In response to the High Court judgement outlawing acts of Christian prayer from town and city halls, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, commented: “it does look as though the Christian voice is being silenced and I am very worried by the dangers of a creeping secularisation. The marginalisation of Christianity is hollowing out our value system and our culture and this worries me more than anything else.”
The Archbishop, it seems, is more concerned by a shift in values and change in our culture than in faith and the 'good news' that the Christian gospel is held by Christians to convey - the spreading of which is meant to be a principle objective.
The reasons that this religion – and by that I mean the set of rules set down by clerics such as the former Archbishop, the plethora of Popes and other religious figures over the millennia – is being over-taken by “creeping” secularisation are not hard to find. The established church has deliberately marginalised itself from a rising tide of compassion that unites not just Christians, but Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and people of other great Faiths. This compassion I would argue is at the heart of a more tolerant global society and reflects greater dependence upon democracy than theocracy. Witness how many more junior clerics in the Church of England are now supported by the current Bishop of London in their quest for more inclusive and tolerant policies.
Many churches are reputedly located on the sites of former temples or sites of special religious significance to followers of the druids and other pre-Christian faiths. Britons today are more numerous, and diverse in terms of colour, culture, ethnicity and open about their sexuality than at any other point in our history and yet churches that were once filled are now empty, converted into houses and theatres or being filled by people of other faiths. Small, verging upon extremist, factions of evangelical Christianity are probably the most constant visitors to today's still open Protestant churches.
There is documentary evidence (such as the story of Saint Issa) that suggests Christ spent much of his life outside of the Holy Land living in India where he was able to study the ancient Buddhist scriptures and learn from other non-Judaic religions. There are aphorisms in the Dhammapada (probably best read as a Buddhist Book of Proverbs written in Pali) that are believed to be the actual teachings of Buddha, and which bear a remarkable similarity in imagery and sentiment to those ascribed to Christ in the New Testament; this is of course quite apart from the instructions and observations we now associate with Lao Tse and Confucius who lived even further to the east and indeed earlier than Buddha or Christ. That ideas and faiths have travelled vast distances is not surprising given the time between these great scriptural testaments being recorded and later written down. Zen Buddhists are possibly unique in their open acknowledgement of the origins of some of their ideas and practices. That the inclusive image we might wish to have of Christ should be associated with the compassionate and profound ideas and teaching of Buddha is also not surprising.
History is full of examples of cultures evolving and others disappearing as new ideas and traditions arrived either peacefully - or at the point of a sword.
The Christian response to slavery, and then women clerics, gay people and other minority groups in the late Twentieth century and early years of this, sadly emulate its previous responses to the challenges presented by people of colour and indeed its historically held perception of its own superiority over other faiths. It took decades to change the church’s view on race, to appoint people of colour as junior clerics and eventually appoint its first black Bishop. The Creator must have shuddered in amazement at that momentous event.
My message to Lord Carey, the current Archbishops of Canterbury and York - Messrs. Williams and Sentamu and their apologists: stop blaming secularism for all that has gone wrong; acknowledge that it may be the church's complacency and historical complicity with wealth and political influence at the expense of our wider society that have caused people to turn their backs on your leadership and organised religion.
The judgemental description “creeping” attached to secularisation by Lord Carey will not stop people rioting on the streets, bankers 'stealing' millions to put into their bonuses or politicians defrauding the electorate. Instead it will build even taller walls between the established church and its former followers - language and sentiment such as this are no longer a credible response. In short people don't care what the Bishops think.
People no longer believe the Church will or can “save” them. In fact, if they are gay and they have to look to Archbishop Sentamu for direction, they must question what the salvation is from or indeed if they want to be 'saved'. Religious bigotry and intolerance is from the same disordered mind as the racism Sentamu has regrettably faced in recent days. He could, however, learn much by listening to former Archbishop Tutu of Cape Town and the current Bishop Charteris of London before attacking gay people and the 'divine' right to a meaningful relationship within the context of a chosen faith.
The real casualty in the rise in secularism will be people losing faith not so much in the organised religions and churches, but in faith itself. If people cease to see in their hearts that there may be a purpose for them, that there may be something far greater than ego and physical self, the stop watch on the present human world will start to tick a great deal faster. Secularism without a system of values does not offer anything but a void. Equally, however, religion without a realistic, rather than just an ethereal, purpose loses validity to its claim to link to a higher cause.
I do not believe that we should be enslaved to the established wishes of the Church of England, a quaint Town Hall tradition that feigns devotion or indeed to Canterbury’s current view of the rules. I do, however, believe that faith in a greater order, power or purpose than us (God if you will), should be preserved and encouraged. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, observed in a Credo article recently published in the Saturday Times, “There is only one God but there may be more than one path to his presence”.
A few minutes reflection, at the start of a democratic meeting, upon words drawn from any of the scriptures that inform the varied, yet compassionate, faiths in Britain today, will encourage greater humanity from our elected leaders. The proposed demise of solely Christian prayers – perhaps an imposed imperialist Victorian tradition – is not something I think we should mourn.
“We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.” (Buddha)
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