Sorry Tom, whether it’s Christian or not is beside the point.

As the Grinch learned the hard way……

He HADN’T stopped Christmas from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same

Religion is one’s systems of beliefs in ultimate matters. Ultimate being a key word, as in that which supersedes the mundane. It does not have to be a Theology with a god; Confucianism, Veganism, Dawkins and his evangelical Atheism, Daoism, Communism for the true believers, and so on also can be called religions under my definition.

And one would think a pandemic would be a blossoming of religious thinking. What is more ultimate than mortality, disruption of society, suffering, loss, and sacrifice. But no, it seems to bring none of that as secular humanism and Liberalism are the regular Western philosophy today, and holds no ultimate, more nihilism and solipsism than anything.

As a young man I spent years in solitary travels, living rough outdoors, often in true wilderness without any distractions like books or electronics. Just myself and thoughts. Mortality always was something I thought of, In nature it is all around you – the whyness of life and then death, society and social contract, morality and ethics, and suffering and what they could mean. I used to think this a normal part of growing up, the thinking of ultimate. Childhood was a time of learning rather than reflecting, and when adulthood is approaching we then were educated enough to suddenly notice the great wheel of life. Good and evil, ethics and morality, life and death, suffering and free will and so tried to figure what it meant. I do not think most modern young people go through this phase much, they lost religion for Liberalism, so do not believe in the ultimate, or even worry about it.

This writer made some good points about how charity, education, and Medical till quite recently were the duty of the Church. Then how these rolls have been Nationalized by the Government leaving spirituality to be replaced by bureaucracy. Clapping for the NHS and mask wearing with social distancing becoming the religious observance.

This covid event has astounded me by how much the thought and energy of most Westerners is about extending the lives of old and feeble by a few months at the cost of the young their education and jobs and socializing, their future for great numbers likely wrecked, made unemployable. Poor students rarely catch up from missed school – and this is a year. Not having starter jobs cripples many youth from getting on the employment ladder till late, and they never catching up.

Covid has had an earth shaking response, it may hand China dominance over huge tracts of the world, like Africa and East Asia, and even South and Central America. The West economies set back horrible so the young and working suffer, pensions crippled, houses lost, business lost, millions of jobs lost and millions of lives wrecked. But you never hear discussion of WHY this path has been chosen.

No studies made of cost/benefit of Person years lost, economies wrecked, and so on. And I think it is because of the losing of religion. No Ultimate exists. Reaction is all which counts. Our spirituality surrendered to bureaucracy and they naturally just want to do more of what ever it is they do without any worrying of what is of ultimate importance.

The assumption here is that the CofE are definitively Christian, the accusation of welfare statism maybe closer to the mark of the CofE being a Christian in name only state endorsed NGO.

The fall of the science as an absolute mantra that has been served to the general public is going to be of more consequence post pandemic than the abstention of the church during the pandemic.