In his new book, Dawkins relates for the first time the full story of his schoolboy break-out as an atheist. In the chapel at Oundle, he helped lead a small insurgency of boys who refused to kneel. The school’s headmaster was in Oxford on the day that the young Dawkins took his university entrance exam and drove him back. During this lift, Dawkins writes, the headmaster ”˜discreetly raised the subject of my rebellion against Christianity. It was a revelation,’ he says, ”˜to talk to a decent, humane, intelligent Christian, embodying Anglicanism at its tolerant best.’
I ask him about this. ”˜I’m kind of grateful to the Anglican tradition,’ he admits, ”˜for its benign tolerance. I sort of suspect that many who profess Anglicanism probably don’t believe any of it at all in any case but vaguely enjoy, as I do”¦ I suppose I’m a cultural Anglican and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it.’ Would he ever go into a church? ”˜Well yes, maybe I would.’
But at this point he turns it back around again. I try to clarify my own views to him. ”˜You would feel deprived if there weren’t any churches?’ he asks. ”˜Yes,’ I respond. He mulls this before replying. ”˜I would feel deprived in the same spirit of the English cricket match that I mentioned, that is close to my heart. Yes, I would feel a loss there. I would feel an aesthetic loss. I would miss church bells, that kind of thing.’
“[i]I suspect that many of those who profess Anglicanism don’t believe any of it at all…,[/i]” says the (in)famous atheist. They just have a certain nostaligic attachment to the aesthetic side of Anglicanism, with evensong in the local church or the chiming of church bells seeming as utterly English as people playing cricket on the village green, or so he asserts.
I suspect that Dawkins is quite right that there are indeed many such folks within the CoE, and within Anglicanism throughout the Global North. And that, of course, is precisely the problem. There are way too many “cultural Anglicans” in England. And in the USA. And in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, etc.
What Dawkiins admires most, he says, about Anglicanism is its “benign tolerance.” Well, of course, that’s what he would like as an unbeliever. But that (in)famous spirit of “benign tolerance” is also highly symptomatic of what ails Anglicanism in the Global North. For the fact remains that, as one famous convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism so aptly summed it up: “[b]A church that tolerates everything teaches nothing.[/b]”
For Dawkins, and for some leaders within Anglicanism, that tolerant spirit isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, and a cherished feature at that. To me, it’s the Achilles Heel of Anglicanism, and a fatal flaw.
David Handy+
He would be at home in most TEC churches and most likely part of the leadership.
“I suspect that many of those who profess Anglicanism don’t believe any of it at all…â€
What Dawkins should do–if he’s serious about trying to think deeply–is to acknowledge that many people who profess atheism are nonetheless religious, which is not necessarily a good thing.
As the saying goes: “Put brain in gear before putting mouth in motion.” Dawkins needs to remember that.
“I suspect many of those who profess Anglicanism don’t believe any of it at all” strikes me as a gross exaggeration. Probably truer to say that a few Anglicans don’t believe any of it at all, or that many Anglicans don’t believe some of it at least. But that many churchgoers are in it for the aesthetics was brought home to me awhile back when I was a newcomer to an old, venerable parish and chatting with the Warden.
I asked if the over-the-top music programmes for High Mass might be somewhat reduced … He joked and said no. He thought that if the music were ever cut, half the congregation would quit coming. Such were their priorities …
I suspect this is true for most religious communities. Us RC folk call them “tribal Catholics”. They may believe it all, or some, or none, but it doesn’t make much difference when it comes to behavior or concerns. You see it most clearly among the libcats, and even the “cafeteria Catholics”: I may not believe it, but it’s my church.
Sigh…