England will play if we have another depression like that of the 1930’s. Would it have the moral authority to play a key role? For it is sometimes suggested that church leaders, including bishops now seem to speak more about social policy than they do about God, and for that reason they have lost their distinctive authority. There are two responses to this, one short, the other more nuanced. The short response is that when the state determines so much of our lives, as it does now, how can we love our neighbour without considering the effect government policies will have, for good or ill, on them? Of course Church leaders have to consider the effects of policy, not least on the most vulnerable.
But what about speaking more publicly about God? That requires a more nuanced answer. First, culturally the English are very shy about bringing religion into public discussion-in contrast to America of course where it is taken for granted, if not required. That shyness has roots in real religion. Some forms of Judaism for example refuse to even write or use the name of the Holy One for that very reason. As the poet W.H.Auden put it “Truth, like Orthodoxy, is a reticence”. The other reason for this apparent reluctance to use religious language in public utterance, as opposed to in Church is that religious words have been so overused, abused or seem lacking incredibility that they either fail to resonate,or even alienate.
This is not a new situation. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in prison for his part in the plot to assassinate Hitler he wrote a remarkable series of letters, one of which was to a young person about to be baptised. In it he said that the great Christian words “have become so problematical and so remote that we hardly date speak of them.” But he went on to affirm that “the day will come when men will be called again to utter the word of God with such power as will change and renew the world…Until then the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair, but there will be those who pray and do right and wait for God’s own time.”
So a certain reticence, far from being an abandonment of faith, can be an expression of its profundity. Meanwhile, that doing right to which Bonhoeffer refers, includes both personal behaviour and public policy. |
