Religious rump-osculation among anglophones isn’t limited to Americans. For a prime example from the other side of the pond, see the new piece by Michael Gove, a British conservative MP, in The Spectator: “Why I’m proud to be a Christian (and Jeremy Paxman should be ashamed)“. (The subtitle is “Despite a tidal wave of prejudice and negativity, faith remains the foundation of our civilisation.”)
Gove’s article can be seen only as a defense against the waning tide of religion in Britain, or as the defensive snarl of a fatally trapped animal. He begins by excoriating Paxman (an ascerbic BBC newsman and interviewer) for making fun of Christianity:
Was it true, Jeremy inquired [of Tony Blair], that he had prayed together with his fellow Christian George W. Bush?
The question was asked in a tone of Old Malvernian hauteur which implied that spending time in religious contemplation was clearly deviant behaviour of the most disgusting kind. Jeremy seemed to be suggesting that it would probably be less scandalous if we discovered the two men had sought relief from the pressures of high office by smoking crack together.
Praying? What kind of people are you?
Well, the kind of people who built our civilisation, founded our democracies, developed our modern ideas of rights and justice, ended slavery, established universal education and who are, even as I write, in the forefront of the fight against poverty, prejudice and ignorance. In a word, Christians.
But to call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal. In a culture that prizes sophistication, non-judgmentalism, irony and detachment, it is to declare yourself intolerant, naive, superstitious and backward.
And yes, it sort of is. It certainly brands you as someone who is superstitious (albeit not necessarily intolerant: after all, this is the UK!), and somewhat backwards in at least what you believe to be true. And of course Christians built a lot of British civilization because everybody was a Christian for the last millennium and a half. You can’t give Christianity any more credit for that than you can racism, for most of the people who built “our” civilization were racists, classists, and sexists.
Gove then goes on, citing Francis Spufford (see here for my critiques of that man) to defend Christianity, asserting that not all Christians believe in creationism, the afterlife, and “fairly tales.” But a surprising number of them do, at least if you believe Julian Baggini’s two surveys of churchgoers whose results appeared in the Guardian (see here for some data). Yes, Spufford and Gove may both adhere to Sophisticated Theology™, but the data show that they’re not the rule but the exception. By and large, Christians, including British Christians, do believe in fairy tales.
He then goes on, and I’ll finish here, with the old canard that because Christianity supposedly inspires acts of charity, it is a good thing regardless of its truth, an argument that reader Sastra calls “The Little People Argument” and that Dan Dennett calls “Belief in Belief”
The contrast between the Christianity I see our culture belittle nightly, and the Christianity I see our country benefit from daily, could not be greater.
The reality of Christian mission in today’s churches is a story of thousands of quiet kindnesses. In many of our most disadvantaged communities it is the churches that provide warmth, food, friendship and support for individuals who have fallen on the worst of times. The homeless, those in the grip of alcoholism or drug addiction, individuals with undiagnosed mental health problems and those overwhelmed by multiple crises are all helped — in innumerable ways — by Christians.
Churches provide debt counselling, marriage guidance, childcare, English language lessons, after-school clubs, food banks, emergency accommodation and, sometimes most importantly of all, someone to listen. The lives of most clergy and the thoughts of most churchgoers are not occupied with agonising over sexual morality but with helping others in practical ways — in proving their commitment to Christ through service to others.
That may be so, but right over the North Sea, the countries of Scandinavia and northern Europe have all that, and more. Those countries benefit not from Christianity, but from socialism and secular morality. In other words, you can have the good stuff without the fairy tales? To the West, Ireland, still ridden with Catholicism, prohibits most abortions, still has anti-blasphemy laws on the books, and terrifies its children with threats of hell. Oh, and up North the Catholics and Protestants used to kill each other, but of course that’s all in the past.
The question is this: does Gove believe that the truth claims of Christianity—the existence of Jesus as savior and his resurrection—are true? Does he even care? Or does he think it doesn’t matter so long as a faulty foundation supports a useful superstructure? Apparently so:
Relativism is the orthodoxy of our age. Asserting that any one set of beliefs is more deserving of respect than any other is a sin against the Holy Spirit of Non–Judgmentalism. And proclaiming your adherence to the faith which generations of dead white males used to cow and coerce others is particularly problematic. You stand in the tradition of the Inquisition, the Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits who made South America safe for colonisation, the missionaries who accompanied the imperial exploiters into Africa, the Christian Brothers who presided over forced adoption and the televangelists who keep America safe for capitalism.
But genuine Christian faith — far from making any individual more invincibly convinced of their own righteousness — makes us realise just how flawed and fallible we all are. I am selfish, lazy, greedy, hypocritical, confused, self-deceiving, impatient and weak. And that’s just on a good day. As the Book of Common Prayer puts it, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…And there is no health in us.’ [JAC: As Hitchens used to say, “Christianity tells us we are born sick and commanded to be well.”]
Christianity helps us recognise and confront those weaknesses with a resolution — albeit imperfect and fragile — to do better. But more importantly, it encourages us to feel a sense of empathy rather than superiority towards others because we recognise that we are as guilty of selfishness and open to temptation as anyone.
Well, first let’s see Gove’s evidence that Christians really do perform more good acts in Britain than do non-Christians or secularists. What he presents in his piece is simply a string of assertions without evidential support. Absent that data, I’m not prepared to accept Gove’s argument. And even if it were true, the other countries of Europe show that one can have societies healthier than that of the UK, all without the superstition.
And of course Gove conspicuously leaves the U.S. out of his argument.
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“Jermy Paxman”?!
Fixed, thanks.
He’ll be “Jermy” to me from now on!
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Germy is good – he can be a bit of a jerk.
“A one-nation tory” he called himself recently. Very disappointing, although he at least never let it sway his interviews.
Their tolerance does have limits though. For example, people who jump the queue!
Queue jumping? Blasphemer!
Off with his head!
Sure! He can take a place in the lin… um.
I don’t know enough about British history to question the claim that they built the place on Christian belief and all that but I doubt it. It is certain said over and over again about the U.S. and it is rubbish.
My understanding was that a certain King, several hundred years ago, said good bye to the Catholic Church so that he could divorce his wife and try four or five others. That sounds like a fine foundation for democracy eh. And one King after another — where is the democracy?
Yes indeed. Pagan Greeks gave us the idea for democracy. Christianity gave us the idea for the divine right of kings.
But all that stuff almost doesn’t matter. Another way of thinking about the Blair/Bush question is this: “Did you spend your time on the job discussing policy, or did you spend it indulging in a shared personal interest you and Bush have?” The question is embarrassing/insulting not because its an attack on religion per se, but because its analogous to asking two world leaders who love golf if, when they got together for a diplomatic meeting, they (instead) spent their time playing golf.
Not necessarily. Presumably, if they had been playing golf, they wouldn’t think that their golf-playing had in some way improved their policy-making.
What shall we do about Iraq? I know, let’s play a quick round – doesn’t seem very plausible. But, again presumably, they thought that ther praying together did improve their politics.
In Henry VIII’s defence, it wasn’t that he was a randy bastard – it was perfectly common in those days for royalty to have a few mistresses – but what he desperately needed was a male heir of uncontested legitimacy. This was in the light of then-recent history and bloody civil wars over the royal succession. So he needed a queen who could give him one.
And when he wanted to divorce one of his queens for a hopefully-more-fertile replacement, the Pope (influenced by Spanish interests) refused to give him one. So he gave the Pope and the Catholic Church the elbow.
Certainly more democratic (for a sufficiently small value of ‘democratic’) for the English succession to be determined by English interests, than by the Pope.
As it happened, of course, Henry didn’t manage a male heir, instead he got Elizabeth, who turned out to be more capable than most kings ever were.
Oh, and of course doctrinal religious differences had sod-all to do with it, it was all politics. Henry would probably have quite happily instituted the Pastafarian Church of England so long as it did what he told it to and not some foreign interests. And to make sure of that, of course, he made himself head of the church. (Of England, that is, not of the FSM).
Are you suggesting that Henry VIII was not the father of Edward VI? Do you know of some skeleton in the cupboard?
Oops, I’m sorry, yes. Edward 6th, crowned at nine, died at 15 before he was legally able to buy a beer or drive a car. People were younger in those days. 😉
Still, much embarrassment for forgetting him. I also didn’t mention Mary of course. As a pathetic excuse, I missed out on that period in history at school, but I should at least have Googled before I posted.
Interestingly, in view of the emphasis on legitimate heirs, Elizabeth was (according to Wikipedia) declared illegitimate when her mother’s marriage to Henry was annulled, and again declared illegitimate (at the age of 37) by the Pope who released English Catholics from their obedience to her – clearly treason. I like to think of Elizabeth’s long reign being a resounding “fuck you” to the Poop.
“I like to think of Elizabeth’s long reign being a resounding ‘fuck you’”
I *love* this.
More embarrassment to come, I’m afraid. Elizabeth’s mother was Anne Boleyn whose marriage to Henry VIII was not annulled so much as terminated with extreme prejudice. Mary’s mother’s marriage was the one that was annulled.
Then Wikipedia has it wrong.
“Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII by second wife, Anne Boleyn, who was executed two and a half years after Elizabeth’s birth. Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate.”
It seems to me that, even though Anne was executed, Elizabeth would still have been legitimate IF Anne’s marriage hadn’t been annulled (posthumously, I assume).
Well, actually, yes: it does seem to have had surpassingly little to do with doctrine.
Henry VIII was a devout Catholic &, until the end of his life, he deplored Lutheranism & other heresies. While he did officially break with the Catholic church, it seems that he remained (at least in his own eyes) Catholic, & he subsequently reversed almost all of the reforms he had made.[1] The English church under Henry came nowhere near to approaching continental Protestantism, & his discomfort with the bulk of Protestant doctrine is clearly apparent. He preserved both the Latin rites of his youth, & Catholic iconography (on a personal level, Henry rejected iconoclasm — painted icons, etc. abounded in his chapels & private rooms —, even during & after the dissolution of the monasteries). He continued to unswervingly adhere to the doctrine of transubstantiation, to endorse clerical celibacy, & to believe in purgatory — all elements of Catholicism which Protestants vehemently abjured. The only elements of Catholic doctrine that he rejected were individual confession, extreme unction, & the ‘magical’ components of clerical ordination.
Tellingly, Henry burned both Protestants & Catholics, but only the former went to the stake for heresy — the latter were executed for treason.
The establishment of an English church that was genuinely Protestant in form & doctrine fell to his son, Edward VI, & the Anglican compromise was the work of Elizabeth.
[1] Short, accessible overview:
http://www.britannia.com/history/articles/relpolh8.html
(Also, note that Henry VIII sought, not a divorce from Katherine, but an *annulment*. This is an exceedingly common error).
Thanks. Interesting.
You are most welcome!
( ^_^ )
It should also be remembered that Henry had previously been named Defender of the Faith by the Pope due to his outspoken criticism of Protestantism and that the only reason the Pope would not grant Henry an anullment of his marriage to Catherine was that the Pope was the prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who also happened to be Catherine’s nephew and simply as a matter of family pride would not allow the Pope to grant Henry leave to divorce his aunt.
Things might have been quite different if Henry’s elder brother and Catherine’s first husband, Arthur, had not died so young (and before he had the chance to become the first historical King Arthur of England (or would he have been named Arthur II in deference to that far more famous Arthur for whom, to my knowledge, there is no evidence verifying his actual existence).
Speaking of Hank and Anne, anyone watching the Masterpiece version of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall? It’s pretty good.
Yes I had read of Charles’ influence on the Pope. But whether it had originated with the Pope himself, or that the Pope was being controlled by someone else, in either case I would think it intolerable that the English succession and hence the whole future stability of the country should be endangered for the benefit of foreign and competing interests.
Another aspect that convinced Henry to break with the Pope was being reminded that all the English territory owned by the papacy would revert to him along with all the revenue that land generated. And a lot of kings throughout Europe were tired of the papacy interfering in how they ran their kingdoms.
Indeed, if anything, English Christianity utterly annihilated central, foundational components of British heritage, culture, & society. In Great Britain, the Reformation was an unbelievably destructive, top-down movement which was fiercely resisted by the general populace. See Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars (Yale UP), or Selwood’s nifty summary here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/dominicselwood/100272287/how-a-protestant-spin-machine-hid-the-truth-about-the-english-reformation/
(Selwood sometimes misses the boat, but nails it in this case).
I am fascinated by the ways in which ideologues like Gove conveniently gloss over Christianity’s pernicious temper-tantrums.
For a couple of centuries after Henry VIII, religion in England and, to a lesser extent, other parts of the island, was an extremely destructive force.
The power struggle between Catholic and Protestant interests was the cause of much violence. The bloodiest war in English history is rooted in the religious conflict.
I like to think that the traditional British reluctance to take religion seriously evolved as a defence mechanism to stop the bloodshed.
On a separate point, I notice Gove trotted out the “Christianity stopped slavery” canard again. Christianity held sway in these islands for 1,300 years give or take before we decided slavery was bad. How long does a bad thing have to go on for before we decide the alleged antidote does not work?
YouGov poll of UK population:
62% said they were not religious.
68% said that religion was “not important” to their own life.
72% of 18 to 24 year olds said religion was “not important” to their life.
35% said they believe in God.
Source.
There was also a poll carried out by Ipsos Mori, and commissioned by the Richard Dawkins Foundation that contains some interesting reading. For example:
“When asked why they think of themselves as Christian, the research found that fewer than three in ten (28%) say one of the reasons is that they believe in the teachings of Christianity. People are much more likely to consider themselves to be Christian because they were christened or baptised into the religion (72%) or because their parents were members of the religion (38%) than because of personal belief.”
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2921/Religious-and-Social-Attitudes-of-UK-Christians-in-2011.aspx
I would start by being sceptical of whether he wrote any of it. He was never so coherent when he was our Minister for Education.
I’d like to apologise on behalf of Britain for Michael Gove. Tariq Ali said it best – he “debat[ed] the ghastly Gove on television [… and found him] worse than most Bush apologists in the United States.”
I’d vote for Gove any day in preference to a professional cheerleader for terrorism and communist tyranny like Tariq Ali. But then, on many issues I’d probably be classed as a “Bush apologist” myself.
I have a lot of respect for Gove. He’s spoken out about the dangers posed by the Islamist Fifth Column in the UK, when many others make excuses for it or choose to look the other way. I don’t share his religious beliefs but I can’t see how anyone can take issue with the claim that Christianity forms part of the bedrock of British (and more generally, western) civilisation. I don’t think even Richard Dawkins would disagree with that.
Part of the bedrock? Yes, it holds Christianity’s fossilised bones.
I’ve made this challenge online before, but never got a proper answer: What positive thing has Christianity itself* contributed to British (or western) civilisation that it didn’t itself inherit or appropriate from secular traditions or philosophies?
* i.e., the theological tradition, rather than the original ideas of people who just happened to be Christians.
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Well, there’s that famous British cuisine. Blessed are the cheesemakers, no? And the signature dish of cheeses fried, lamb with cod that’s greasy on the sole.
b&
UK finally got decent cuisine – as a result of reverse colonialism. Mind you, “curry” now seems to mean anything from Morocco to Thailand …
@Ant, “What positive thing has Christianity itself contributed to British (or western) civilisation that it didn’t itself inherit or appropriate from secular traditions or philosophies?”
Good question, and I initially thought of the codex which the early Christians popularized but which the Romans invented.
Maybe the Concordance? First produced for the Vulgate Bible in the 13th century. I don’t know whether concordances were produced for Greco-Roman authors or elsewhere, say, China or in the Arabic world.
You can see where I’m coming from: in the 1,000 or so years of hegemonic Christian scribal copying, someone somewhere would think of an influential and scholarly technical innovation. x
No time whatsoever for Gove, the failed education minister and now failed Chief Whip. His comments on Christianity are entirely in keeping with his hero status on the Tory right, of course, but Gove has a habit of pissing off almost everyone eventually. Preaching the gospel according to Gove isn’t going to win the election for the Tories as most people would find a serious politician talking about religion other than to to condemn extremists as highly suspicious.
“Christianity is the foundation of our civilization.”
I’ll go along with that.
Of course, by, “foundation,” I would be referring to the fundament, that on which one sits and from which one excretes.
There’s but no doubt whatsoever that Christianity truly is the ass end of our civilization and the primary source of all the shit we keep having to wipe up.
b&
I kind of like that – it flows.
It is the religion of the asses.
And they talk, too — what a miracle! Must be lots of beans and cabbage involved, I should think….
b&
Oh, this is rich. I love seeing religious folks complaining self-righteously about the ‘Holy Spirit of Non-Judgmentalism’ when they themselves are the very ones most likely to invoke it whenever their implausible beliefs are called to rational account. “But this is my faith — we all have faiths, we all need faiths — you can’t judge me!”
So a “good day” must be one when you’re making up arguments defending the Christian faith.
Good one. Hoist with his own deeply flawed petard.
I was living in the UK when he was the education secretary, and I recall a number of descriptors in popular use that could be added to his list. None of them flattering, but all richly deserved.
Oh, snap!
Look at me! Look at me – I’m so humble!!
Not at all like you self-righteous non-Christians!!
“…helps us recognise and confront those weaknesses with a resolution — albeit imperfect and fragile — to do better. But more importantly, it encourages us to feel a sense of empathy rather than superiority towards others because we recognise that we are as guilty of selfishness and open to temptation as anyone.” This could be said of Buddhism as well, and probably much more accurately.
….except for when writing articles – superiority-condescension-I’m being oppressed- osis
I was listening to New Zealand public radio yesterday when one of a panel of Kiwis said that it would be political suicide for a US presidential candidate to profess his or her atheism while here in New Zealand it would be political suicide to profess one’s Christianity, as if it were a positive thing.
In NZ we’ve had atheist prime ministers continuously since 1999, and they’ve been popular and successful.
If a New Zealand political candidate said the “American line”, “God bless you and God bless [NZ]”, their poll ratings would plunge overnight, and they’d have no chance of getting elected. People would opine about whether the pressure of electioneering had got too much for them, and whether they had the mental strength for the rigors of office.
Yes, it sounds like you are at least half a world ahead of us. Certainly far more than the 17 hours ahead of Chicago time on the clock. In fact, it must be around 9 am. right now. Saturday morning.
We (the US) were much further ahead 40 years ago.
There’s a strong possibility that Britain will have an atheist prime minister come next month. Ed Miliband may be Jewish culturally but he has no faith.
That would be interesting on both counts!
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Christianity is certainly a huge part of the history of Western civilization. It is impossible to understand that history without a knowledge of Christianity. Our civilization has also been relatively successful. However, to credit Christianity with that success is simply confirmation bias.
Imagine, for example, if we had instead been dominated by a religion that respected men and women equally, not one over the other (because it would also have been bad if women had dominated). Our civilization would likely have been far more advanced than it is.
And for Christianity to take the credit for the Enlightenment values we celebrate today is the height of revisionism – if it wasn’t for religion, we might not have needed an Enlightenment.
In the US South, the dominant white religions were Southern Baptist and Southern Methodists. They preached from the pulpit slavery, then the black caste system, and now the evils of gays. In the former cases, the story of Ham was used to justify the unjustifiable. How can anyone believe that religion is a superior path to ethical behavior when it has failed so many times, even to the current day?
Oh that’s not true – the Christians were the ones who rallied for the abolition of slavery and the right to sit at the counter and the front of the bus etc like, like, like like what about MLK Jr. – huh huh? Just read their history books or listen in on some Christian radio. (snark)
“…if it wasn’t for religion, we might not have needed an Enlightenment.”
Worth repeating.
Indeed, this point — religion’s possible rôle in stimulating the Enlightenment — is an excellent one, Heather.
Just about every advance in individual or social rights that the UK has achieved in the past 200 years has been in the teeth of opposition from the established church. As is demonstrated by his record as Education Secretary, Gove has a highly selective view of history.
But hey,it’s election time! There are votes to be won! And polls indicate that older people are both more religious and more likely to vote than the average. Expect much more of this nonsense before May 7.
Hm, that would have been better expressed as ‘religious people, being older on average, are more likely to vote’.
I will say for Gove that he has been resolute in trying to keep creationism out of the classroom, and indeed strongly in favour of putting evolution on the primary school curriculum.
No need to thank christianity for “debt counselling, marriage guidance, childcare, English language lessons, after-school clubs, food banks, emergency accommodation and, sometimes most importantly of all, someone to listen”. These are all widely available in the UK (and even the USA)from secular sources.
Less scandalous? No. More salubrious — or at least less pernicious — for their respective polities? Very well could be.
The base-heads I’ve known — sure, they’ve made, some of them, slews of bad decisions for themselves. None of them, however, had access to a nuclear (which, for W’s benefit, is pronounced, you know, “nuclear”) football, and if they had, most would have had the common sense in their sober interludes to ensure it was out of their reach while binging on the pipe.
Not so those intoxicated on the overweening hubris and faith-frenzy that comes with knowledge certain that The Lord God Almighty has selected you, among all your countrymen, to lead your nation on adventures great and small — especially when you happen to be C-in-C of the most fearsome, fearsomely equipped, military power the world has ever known.
Don Corleone said that a guy carrying a brief case can steal more than a thousand guys armed with pistols. Much more can the leaders of the free world do a thousand-fold more damage with a single religiously enraptured blunder, than can a phalanx of rock-monsters even in the lowest throes of their addiction.
Christianity is a parasite on our civilisation.
There. Ftfy.
For Xtianity to claim the credit is a bit like the Mafia claiming the credit for the modern United States.
Gove, of course, misses the point entirely. Even if any of what he wrote were demonstrably true (which it isn’t), a large proportion of the electorate are going to be seriously uncomfortable with the notion that government policy is being informed by conversations a politician has had in his head with an invisible, magical, sky pixie.
The difference between then and now is that secular society has tamed religion by denying it authority over earthly life-and-death. Does anyone believe that if the ecclesiastical classes still had such power over mortal matters they would exercise it any more benignly than did their predecessors?
Gove stresses the good works and services provided by the religious to the needy, but his “evidence” for this, such as it is, is anecdotal. Even assuming the accuracy of his contentions, always the proselytizing is sure to follow — if, indeed, it is not fronted in the selection of worthy recipients of the church’s largesse.
I am going to disagree with you but only up to a point. There have been a number of religious people who have been instrumental in making major changes, for the better it has to be said, to the UK’s society: Cecily Saunders ( an Anglican nun) who was the creator of the modern hospice movement which has done so much to help end-of-life care initially in the UK but now worldwide and, secondly, Chad Varah (a C of E priest), the founder of the Samaritans immediately come to mind. Where I agree with you is that these people were individuals who worked outside of framework of the church itself – the church itself doing sod all …..
I’m not sure that’s even a partial disagreement, but I’ll defer to your judgment, inasmuch as what I know about Old Blighty was set out by Dennis Farina during Cousin Avi’s capsule summary of London in Snatch.
Good people doing good things who need an established place to do it will of course find themselves often helping out in a church based charity. That is true. But if history was different, wherein most people of the country were and maybe still are Buddhist (or insert whatever group/religion) then the same good people would help out in that establishment.
Pioneering helpers with the wherewithal – time, ability, energy, intelligence to start “their own” good works based charity continue to start charities today. In a couple hundred years, trees of which the seedlings are visible now – see MSF (DWO), we will see charitable good works organizations that are atheistic or at least completely secular as that population of people continues to grow.
Are people like the good Michael Gove really that thick to not see this? Or are they actually OK in the IQ area but just being LFJ (Liars for Jesus)?
DWB not DWO sorry (Doctors without boarders)
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(because I forgot to do so. twice).
I find this an incredibly shallow response to Gove’s Spectator piece, and the comments even shallower. There is certainly a lot of misunderstanding about the place or religion in society, but surely those who profess a faith should not, for that reason, be simply ridiculed. Atheists may certainly believe that all those who have a religious faith are riddled with superstitions and epistemic failures, but there is no need to be so offensive as to take a very simple profession of faith, along with complaints that faith is widely despised and ridiculed, as a sign of “osculating the rump of religion” (a vile expression in my view, even in the form of “religion rump-osculation), as though there could be no one of any intelligence who could be said reasonably to adhere to a religious faith, and as though only those who disbelieve can be thought to be intelligent and reasonable. (Indeed, one reason to leave the US out of consideration is the sadly decayed aspect of American Christianity, which has been almost entirely reduced to fundamentalist idiocy.) And certainly not for some of the points that are raised here.
Christianity does indeed stand at the heart of Western civilisation. It seems pointless to argue otherwise. It was in Christian Europe that democracy first took firm hold, not in Islamic or Buddhist or Hindu regions of the world. Perhaps we should ask why it was that democracy developed in Christian nations, and still has such a hard time in non-Christian ones. What was it about Christianity that allowed the development of democracy (Greek democracy, for instance, was based on a slave economy, and included only free men – who were a minority – which, as Plato pointed out, eventually morphed into tyranny)? It wasn’t only the Enlightenment, since Magna Carta preceded it by several hundred years, and while Magna Carta speaks about the rights of barons, it became a foundation upon which British freedoms came to be based (and has been often referred to by twentieth century declarations of human rights).
As for the development of Protestant Christianity in Britain, it was not simply a cash and grab deal by Cromwell and Henry (though it was at least that). There were issues between the English throne and the Vatican of much longer duration than that (google ‘investiture controversy’ and ‘Peter’s Pence’). And since the pope was effectively a captive of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the time Henry’s appeal for an annulment of his marriage to Catherine was made (Charles being her nephew), there were definitely issues of state that legitimised a break with Rome, since the pope, so long as he was under Charles’ thumb, could not agree to an annulment (which otherwise would have been easy for a monarch to receive), and Henry believed he had just cause to seek one. (This is a fact that Selwood rather sedulously avoids in his Telegraph minihistory of the English Reformation.) The problem here was precisely that separation of church and state, which had been, from the beginning, a fundamental Christian principle, though severely tested by the secular pretensions of a series of popes. But it was not only the popes. Religious houses and monasteries at the time owned around a third of the land in England, and their first loyalty was to Rome, not to the King, which largely explains their dissolution – not that Henry did not benefit from the dissolution, and the rewards paid to gentry whose support he could count on. The title “Fidei Defensor” was awarded by the pope to Henry VIII, on account of the latter’s book defending the seven sacraments, and has been assigned to English monarch’s since. They have no central ecclesiastical role, aside from the appointments of bishops, which had been the prerogative of the pope. (And this, of course, gave monarchs control over the direction in which they wished the church to go, just as John Paul II and Benedict gave a deeply conservative colouring to the Roman Catholic Church during the last two decades of the twentieth and the first of the twenty-first century.)
And while we are debating the undoubted cruelty involved in the religious disagreements of the sixteenth century, it is only fair to point out that the number of “martyrs” under “Bloody” Mary was something of the order of 300, while under Elizabeth it was around 30, and that was mainly following Elizabeth’s excommunication by the pope, and the pope’s “fatwa” that anyone who killed her would be doing God’s service. Remember that during the same period during which the English Reformation was being consolodated, the Bartholomew’s Day massacre occurred in France (1572), claiming upwards of 20,000 Huguenot victims, after which a great Te Deum was sung in Rome.
But it was in England, and in the Scandinavian states and the Netherlands, as well as Switzerland, with their national churches independent of Rome, that democracy first flourished. American democracy was an offshoot of its British model (it is not by accident that the President of the US stands in relation to Congress much as the King in 18th century England stood to Parliament), and it was the freedom of Englishmen that American colonists demanded. It is not unreasonable to believe that Christianity (particularly its Protestant variety) played a role in this. What part? I don’t know, not being a trained historian, nor deeply read in the subject, but simply dismissing Gove’s claim out of hand, as is being done here, seems not only intellectually hazardous (if truth is what we’re after), but irresponsible (unless, of course, we have the expert testimony of an historian at hand).
“But it was in England, and in the Scandinavian states and the Netherlands, as well as Switzerland, with their national churches independent of Rome, that democracy first flourished. … It is not unreasonable to believe that Christianity (particularly its Protestant variety) played a role in this.”
I can’t see that you can claim democracy for Christianity on this basis; why then didn’t democracy flourish as early in Catholic countries that were equally (Rome would say, more) Christian?
It seems to be more to do with northern European culture and temperament, a resurgence of ideas going back to pre-Christian times. (With Switzerland as an outlier.)
If you claim it for Christianity’s Protestant variety, I’d say you’d have to look for the origin of Protestantism in the same culture and temperament, a rebellion agains the absolute authority of the Pope, just as democracy was a rebellion against the absolute authority of kings.
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And that’s one of the fundamental points that’s separated “New” and “militant” and “strident” atheists from the rest of society for, frankly, millennia.
In no other context is this sort of faith considered a virtue, save to those who would exploit it. Earned trust is valuable, yes; civilization could not function without it and neither could personal relationships.
But religious faith is belief that persists at best despite a lack of good reason to believe and all too frequently in the face of overwhelmingly good reasons not to believe.
It is, in short, the same type of unwarranted confidence that conmen are all too eager to instill. Trust me; you don’t need to verify the deed to this bridge. Ignore the prospectus and have some confidence in my years of financial success. Forget what your own mechanic says have have a little faith; this creampuff won’t let you down.
Ridicule is always appropriate for the victims of faith, though, when the victim is a friend, sympathy should often temper the pointedness of the ridicule. Faith in no way, shape, nor form can ever even hypothetically deserve respect.
As for the rest of your defense of Christianity…the sacred texts of the religion have always been toxic to Enlightenment values, and the staunchest opposition has always come from the churches. Yes, you can point to a great many examples where religious figures took great strides away from their religion to the benefit of all mankind. Though always kicking and screaming, the devout have never let there be too much of a gap between them and the rest of society; even the Vatican today has an observatory that does work that Galileo could only have dreamt of.
At best, your charge that it was Christianity as opposed to Buddhism or Hinduism that permitted the Enlightenment to flourish…is damning with faint praise. First, there were great blooms of technology in science in Asia well before the big one happened in Europe — and those can trace their rises and falls with an inverse dedication to the local religion. When the same thing happened in the West, the most that can be said for Christianity is that it failed to completely stop the march of progress, for it certainly did nothing whatsoever to support it.
The evidence of the toxicity of religion to civilization is all around us. Everywhere, the most devout, the ones who hew the closest to the faiths of their forefathers…are always the ones most opposed to civilization.
Always.
So, yeah. Fuck faith and the dead horses it keeps flogging.
b&
Responding to this in depth, & addressing every point is not feasible given the quantity of work before me. Moreover, it is clear that you have an agenda, so I feel disinclined to engage. Nonetheless, I would like to offer a few clarifications.
Re professional historians: I am currently embarking upon my fourth degree, my PhD, in an historical field. Yes, those who frequent this site tend to skew STEM-wards (given the foci of these pages, that should not surprise anyone), yet ‘non-sciency’ secularists/atheists do exist, & some historians are interested in modern science. Hence, one may encounter historians on a site such as this one. (For what it’s worth, assumptions, in my experience, so frequently lead one astray that it seems wise to resist them wherever & whenever possible).
No, I did not go into the tangled background to the English Reformation. I am, however, well aware of the long history of the power struggle between church & state in medieval Europe (not solely England) which stretches all the way back to the 5th cent. fall of the Western Empire. Absurd quantities of ink have been spilled on the matter.
Seeing as the subject is of such interest to you, you will also note that I also remained silent re: In nomine Domini, the Ordinance of William I separating the spiritual & temporal courts, the Dictatus Papae, the 1084 Sack of Rome, the Tractatus Eboracenses, the Gregorian Reforms & Concordat of London, the Constitutions of Clarendon & Becket Dispute, the Concordat of Worms, the Langton Dispute, Innocent III’s interdict on England, John Wyclif, Circumspecte Agatis (13 Edw I, st. 4), Articuli Cleri (9 Edw II), the 1462 Charter of Edward IV, etc., etc.
The post did not constitute a summa on the impact of ecclesia–mundus struggles in the developmental trajectory of the Western polity, but merely a note on Henry VIII’s chief motivations. Although Dr. Coyne & my fellow commenters tolerate my occasional declamations on medieval & Renaissance topics, this is not a history forum. I keep it brief & accessible.
Further, you seem to assume that the links I posted were my sources. They were not. They were short, openly accessible, lay-friendly passages for those who might be curious.
As for Selwood — who is, incidentally, both a barrister & an historian specializing in medieval religious & military life (PhD (Oxon.), FRHistS, FRSA) —, his column did not advance an original thesis, but laid out the long-standing consensus among professional historians (as indicated, vide Duffy, inter al.). If you object to that consensus, by all means, do your own research, publish your monograph, & bask in the accolades.
Significant amounts of ink have also been expended upon the rôle of Christianity in the Western ascendancy, a.k.a. The Great Divergence. Scholars propose numerous possible factors in the West’s rapid rise & ongoing success. Christianity isn’t among them.
In closing — since I do have research to do —, you lost whatever credibility I might have granted you when you defended your thesis by calling upon Magna Carta. Doing so was nothing short of ludicrous:
– 15 Jun 1215: Magna Carta was sealed at Runnymede
– 07 Jul 1215: Innocent III excommunicates the rebellious Barons
– 24 Aug 1215: Innocent III issues the bull Etsi karissimus, declaring Magna Carta null & void
That is, the church unequivocally opposed even this earliest, modest charter of civil rights.
Nonetheless, thank you for the laugh — it was a great way to start the day.
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StephaJL. Does your comment purport to be a response to mine? This is not clear. And, if so, why am I called to task for things you claim to have said, and references you made, of none of which am I aware,and cannot find in the comment stream on this post?
Regarding Magna Carta, the fact that the pope immediately excommunicated the barons is basis enough for questioning giving Rome the right to interfere in English affairs. It would be improper to suggest that the church (as such) opposed civil rights (limited though the Magna Carta may have been), so much as that the pope (who has been, since the discovery that the Donation of Constantine is a fake) has exercised an usurped power over other Christians, a power of interference in English affairs that was justly ended by Henry VIII, and much earlier by the Eastern Church. Of course, the English Reformation was destructive, and we may grieve the loss of so many great cultural treasures, which the greed of the great abbeys and monasteries had accumulated, but we surely cannot grieve the end of the rule of the pope over the English Church and people, which has so evidently kept the Irish people (and others) in bondage till the present day.
As to your statement that
Aren’t you forgetting a great deal that followed directly from the Reformation, namely a spirit of questioning and doubt that transformed the face of Christianity, let alone the face of Europe? Medieval disputations provided a model of questioning thought which not only provides a basis for claims regarding individual rights, but for the later questioning of faith and its foundations which flourished in Renaissance Christian humanism and Reformation thought. Milton’s Areopagitica did not arise from nothing.
I am not a professional historian, but it seems to me that your claim is, on the face of it, ridiculous, as though the centuries that preceded the Reformation, the habits of thought and reflection of which the medieval universities are an unique product of Western Christianity, and the culture that developed as a consequence of it, played no role in the development of Western civilisation. There is no credible account of European history which can justify the suggestion that Western Civilisation is the unique product of forces and influences completely divorced from Christianity. Speaking of a good laugh, this as ridiculous as it gets.
I might also point out that, while the Magna Carta may not have been honoured, it is not solely about the barons. Besides the gentry and freemen it even includes a clause that states that fines would not distrain even the villein’s (that is, a serf’s) tools of husbandry.
Good luck with your PhD. You’ll need it, if this is any measure of your abilities.
“It seems pointless to argue otherwise. It was in Christian Europe that democracy first took firm hold, not in Islamic or Buddhist or Hindu regions of the world.” It took hold with the church kicking and screaming all the way, frustrated with losing it’s power and influence. If anything, democracy is direct opposition to theocracy in many cases.
Wasn’t the real foundations of western civilization the pre-Christian democratic and republican governments of Greece and Rome? Yeah, they were hardly perfect, and tended to favor the uber-wealthy (well, so do most modern democractic-republics), but they seemed to be crawling towards ever more representative forms of government before being knocked over by imperialist forces. Christianity certainly shaped western civilization but it was hardly the foundation and it tended to favor the usurping imperialism over the democratic-republicanism. The enlightenment got it’s initial charge when scholars, religious or otherwise, brought the ancient democratic ideas back to light, and the introduction of printing in Europe made it impossible for the Church to entirely stamp it back out, no matter how much it tried.
Let’s be fair, Fred. If the foundations of Western civilisation rest in pre-Christian classical political arrangements, it is scarcely fair to ignore the long reign of Imperial Rome. Indeed, the ancient world knew very little of democracy, and the Roman Republic was relatively short-lived. This does not mean that Greek models were not formative for Western ideas of democracy, but it is also important to recognise that English Lollardy was central in the development, not only of the English Reformation, but of the Commonwealth, and also of the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, where the Monarch’s acceptance of subordination to English law was crucial. And Holland, from which William and Mary came, was an important source of reformed Christianity. If by the Church you mean the Roman Catholic Church, by this time, it was an also ran in the project of political reform in Europe (and especially in England and the Scandinavian states). But this does not diminish the central role that reformed Christianity played in the growth of democratic institutions, as well as in the growth of science.
Help me, Eric. If I understand correctly what you mean by Lollardy, how do you draw the line connecting the belief that “the church should aid people to live a life of evangelical poverty and imitate Jesus Christ” to “the Monarch’s acceptance of subordination to English law”? I don’t see how one begets the other…
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Well, Ant, to put it quite simply, or simplistically, the Lollards were a very diverse group, and their beliefs cannot be summed up in the idea that “the church should aid people to live a life of evangelical poverty …,” etc. They were reformist in relation to both the church and the state. At least one dimension of their reforming zeal held that churchmen should not be involved in secular affairs, which, in the English Church (and perhaps in European churches as well) meant that those holding high offices in the church were essentially civil servants, and in that capacity could enrich themselves, while lesser functionaries carried out their ecclesiastical responsibilities (for very low remuneration). The title ‘vicar’ implies this relationship to a holder of a benefice (a parish), who, in some cases was not even a priest. The holder of the benefice was entitled to the income of the parish, out of which the vicar was paid a small stipend. Lollards, whose emphasis was on the Bible, not the corrupt traditions of the church (as they viewed them), played an important role in undermining the Roman system of church order. Without the widespread influence of Lollardy, it is doubtful if the English Reformation could have been achieved with such relatively little resistance. Lollardy was, in essence, a precursor of Puritanism.
In this connexion, however, the court of Star Chamber, which, during Henry VIII’s reign, was headed by Cardinal Wolsey (and Thomas Cranmer), was used as a means of maintaining the King’s power (regardless of the common law of the land). Originally meant to enforce the law with respect to very powerful persons whom the common law could not touch (Anne Boleyn was tried and convicted by Star Chamber), Star Chamber became a political weapon in the hands of the monarch, who could by this means enforce his or her will, and was, in this sense, above the law.
Star Chamber was abolished during the Commonwealth, and when James II produced a Caholic heir, thus threatening to return England to the Catholic fold, a small disguised delegation was sent to speak (treasonously) to William of Orange, to see if he would be willing to invade England, depose James, and accept the crown in his stead. This happened, and has ever since been called the Glorious Revolution (since William’s invasion force met with little or no resistance, and James fled to the continent), and a Protestant once more sat on the English throne. Of course, the succession was maintained, since Mary, wife of William, was the daughter of James II, who was also William’s uncle. Unlike her father, Mary was a Protestant, as, of course, was William. However, William and Mary had to agree to the Declaration of Right, which was later passed as the statutory Bill of Rights (influenced, of course, by Locke), which limited the power of the crown and increased the power of Parliament, mandated elections, and provided conditions such as the right to bear arms, the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and various other matters. The point is that the foundation of this lay in the Protestant Reformation, in the success of which the Lollards played an important role. But the thread that ran through all these events was reformed Christianity. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church continued to oppose democracy, but it does not follow that there is no foundation in Christianity for things like democracy, human rights, the rule of law, etc., for these were the product of questioning faith.
But that’s just it.
We’re not challenging the notion that there were people and even movements within Christianity that embraced Enlightenment values and helped further them.
But your own last two words there make clear that it was the religion itself that they had to revise in order to get there. Of what need is there to “question faith”? Isn’t the whole point of the religion its divine revelation?
The only reason they had to question the faith is because the faith isn’t merely questionable, but downright horrific. And it was through not merely questioning the faith but outright rejecting huge and fundamental swaths of it that any progress was made.
b&
Eric…you seem to be emphasizing the importance of selected individuals who happened to be Christian as opposed to Christianity itself.
Can you identify any actual Biblical passages that actively promote science and Enlightenment values? And, please — preferably something more than a bumper-sticker excerpt buried amidst a long discourse on the perils of infinite torture.
And if such is lacking from the Bible…then should it be obvious that anything that’s come since at least its canonization is the result of something that’s been added to Christianity rather than something that came from Christianity itself? I mean, the only way it could be otherwise is if there’s been a divine revelation since then revising the original text, and the only examples of that sort of thing I’m aware of come from Joe Smith and others like him.
That’s the problem the rest of us are having with what you’re proposing. It’s particularly obvious in Judaism, where there’s an especially long tradition of constant re-revisioning of the original texts in such a way as to turn them on their heads as necessary to fit with the demands of the secular world. The Torah clearly calls for the murder of male homosexuals, for example, and yet I’m sure it wouldn’t take very long to find an example of a woman rabbi who’s presided over the “traditional” religious marriage of two gay men — and I’m equally certain that the celebrant would be more than happy to explain how scripture and tradition should really be understood as an endorsement of gay marriage. If it can be done with a magic light switch….
You would cite such as an example of religion furthering the cause of liberalism, but the rest of us see it as secularism imposing rational values upon religion.
b&