David Aaronovitch: Don't ask me to weep if Christianity is 'vanquished'
Christianity has "now almost been vanquished" in England and Wales, according to the head of the Roman Catholic Church: a vivid phrase conjuring up an image of heavily-armed atheists, Richard Dawkins in their van, laying waste to a formerly devout and well-ordered nation.
The Cardinal Archbishop is guilty of an extreme example of verbal inflation, in which "being vanquished" translates as "has petered out". This development deserves a response ranging from quiet satisfaction to mild regret, rather than a call to moral arms. It does not mean, as Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor alleged, that most people in this country are "indifferent" to Christian values. On the contrary, many of the fundamental values taught by Jesus Christ are so deeply embedded in the assumptions of our society that it is impossible to believe that they could ever be "all but eliminated" – another colourful phrase of his. The ideals of love, of forgiveness and of treating others as of equal worth are as valued now as they ever were; it is the secondary issues of abortion, gay rights and the role of women, on which Jesus did not pronounce directly, which are disputed within and between churches, and in the wider society.
However, it is true that many people in England and Wales, as in Scotland and much of Europe, are indifferent to churches as institutions. The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England and the other mainstream Protestant denominations have been in decline for so long that even those – mostly Catholics – who have a relaxed historical perspective on the Church must doubt whether formal religious observance will ever be anything like universal again.
That should not, however, be a cause for hand-wringing despair. Once it was believed that the earth was held on the shoulders of a giant and would fall if undermined by disbelief. It may yet, of course, although the cause of global catastrophe is more likely to be a stray asteroid, super volcano or human pollution than a giant in a huff. But many of the dire consequences expected from the slow collapse of the Church have failed to materialise or are much exaggerated.
It is a common complaint, voiced by cardinals, archbishops of Canterbury, chief rabbis, imams and others, that the lack of influence of organised religion (usually their particular brand thereof) leaves a moral vacuum in society that is responsible for family breakdown, drug abuse and crime. Instead of the deeper satisfactions offered by the church, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said yesterday, people sought transient happiness in alcohol, drugs and pornography. This betrays a poor understanding of the history of the temptations of the flesh; what has changed in recent centuries is not so much the rival attractions, but organised religion itself. Despite the good works done in the name of religion, they are no longer central to social organisation in this country or in most of the world.
Lord Hurd's report on the allocation of name-plates in Lambeth Palace is not going to make the Church of England more relevant; nor is any tinkering with doctrines or marketing going to make a lasting difference. Both the Roman Catholic church and the Church of England suffer from poor leadership (in the first case, partly because Basil Hume was a hard act to follow). But the problem goes far beyond that. The world has changed. It is richer; more intellectually egalitarian; education and the advance of science have pushed fundamentalist religious belief to the cultish margins. Mainstream Christianity is now a liberal Catholicism that is quietly sceptical about the Pope's authority, and a Protestantism that leans towards the use of religious devices as metaphors to aid an understanding of morality.
This may dismay those who yearn for a partly-mythical golden age when church-going was an important focus of a local community, an expression of a common value system and a settled social order. But any attempt at doctrinal rigour is bound to be dictatorial: witness the United States, where religions tend to be strict with their own, and everyone looks down on those who choose none. Far better to celebrate the more tolerant attitudes towards religion and irreligion in this country, disestablish the Church of England, and let everyone find their own way to a higher moral plane.