A recently released report published by the Woolf Institute’s Commission on Religion and Belief in Public Life at Cambridge University recommends substantial changes to the way religion is treated in the British Isles. Shrouded in the language of “pluralism,” the report, entitled “Living With Difference: Community, Diversity and the Common Good,” is in fact an unapologetic attack upon faith and its role in British public life.
“Living With Difference” contains several recommendations, including: (1) the creation of a Magna Carta-style statement setting forth a series of secular British values; (2) ending religious assemblies for children in state schools, and the elimination of public subsidies to religious schools (the program would gut Catholic and Jewish school funding); (3) replacing many of the most important bishops in the House of Lords with non-Christian clerics; and (4) revising the coronation service to eliminate many of its Christian elements so that leaders of other faiths can play a more prominent role.
Although the Church of England has called the report “seriously misguided” and challenged the findings as “dominated by the old-fashioned view that traditional religion is declining in importance and that non-adherence to a religion is the same as humanism or secularism,” it is rumored to have several notable sympathizers including Lord Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.
Hardly an isolated endeavor, “Living With Difference” is the most recent example of an intolerant secularism that is contemptuous of every brand of traditional faith. The report is an unsubtle attempt to reconfigure British culture without its religious underpinnings, and ultimately, its historical antecedents. It is an effort to erect a civilization without religion, but neglects to inquire as to whether such a civilization is desirable or even possible.
In “Europe and Its Discontents,” Pope Benedict XVI noted that there is a “peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological.” This pathological condition is apparent in feel-good popular theologies that challenge Christianity’s role as the core of Western culture. It has become fashionable in the West to embrace secular dogmas premised on political ideologies that promise earthly salvation. Nevertheless, following a century of unprecedented barbarism committed in the name of the false gods of politics, technology, and materialism, we still resist the lessons of history and commit our energies to constructing a secular culture premised on meager ideological constructions.
But to confront the problems of culture, the West must understand the meaning of culture itself. Specifically, can culture be secular or is it an inherently religious concept?
Eminent historians such as Arnold Toynbee and Christopher Dawson have endeavored to show that cultures arise from the “cult” — that is, the communal worship of the divine. Following this initial spark of “culture” rooted in faith, individuals can then cooperate in other aspects of life — language, agriculture, organized arts, civil administration, and economic development.
For example, out of small bands of worshippers in ancient societies arose the great cultures of antiquity — Egyptian, Chinese, Minoan, Hellenic, and Roman. Joined in unions of faith, these cultures laid the groundwork for our modern civilization. But, when the spiritual dynamic of these ancient cultures withered under the pressures of materialism, political strife, and internal decay, the civilizations themselves suffered catastrophic decline and, ultimately, complete destruction. When the old gods lost their place at the apex of the Rome’s civic life, the Republic’s fate was sealed and an unsustainable — cruel military despotism readily took its place.
Today, the same problem persists in new forms. “Living With Difference” views Britain’s Christian heritage as an unwelcome intruder into modern life rather than the cornerstone of its dynamic culture. In doing so, it ignores that almost all of Britain’s public traditions were born in its abbeys and cathedrals, that Magna Carta’s chief architect was a Catholic Cardinal, and that Christianity was the sole source of order, freedom, and justice in those lands for more than a millennia.
By seeking to enervate the vitality of Christianity and its place in British culture, the report’s authors undermine the very nature of Britain itself and endeavor to replace it with a culture utterly divorced from its roots. But can a new Magna Carta animated by nationalistic ideas and utilitarian morality succeed? Can Britain, and by extension the West, endure as a civilization without religion?
Historical experience militates strongly against such an idea. A cursory review of the last two centuries shows that removing religion from the public square is the most efficient way to facilitate cultural ruin and human suffering.
A generation ago, Christopher Dawson argued in favor of a “movement of spiritual reintegration which would restore that vital relation between religion and culture which has existed at every age and on every level of human development.” Today, the West desperately needs to restore its traditional faith or risk transforming into something entirely new, weak, and destructive – a society in which power, money, and technology are worshipped at the expense of human dignity, order, justice, and freedom.
And while Christianity remains the target of self-loathing Westerners and secular elites, the war against faith extends to the followers of all traditional religions. Quasi-religious in its zeal, “Living With Difference” is a significant step toward the relegation of faith to the back-benches of cultural life. It is a schematic for a Godless constitution that unwittingly romanticizes the darkest ages of Europe in which power, human appetite, and brute force prevailed.
Glen A. Sproviero is a commercial litigator in New York. Read his past columns here.
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