Salaam
Found an interesting chapter from the book 'The Rage Against God' that I would like to share. Obviously its from a conservative Christian viewpoint but I wonder if there are any lessons for Muslims (or anybody that matter) that could be learned from the decline in Christianity in the UK.
The Decline of Christianity - by Peter Hitchens
Western Christianity has undergone several separate reverses and defeats in the modern ear. It was permanently divided by the reformation; it was weakened by the Enlightenment and the bold claims of modern science; it did itself huge damage during modern wars, by allowing itself to be recruited to opposing sides. This problem was most harshly stated by Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address on the 4th March 1865 in which he pointed to the absurdity of both sides seeking the aid of the same God.
Lincoln, who seems not haven been a Christian but who knew his Bible better than most believers, was undeniably right – though his target was not the Church but the Christian slave owners. The same absurdity was on display in the First World War in which soldiers of both sides initiated and enthusiastically joined an unbearably poignant Christmas Truce in 1914 which – had it spread and taken hold – might have ended the whole undertaking. The decline of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant in Europe dates from this war, in which leaders of national Churches gave their support to the war making of democratic politicians and so helped destroy themselves for many years to come.
Previous European wars had been over more quickly, and had not brought about such terrible numbers of deaths and maimings. Many priests and pastors performed great acts of personal bravery and sacrifice, bringing comfort to the dying and not shirking terrible danger and privation. But the gospels could not really be made to endorse or excuse mass murder, the rapid loss of all delicacy of language and feeling, everything which had been considered good and fair before; the acres of unburied dead rotting in plain sight until consumed by rats, the resulting growth of mercilessness and brutality at home, thanks to the corruption of mens morals by what they had seen; the devastation of family life and social order. As old regimes, one by one, crumbled and sagged, the churches crumbled and sagged with them.
Protestant England was particularly troubled after the war was over because most of the its very Protestant churches were unable to permit the prayers for the dead that so many bereaved families would have liked to offer. Spiritualism, with its promise of renewed contact with the departed, briefly flourished because of this, prompting Rudyard Kipling to write the poem ‘En-dor’ warning the bereaved that they were being cruelly manipulated for gain. But in general the Church of England suffered the decay of authority and the loss of trust and deference which affected every established pillar of English society.
People had gone to war for things they completely believed in, and had been completely betrayed. Promised glory and humour, they had found hideous death, mud, sin, mutilation, rats and filth. They had astonishingly, passed through it without any serious mutiny (in the case of the British armies) or collapse in morale. But they knew, and everyone knew, they had been fooled and that whatever they had fought for had been lost during the squalor of war. Among those who had deceived them were their Christian pastors. Never such innocence again, as Philip Larkin wrote about the last hours of old England in August 1914:
Never such innocence
Never before or since
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer
Never such innocence again
Even so Christianity still survived into the 1930s and into the early 1950s as a considerable if weakened force. Church attendance fell, but was still healthy by the standards of today. The supremacy of the Christian faith was assumed in schools, state and private, and in public life in general. It was affirmed in teh great national ceremonies, such as the two Coronations of the era – George VI in 1937 and Elizabeth II in 1953. The national broadcaster, British Broadcasting Corporation, was still unquestionably Christian. Well into the 1950s it broadcast on its main morning news programme an uncompromisingly Christian segment entitled ‘Lift up your hearts’ as well as a number of church services at other times of the day. The important thing was that nobody thought this was odd. But 50 years later it is more or less unimaginable.
For the disillusion of the First World War has by now been reinforced by the double disillusion of the Second. In Britian a supposedly glorious victory was followed by two astonishing experiences. The first was severe economic crises, made worse by the exceptionally cold winter and appalling pollution – a time of lethal smogs of frozen pipes and frozen railways, of profound shortages and rationing far more restrictive than it had been during wartime, when supply convoys were being torpedoed by German submarines. Bread had never been rationed in the war. Now it was.
This dismal period made talk of victory seem especially hollow, in a country that was still damaged and exhausted by six years of total war. It brought home to those who had not yet understood it the great decline of the country as an economic and political power. The Church, associated with discredited authority and supplanted by an increasingly social (as opposed to individual) conscience and social gospel, went into accelerated decline as the pre war generations of habitual worshippers slowly died away.
At around this time, the great missions of Billy Graham to Britain laid the foundations of a new evangelism which has in recent years become a major force in the English Church. And the Roman Catholic Church, with its comparatively uncompromising position, seduced many thoughtful English Christians from the increasingly relativistic and agnostic established Church of England. But that established Church itself lost authority and, though still present in every corner of England spoke to and for fewer and fewer people.
It was the 1940s revolutionary period of nationalisation, rationing and growing state power that gave George Orwell the imaginative background for 1984, his novel about a perpetual socialist future of oppression, regimentation and shortage. For it was coupled with one of the most thoroughgoing attempts to introduce a socialist state ever attempted in a free country with the rule of law and an elected parliament. The labour government elected in 1945, with a huge parliamentary majority had many of the characteristics of a revolution, nationalising private property and centralising state power, greatly increasing the direct role of government in the national life in way never before attempted in peacetime (though familiar from the recent war).
Many of its measures were popular, not least the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) which made most doctors employees of the state but gave the poor guaranteed free medical treatment. Many of these changes had their roots in English and Scottish radicalism, not in Marxism or Communism, and were inspired by Christian sentiments. The wartime Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, had considered himself a Christian Socialist, and much of the Church of England believed that the 1945 Labour government was enacting Christian legislation and turning the country into an ideal Christian society. One effect of this was that the Church relinquished control of many secondary schools to the state (a mistake the Roman Catholics did not make), in return for the promise of a daily act of Christian worship in all schools, a promise that would be extensively broken within a few decades.
A commitment to social welfare at home and liberal anti-colonialism abroad became – in many cases – an acceptable substitute for Christian faith. It is very much so today.
Britain began a long and rather strange era in which it was simultaneously conservative and socialist. Many of its institutions customs and traditions were conservative in character, but its government was egalitarian and radical. The conservative elements in the country were strengthened artificially by the outbreak of the Cold war, which identified the more extreme forms of socialism with the national enemy in Moscow. Thus the political conflict between growing secular egalitarianism and the remaining fortresses of Christian conservatism was left unresolved for decades. During this time, the weakness of Christianity among the people and in the schools grew, and cultural revolution of all kinds (described in my 1999 book The abolition of Britain) continued at all levels.
During the 1960s Christianity was slowly, by gradual degrees, driven into the margins even when religious matters were under discussion. A new generation of teachers, many of them not themselves Christian in any serious way, did not wish to obey the law requiring a daily act of Christian worship in state schools. A revolutionary reorganisations of these schools in the 1960s and 1970s combined with an official decision to widen the recruitment of teachers, coincided with the cultural revolution of the same period. At around the same time, Britain began to absorb (or in many cases fail to absorb) large numbers of migrants from the Indian sub contentment who were not Christian.
On the ground of good manners, many teacher and local government authorities felt unable to continue to behave as if Christianity was the national religion. It is difficult to tell whether this was motivated in all or most cases by a kindly tactfulness, an attempt at tolerance, or a disguised desire to weaken Christianity, which found multiculturalism a convenient excuse. This led over time to absorb paradoxes, such as the existence in some parts of England of ‘Church of England’ primary schools whose pupils are almost exclusively Muslim, thanks to the transformation of the areas involved by migrant populations.
A belief in multiculturalism, promoted by those who disliked the Christian, patriotic monoculture of the country, became common among educationalists and among teachers themselves. The very idea that Christianity could and should be taught as a belief which the teacher and pupils both shared became increasingly hard to sustain. If it was taught at all, the Christian religion was explained as something which other people might believe, but which listeners were not expected to embrace themselves.
The headquarters of the BBC, the national broadcasting service, is dedicated to Almighty God and adorned with a scriptural exhortation to pursue ‘whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are true and of good report’. Yet in recent years BBC announcers began to say of Easter not that it celebrated the Resurrection of Christ but that on this day ‘Christians celebrate their belief in the resurrection of Christ’ or similar neutral formulation. Had Britain not until recently been a specifically Christian country, these changes would not be so striking. The transition from official Christianity to official religious neutrality has been cautious and gradual and, as such things often are, noticed only by the more committed.
It remains incomplete, but the process is clearly visible to the observant. On the main radio channel, a daily Christian service is transmitted but only on the little used Long Wave frequency. The confident evangelism of ‘lift up your hearts’ has been supplanted by ;Thought for the day’ in which Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus, and the occasional Christian communicate vapid thoughts in general subjects. The singing of an Easter Hymns on the morning of Easter Day appears to have been quietly discontinued. There are religious programmes, but often these take a form of a neutral or hostile discussion of religious current affairs featuring long items about Roman Catholic priests abusing Children, or Anglican arguments about homosexuality. Alternatively they show gathering of elderly people singing hymns. Recently the Corporation appointed a Muslim as its head of religious broadcasting.
These things have happened not because of the rage against religion in Britain (though such a rage is increasingly common among the intelligentsia for reasons I shall come to) but because the British establishment has ceased to be Christian and has inherited a society with Christian forms and traditions. It does not know what to do with them or how to replace them. Into this confusion and emptiness the new militant secularists now seek to bring an aggressive atheism.
Found an interesting chapter from the book 'The Rage Against God' that I would like to share. Obviously its from a conservative Christian viewpoint but I wonder if there are any lessons for Muslims (or anybody that matter) that could be learned from the decline in Christianity in the UK.
The Decline of Christianity - by Peter Hitchens
Western Christianity has undergone several separate reverses and defeats in the modern ear. It was permanently divided by the reformation; it was weakened by the Enlightenment and the bold claims of modern science; it did itself huge damage during modern wars, by allowing itself to be recruited to opposing sides. This problem was most harshly stated by Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address on the 4th March 1865 in which he pointed to the absurdity of both sides seeking the aid of the same God.
Lincoln, who seems not haven been a Christian but who knew his Bible better than most believers, was undeniably right – though his target was not the Church but the Christian slave owners. The same absurdity was on display in the First World War in which soldiers of both sides initiated and enthusiastically joined an unbearably poignant Christmas Truce in 1914 which – had it spread and taken hold – might have ended the whole undertaking. The decline of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant in Europe dates from this war, in which leaders of national Churches gave their support to the war making of democratic politicians and so helped destroy themselves for many years to come.
Previous European wars had been over more quickly, and had not brought about such terrible numbers of deaths and maimings. Many priests and pastors performed great acts of personal bravery and sacrifice, bringing comfort to the dying and not shirking terrible danger and privation. But the gospels could not really be made to endorse or excuse mass murder, the rapid loss of all delicacy of language and feeling, everything which had been considered good and fair before; the acres of unburied dead rotting in plain sight until consumed by rats, the resulting growth of mercilessness and brutality at home, thanks to the corruption of mens morals by what they had seen; the devastation of family life and social order. As old regimes, one by one, crumbled and sagged, the churches crumbled and sagged with them.
Protestant England was particularly troubled after the war was over because most of the its very Protestant churches were unable to permit the prayers for the dead that so many bereaved families would have liked to offer. Spiritualism, with its promise of renewed contact with the departed, briefly flourished because of this, prompting Rudyard Kipling to write the poem ‘En-dor’ warning the bereaved that they were being cruelly manipulated for gain. But in general the Church of England suffered the decay of authority and the loss of trust and deference which affected every established pillar of English society.
People had gone to war for things they completely believed in, and had been completely betrayed. Promised glory and humour, they had found hideous death, mud, sin, mutilation, rats and filth. They had astonishingly, passed through it without any serious mutiny (in the case of the British armies) or collapse in morale. But they knew, and everyone knew, they had been fooled and that whatever they had fought for had been lost during the squalor of war. Among those who had deceived them were their Christian pastors. Never such innocence again, as Philip Larkin wrote about the last hours of old England in August 1914:
Never such innocence
Never before or since
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer
Never such innocence again
Even so Christianity still survived into the 1930s and into the early 1950s as a considerable if weakened force. Church attendance fell, but was still healthy by the standards of today. The supremacy of the Christian faith was assumed in schools, state and private, and in public life in general. It was affirmed in teh great national ceremonies, such as the two Coronations of the era – George VI in 1937 and Elizabeth II in 1953. The national broadcaster, British Broadcasting Corporation, was still unquestionably Christian. Well into the 1950s it broadcast on its main morning news programme an uncompromisingly Christian segment entitled ‘Lift up your hearts’ as well as a number of church services at other times of the day. The important thing was that nobody thought this was odd. But 50 years later it is more or less unimaginable.
For the disillusion of the First World War has by now been reinforced by the double disillusion of the Second. In Britian a supposedly glorious victory was followed by two astonishing experiences. The first was severe economic crises, made worse by the exceptionally cold winter and appalling pollution – a time of lethal smogs of frozen pipes and frozen railways, of profound shortages and rationing far more restrictive than it had been during wartime, when supply convoys were being torpedoed by German submarines. Bread had never been rationed in the war. Now it was.
This dismal period made talk of victory seem especially hollow, in a country that was still damaged and exhausted by six years of total war. It brought home to those who had not yet understood it the great decline of the country as an economic and political power. The Church, associated with discredited authority and supplanted by an increasingly social (as opposed to individual) conscience and social gospel, went into accelerated decline as the pre war generations of habitual worshippers slowly died away.
At around this time, the great missions of Billy Graham to Britain laid the foundations of a new evangelism which has in recent years become a major force in the English Church. And the Roman Catholic Church, with its comparatively uncompromising position, seduced many thoughtful English Christians from the increasingly relativistic and agnostic established Church of England. But that established Church itself lost authority and, though still present in every corner of England spoke to and for fewer and fewer people.
It was the 1940s revolutionary period of nationalisation, rationing and growing state power that gave George Orwell the imaginative background for 1984, his novel about a perpetual socialist future of oppression, regimentation and shortage. For it was coupled with one of the most thoroughgoing attempts to introduce a socialist state ever attempted in a free country with the rule of law and an elected parliament. The labour government elected in 1945, with a huge parliamentary majority had many of the characteristics of a revolution, nationalising private property and centralising state power, greatly increasing the direct role of government in the national life in way never before attempted in peacetime (though familiar from the recent war).
Many of its measures were popular, not least the creation of the National Health Service (NHS) which made most doctors employees of the state but gave the poor guaranteed free medical treatment. Many of these changes had their roots in English and Scottish radicalism, not in Marxism or Communism, and were inspired by Christian sentiments. The wartime Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, had considered himself a Christian Socialist, and much of the Church of England believed that the 1945 Labour government was enacting Christian legislation and turning the country into an ideal Christian society. One effect of this was that the Church relinquished control of many secondary schools to the state (a mistake the Roman Catholics did not make), in return for the promise of a daily act of Christian worship in all schools, a promise that would be extensively broken within a few decades.
A commitment to social welfare at home and liberal anti-colonialism abroad became – in many cases – an acceptable substitute for Christian faith. It is very much so today.
Britain began a long and rather strange era in which it was simultaneously conservative and socialist. Many of its institutions customs and traditions were conservative in character, but its government was egalitarian and radical. The conservative elements in the country were strengthened artificially by the outbreak of the Cold war, which identified the more extreme forms of socialism with the national enemy in Moscow. Thus the political conflict between growing secular egalitarianism and the remaining fortresses of Christian conservatism was left unresolved for decades. During this time, the weakness of Christianity among the people and in the schools grew, and cultural revolution of all kinds (described in my 1999 book The abolition of Britain) continued at all levels.
During the 1960s Christianity was slowly, by gradual degrees, driven into the margins even when religious matters were under discussion. A new generation of teachers, many of them not themselves Christian in any serious way, did not wish to obey the law requiring a daily act of Christian worship in state schools. A revolutionary reorganisations of these schools in the 1960s and 1970s combined with an official decision to widen the recruitment of teachers, coincided with the cultural revolution of the same period. At around the same time, Britain began to absorb (or in many cases fail to absorb) large numbers of migrants from the Indian sub contentment who were not Christian.
On the ground of good manners, many teacher and local government authorities felt unable to continue to behave as if Christianity was the national religion. It is difficult to tell whether this was motivated in all or most cases by a kindly tactfulness, an attempt at tolerance, or a disguised desire to weaken Christianity, which found multiculturalism a convenient excuse. This led over time to absorb paradoxes, such as the existence in some parts of England of ‘Church of England’ primary schools whose pupils are almost exclusively Muslim, thanks to the transformation of the areas involved by migrant populations.
A belief in multiculturalism, promoted by those who disliked the Christian, patriotic monoculture of the country, became common among educationalists and among teachers themselves. The very idea that Christianity could and should be taught as a belief which the teacher and pupils both shared became increasingly hard to sustain. If it was taught at all, the Christian religion was explained as something which other people might believe, but which listeners were not expected to embrace themselves.
The headquarters of the BBC, the national broadcasting service, is dedicated to Almighty God and adorned with a scriptural exhortation to pursue ‘whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are true and of good report’. Yet in recent years BBC announcers began to say of Easter not that it celebrated the Resurrection of Christ but that on this day ‘Christians celebrate their belief in the resurrection of Christ’ or similar neutral formulation. Had Britain not until recently been a specifically Christian country, these changes would not be so striking. The transition from official Christianity to official religious neutrality has been cautious and gradual and, as such things often are, noticed only by the more committed.
It remains incomplete, but the process is clearly visible to the observant. On the main radio channel, a daily Christian service is transmitted but only on the little used Long Wave frequency. The confident evangelism of ‘lift up your hearts’ has been supplanted by ;Thought for the day’ in which Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus, and the occasional Christian communicate vapid thoughts in general subjects. The singing of an Easter Hymns on the morning of Easter Day appears to have been quietly discontinued. There are religious programmes, but often these take a form of a neutral or hostile discussion of religious current affairs featuring long items about Roman Catholic priests abusing Children, or Anglican arguments about homosexuality. Alternatively they show gathering of elderly people singing hymns. Recently the Corporation appointed a Muslim as its head of religious broadcasting.
These things have happened not because of the rage against religion in Britain (though such a rage is increasingly common among the intelligentsia for reasons I shall come to) but because the British establishment has ceased to be Christian and has inherited a society with Christian forms and traditions. It does not know what to do with them or how to replace them. Into this confusion and emptiness the new militant secularists now seek to bring an aggressive atheism.
