Judging by the reaction, anyone would think that the people concerned had at the same time suggested the return of the Inquisition (complete with comfy chairs for Monty Python fans), compulsory church going and universal tithes. More than 50 leading atheists wrote to the Telegraph in protest.
It’s all quite baffling and at the same time quite encouraging. Christian faith is much more vulnerable to comfortable indifference than to hatred and opposition. It’s also a variation on the normal “Sword and Grail discovered” stuff that seems to be a feature of Easter week news.
Yet the Prime Minister and other members of the Government have not said anything very controversial. It is a historical fact (perhaps unwelcome to some, but true) that our main systems of ethics, the way we do law and justice, the values of society, how we decide what is fair, the protection of the poor, and most of the way we look at society . . . All have been shaped by and founded on Christianity. Add to that the foundation of many hospitals, the system of universal schooling, the presence of chaplains in prisons, and one could go on a long time. Then there is the literature, visual art, music and culture that have formed our understandings of beauty and worth since Anglo Saxon days.
Hmmm. Nicely expressed, but only partly true. Yes, England (and the whole UK) has a long and rich Christian heritage. That is a historical fact, and one worth celebrating.
But England ceased to be a predominantly Christian country long ago. It would be far more accurate to say that England WAS a Christian country than that it is one today. After all, ++Welby has rightly been calling for a renewed and vigorous commitment to evangelism, which surely implies that a great many Brits aren’t in fact Christians and need evangelizing.
This is no small matter. Coming out of our collective denial about the de-Christianization of western (or global north) culture is absolutely essential to coming to terms with the fact that we face the greatest crisis, and the most promising opportunity, that the Church has faced in roughly 1500 years. We live in a post-Christendom society. Our post-Constantinian culture in the North Atlantic social world has embraced a radically different alternative ideology as its fundamental framework for thought and action. You can call that alternative ideology by various names: secular humanism, relativism, or whatever. But the point is that the public square isn’t empty or neutral. It has been taken over by enemies of Christianity, and we must start acting appropriately in response to that unpleasant fact. And for a state church tradition like Anglicanism, that changes everything. Literally everything. Anglicanism is going to have to be re-designed accordingly, from the ground floor up.
Personally, that prospect is less daunting or discouraging than exciting. I firmly and ardently believe that the best days of Christianity are still to come. Freed from the shackles of the long era of imperial or state church religion, we now have a golden chance to rediscover Christianity as it was meant to be, the way it was during the Age of the Martyrs, in the first few centuries. Before Constantine, Theodosius, Justinian, and Charlemagne coopted the Church, and thereby corrupted it.
David Handy+
(As an American, I dislike and distrust state churches anyway)