Henry Drummond, who was a prophet of the Free Church of Scotland in the late 19th century, and a most eloquent man who preached to large audiences, declared with shame that there were 30,000 people in Glasgow who did not go to church. In November 2002 the Daily Telegraph published an article which declared that, round Hull, only 1% did go to church. In ordinary language, the Church has done a “Marconi”; and anyone who thinks that tinkering or papering over the cracks is going to achieve much is in for a rude awakening.
Civilizations come and go. And Toynbee and Spengler prophesied some time ago that ours was coming to its end. Indeed there is a parallel between the decline of our society and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire long ago, with this difference that with us the barbarians are within our society, whereas it was the barbarians from without who over-whelmed Rome. Most people agree that Britain has a Christian culture, because Christianity has been the official religion in this country for the last 1400 years. And Winston Churchill was able to declare after the Battle of Britain that the few hundred young pilots of the Hurricanes and Spitfires, who had won the Battle, had saved Christian civilization for the world. I believe he was right. But it is beginning to look as if the venality and short-sightedness of our politicians and the apathy of the population as a whole is throwing away that victory as fast as ever they can. At the moment the Church of England, whose job it is to uphold the official religion, is in decline. It is not only that just a tiny proportion of the population go to church, but the intolerant secularism that is striding across Europe, to use Pope Benedict’s striking phrase, both insidiously works its way into people’s minds, and also activates the conduct of many in authority too. And fewer and fewer people protest against it. So Christians are convicted in the Law Courts of the new shibboleth of “Discrimination”, when they try to uphold their values; and the C.of E. is persecuted in many more subtle ways. Does it matter that our native culture is being undermined? If so, what can be done about it?
Part of this process of decline is the race for supremacy between Christianity and Islam. Whatever the virtues of Islam as a religion, it is an alien culture in England, at least as compared with the indigenous Anglo-Saxon culture that has grown up here since the Canterbury St. Augustine came to our shores in about AD 600, that is over 1400 years ago. There were others, Columba, Cuthbert, Bede; but in the end Celtic Christianity submitted to the iron discipline of Rome, which at the time was probably just as well. In many ways today it is an uneven race; for whereas any insult or even criticism of Islam is resented, often with murderous violence at least in speech, Christianity is expected to turn the other cheek, to all blasphemous ribaldry that is heaped upon it.