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There were echoes of the Grand Inquisitor in Toynbee's chilling tone. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
The trouble with writing anything about religion is that if you’re not religious, like me, you’re not a legitimate voice (what’s it got to do with you?); if you are religious, you’re not a legitimate voice either (you would say that, wouldn’t you?). It’s easier to steer well clear. So this huge, foundational aspect of life is often absent from – or misrepresented in – the media.
The British Social Attitudes survey is the big annual state-of-the-nation report, and this year the headline finding was that for the first time ever, more than half of the country (52%) now sees themselves as totally unreligious. The Church of England has collapsed most spectacularly (only 1% of 18-24 year olds now identify as Anglican, compared to 33% of over-75s) and hard atheism is on the rise, with 26% of the population now saying with confidence that they don’t believe in God, up from 10% 20 years ago.1
This wasn’t the area most newspapers focused on, though. They led with the juicier findings about gender identity and acceptance of gay relationships. The religion stuff was reported neutrally, matter-of-factly, as yet another confirmation of a trend we can’t do anything about. The decline of the Church now sits alongside Capitalism, Globalisation and Technology in the ‘too big to spend time fretting about’ category.
There was one commentator, however, who did find something to say about the report. The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee was delighted with the findings and devoted her column to calling for any remaining role for the Church of England in public decision-making to be finally extinguished. She neatly managed to bring her political views into line with the good forces of rational correctness. “This visceral Brexit war between old and young,” she concluded, “has often felt like a conflict between reason and unreason, between economic fact and emotional national identity. But the BSA report reassuringly finds that beneath the surface of our present turmoil, superstition and unreason are on the retreat.” There was something of the grand inquisitor in her tone, chasing out the last vestiges of the forbidden faiths.
Nor do the authors of the BSA report itself, distinguished social scientists, attempt to hide their conclusion that the collapse in religious belief is a positive development in favour of a more scientific world view. They write that “scientific rationalism and liberal individualism” are taking the space left by religion, and that science and technology offer “an alternative way of interpreting and understanding the world”. The chapter on trust in science and scientists (it’s high) directly follows the chapter on declining religious belief – structurally cementing the idea that the one has been succeeded by the other.
Yet when you look at the questions posed in the survey, they don’t seem to be the most important ones. They are focused on organised religion and its structural role in society – and as such are tilted towards the obvious.
“Looking around the world, religions bring more conflict than peace.” Do you agree? It would be hard for even the most ardent believer to make the case, in this context, that religion had brought more peace than conflict around the world. Or “Do you think that churches and religious organisations in this country have too much power or too little power?” Again, even die-hard Christians are not arguing for a theocracy, or that the Church should be granted new formal constitutional ‘powers’. I’m amazed that as many as 5% chose that option.
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SubscribeAs a new UnHerd reader, I enjoy discovering “alternative” views even when an alternative may harbor less claim to truth than a traditional view. The touted trend among the “new anti-relgious” in Western countries is a case in point. The cliche of pundits and placard-bearers alike, “We believe in science,” shows how shallow these marchers are. They assume that their protests can easily be subsumed under newly-valued terms like “science” instead of under archaic ones their generation has rejected.Their belief system celebrates the same vauge philosophically-correct ontology that relgious people don’t worry about too much. American Christians, for example, who aren’t locked into avante guard linguistic technicalities, may remember that Christianity prospered on the frontier as a communitarian bond in which everyone supported the need of the neighbor. This “Grundbass” continues to sound in Western society even if little heard or understood by those writing the headlines. In societies in which individualism is the new norm, slogans like “Black Lives Matter” or even “All Lives Matter” arise as new insights from the alternative crowd. Forget the fact that too many so-called “religious” in societies in which Christianity is a majority have held racist views– and justifiablly are called-out by minority brothers and sisters. The truth, even higher than ontological truths that Generations X, Y and Z may not fathom, is the fact that true religion is to “seek justice and correct oppression” (Is. 1:17). “Pure and undefiled religion is this,” says James (1;27), “to care for orphans and widows in their distress,” (James 1:27). Newer generations, in their individualism, may think that by rejecting buildings and structures they have rejected religion in favor of science. This is shallow. The slogans on their placards that they may think are new to them are, in fact, age-old religious truths. They are not really alternative views– and they are certainly not scientific. Like ancient volcanic magma they bubble up values that generations before them at least mouthed, perhaps even held dear. Many of us who give both science and religion their due would love to hold hands with newer generations who think they alone have new insights. If we squeeze one another’s hands hard enough, some of our mutual truth and energy might be engaged.