Being more cynical, one might buy into the famous Marx quotation: “religion is the opium of the people”. While it’s true that Marx was articulating his belief that religion was a way of “power” saying “don’t worry if you’re downtrodden in this life, you will find a reward in the next”, in the wider quotation from which those words are taken, he was actually being more sympathetic: acknowledging the potential of religion to give solace where there is distress.
That’s how I feel when I look on in bemused fascination at members of my own family’s religious devotion despite their never-ending series of trials in this life. As a callow, arrogant youth I would try the Marx line out on them, only to be dismissed. And rightly so, because back then I was merely trying to provoke them.
Today, the conversation is different. I respect their beliefs because I can see the solace they have brought them, whilst absolutely rejecting any attempts to continue to force those beliefs upon others, or to marry them to the state.
The need for complete dis-establishment of church and state not only in this country, but in all countries, appears so obvious in the face of the many inequalities that accompany “establishment” that it is mystifying that in the 21 Century that there can be any argument against it. But then, what do I know? Apparently, my heart is closed.
Of course, you could look at the same evidence as Hatfield and come to a very different conclusion: namely, that nationalism is one of the most virulent forces in our world, and can when it turns pathological wreak great havoc. Still, there is no doubting that when religion and national identity are intertwined in such a way that there is no room for critique of one or the other, instead just a mutual reinforcement, then things can turn ugly.
Viewing the Ukraine horror has made me think of Stanley Hauerwas’s early book The Peaceable Kingdom with its insistence that baptism should make it utterly impossible for Christians to kill one another. He asserts that it was so in the earliest days of the Church. I look at Ukraine and see Orthodox Russian speakers lined up against Greek Catholic rite and Ukrainian Orthodox Ukrainian speakers and think he might have a point.
The irony of this article is that the more the CofE attempts to fit in with the secular culture, the more that culture will call for the CofE to be disestablished.
When the Church is faithful to its calling, the world might argue against it or even persecute it, but it still *respects* it. But when the Church abandons its calling and seeks compromise with the world, ironically that is when the world loses respect for the Church.