What will be lost as Britain loses its religion?

Recent statistics tell us that there are fewer Christians than non-believers in Britain. Oddly, more people pray than don’t pray, and I think that (if we don’t bother to get picky about how accurate these figures are) if we take these two bits of data seriously we ought to make sense out of them.

We forget that 400 years ago Britain was in the throes of a religious and social turmoil which would have people behaving like ISIS, the Saudi monarchy and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Obsessed with theological details and insisting upon ways in which people performed the cult, the powerful would use the most extreme forms of coercion to ensure uniformity. By the end of the seventeenth century Britain had gone through a massive religious and social change. In 1500 the church had great wealth, the priests had great power and the people in general obeyed them. By 1700 the state had taken control of the church, including its land, and the parson had no monopoly of power, no ability to coerce, and it would seem that religious practice was dull and formal, and very varied.

The people of England, Wales and Scotland adhered to a Protestant narrative, but had had enough of the two centuries of violent coercion and created cool Christianity. Only with the rise of the Methodists did some passion return, strangely warming the hearts of people, and then the Anglo-Catholics brought in romance and beauty; both encouraged a sense of mystery and awe. But in general most people were cool about religion. They believed in a God of order, in a life after death, but not too passionately.

The industrial revolution brought change and uncertainty. Rural Britain found people moving into the towns and there people found religion to be a binding and social force. Church and Chapel gave urban workers what the village had given, a sense of connectedness and community. But it gave much more. Different religious groups saw the need to challenge the ills of capitalist urban Britain. They were integral in different reform movements, from the anti-slavery Wilberforce and Newton, to the care for workers with Quakers like Rowntree and Cadbury. Methodists sought respectability by huge donations to the good of towns, and committed reformers used the Christian message to make society a better place. The odd mystic Blake saw the need to build the Kingdom of God, the new Jerusalem in England because he could not see it. The radical equality practised by Jesus and the first Christians was not seen: was Jerusalem builded here? No. Let’s do it then, Let’s build it.

And other things happened. Industrial society encouraged singing and music. Inexpensive art. Not music for the elite, but for the people. Youngsters didn’t need to sit exams for their instruments, they played in the bands and orchestras. The now partly literate (thanks to denominational schooling) sand their hymns in harmony in their chapels and new choirs in churches meant a developing musical scene with new music, new anthems, chants, canticles being learnt, and children were busy: instrumental practice, choir practice, services. ‘Praise the Lord’, the Reverend Eli Jenkins was able to proclaim in Under Milk Wood in 1954, ‘we are a musical nation.’

There was a huge variety of Christianity. Much of it was about doing. About mass participation in worship, often several times on a Sunday and sometimes midweek. About caring for the poor and needy, establishing massive housing projects, soup kitchens, all sorts of charitable projects. In general these were based on a Christ-based understanding of the world. Not a sophisticated theology, but an understanding that faith is about works. In wealthier places it meant the commissioning of new pieces of art: musical commissions from major composers, new windows, mosaics, whole buildings built by craftsmen to express a sense that religion matters, that the sense of awe discovered in a beautiful building is important, that the stories inform us. And the huge choirs and orchestras now found in the cities naturally sang in secular halls the stories which underlay people’s lives: old works like ‘Messiah’ and new ones like ‘Elijah’ or ‘The Apostles.’

What ordinary people thought is not always easy to say. Christianity is in essence a meditation on Christ. Different people reflect in different ways. The English saw him as an exemplar, one to follow. Some saw him as the terrifying judge, and certainly many clergy tried to have power by threatening their flocks. But in a society where going to church had not been a major activity for centuries until the industrial revolution this wasn’t always successful.

But Christ as exemplar is where much of socialism in Britain finds its root. The ethics of non-conformity is about doing good to others, about service. The theologians of the established church reflected this in a theology in which Christ is God sharing our humanity, in teaching us to be human, rather that in the old theology of sacrifice (whatever that means in modern society).

So it was that the assumption in post-war Britain was that refugees should be cared for, that we should keep rationing so that those who were so lately our enemies could have some food, that Coventry should rebuild its cathedral committed to reconciliation, its first aim was to remember Christ’s words, Father, Forgive.

Of course we have no idea what people believed in their heart of hearts. But the stories which inspired them were those told in Sunday School of the Good Samaritan (hence the Samaritans), or the journey to Emmaus (Emmaus today is a homeless people’s charity). And Vaughan Williams, vicar’s son and person of doubt had the Pilgrim’s Progress as his text, so that whatever questions he had about doctrine, the story was what he loved.

The reaction of some today to the people fleeing the catastrophes in western Asia and Africa, of giving not one hoot for them is not the reaction of that Britain. The isolationism doesn’t reflect the pained yearning for reconciliation of the bombed cities, the desire to share their commonalities. It comes from a world view not based on the Protestant Christ, the healer, the one who shares in the suffering of his people.

Faith is about uncertainty. Any scientist will say much the same about science which is always provisional on someone disproving the latest idea. But faith and doubt are about how we tell the stories, how we sing them, how we live them out. The Lloyds Building and the Shard will never have the same impact as Wells Cathedral or York Minster, never be the places where ordinary people burst into song. Faith is best expressed in poetry, music and service. The mystery of God is best told in the stories, stories being told in the York Mysteries; but it is best lived out in the thousands of volunteers who run the food banks and urban estate projects, in the refugee welcome centres and the quiet visiting of the lonely. These are still overwhelmingly run by churchgoers, many of whom find doctrine and dogma baffling, but realise that going to church, being the church is not primarily about believing impossible things but about a meditation on Jesus.