Is Great Britain a Christian Country?

Let’s outline a couple of fundamentals here. The Queen is the official head of the State as well as the head of the Church of England (as well as the head on our currency). The practice of marriage is currently faithful to scripture. The prime minister always seems to be a Christian, and the current one is for sure.  These are facts that cannot be denied, and it is why our country is not officially ‘secular’. But are these things just window dressing? Is the spirit of our population playing by secular rules despite the ecclesiasticism that remains? Is a constitution all that is needed to put the final nail in the coffin of theocracy?

Unfortunately, religion is a subject that most people are either uncomfortable or not interested in thinking about. You’ve heard the phrase, “no religion or politics over dinner”; as if they were in the same camp as, “please don’t wear your Swastika to the old peoples’ home”. However, none such etiquette needs be applied here, so let’s talk frankly about this issue. Oh, and just to warn you, I will not be discussing an EDL-esque argument about whether we could become a Muslim country. I am going to remain sane I’m afraid. 

How many people do you know that call themselves Christian? Even the churchgoing folk must concede that they really only talk religious stuff within the walls of their ever emptying churches. Secular arrows have picked away at the foundations of this Westernised incarnation of the religion; Darwin is a genius, Einstein is of course right, Edwin Hubble is an ally. What happened to this old stalwart of a church? A modern theologian is more sceptical than the average 70's atheist. If it weren't for the slight cultural allegiance to the Bible, the term Deist would fit like a glove. Then, once confronted with serious questions about how far they are willing to push their faith, agnosticism becomes most suitable. Since agnosticism began as a euphemism for atheism, what the hell is going on?

The Christian church wheels its big intellectual guns out occasionally, and yes, they have some really big guns. But the Bible never gets discussed. Jesus is mentioned occasionally but his miracles are played down. The theist steals every hypothesis offered by the great scientists and sacrifices it to their God. Quantum physics plays a bigger part now in religious debates than the Immaculate Conception. If this cluster-fuck of intellectual theology can form within the intelligentsia of the religious elite, then what is happening further down the ladder? In Britain, I believe it is disappearing. Let me first however, outline some of the effects of this.

As Chesterton famously said, “When people cease to believe in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything”. This means that if religion is relinquished, then the void is filled immediately by an equally dubious figure. I can sum it up with a recent experience of mine: I was chatting to my lovely hairdresser the other week- I will withhold her name- when the subject of church came up. I asked if she herself was religious and she said she was a fully paid up atheist, born and raised. I then proceeded to mention a few words of solidarity before the following sentence emanated from her lips, “but I do believe in ghosts”. I asked why and she said it was because her father did. We can tick another name on the atheist conversion list, but I don’t consider her to have even begun the registration process.

In a televised debate, Dr Barry Brummett made a similar observation. In his example he mentioned fitness as the substitute for faith. New diet fads become the obsession for people who no longer seek redemption. They now place all their attention on questionable fitness tests and unsubstantiated statistics; proving that credulity is still among their most prominent traits.

The growing secularisation of the west is allowing certain other things to flourish too. Who hasn’t noticed the physic charlatans who operate on niche channels, and mainstream shows? People don’t associate these mediums with the Christian Heaven, but are instead viewing the "other side" as a sort of pseudoscientific theory. These practiser's of the paranormal would have been burned at the stake in a society of Christendom, but the shackles are off and atheists are being born not grown. This means that the Bible isn't thrust into their laps as toddlers any more, so something has to fulfil the human desire for reassurance. What prompted our predecessors to create God is the yearning for a death solution. What can prove this more than the credit card numbers that are divulged in order to communicate with the deceased? This impulse remains until the fear of mortality is vanquished, and this is yet to happen en masse.

Just as these “atheists by default” are not necessarily on the same page as Dawkins, Gillette or Dennett; the Christian community has a similar problem. There is a large section of the church right now that could sum up their belief as: “I was brought up Christian and it never did me any harm”. This doesn’t exactly meet the demands of scripture and neither does their indifference to shellfish or the tolerance of menstruating women. Their concept of Hell has reverted back to a kind of Jewish level of existence, or sometimes it is completely denied all together. Genesis is flat-out laughed at within houses of God, and the teachings of Spinoza and Aristotle have somehow filtered into Jehovah’s plan for his proselytisers. Such folk of faith are likely to be one George Carlin skit away from full renouncement of the trinity, yet the ritual of Sunday communion is reassuring enough to keep them from doing so. Just as the tarot card readers aren’t on my list of atheists, these people should not be on the list of Christians.

Of course there are a great many Christians who are devout and I am not trying to belittle their strength of faith. I am simply saying that any statistic trying to measure belief against unbelief will never prove whether a population is swaying either way. Ignorance of religion is becoming more and more prevalent. I am willing to guess that millions of people in Britain are capable of ticking one box on the census, and then persuaded by someone to tick the other. It isn’t as simple as saying, “hey nine out of ten ticked Christian”. Explain what being a Christian means and a couple will rethink their choice. This isn’t condescending by the way; just that people can’t know what they haven’t been taught or tried to learn.  

The dilution of religion can only be a good thing. I don’t expect to have to explain this; look at an atlas for a sliding scale. However, the void left is a real one and stupidity is still running parts of the show. Secularisation is not synonymous with scepticism. Think of cold reading, astrology, graphology, dowsing, telekinesis and homeopathy. These are all non-compatible with organised religion yet they demand the same reliance on faith and gullibility. Pension funds and life savings are cleared on a daily basis by the perpetrators of these rackets. Worse still, missing children are declared dead by psychics before the bodies are even found. It would surely break the coldest of hearts to see the true effect of these consequences close up.

Taking into consideration all that went before this paragraph, I think I have to make my mind up on all this. I hadn’t quite known where I would end up as I was typing, but my gut instinct is pushing a conclusion towards my fingertips. My personal desire would be to settle for all the bad that comes from secularising society as long as we could dispose of everything that comes with theology. On balance, the crusades, sexual repression and 9/11 kind of beat the evils I mentioned previously. Though this is simply my personal wish, I also believe it may be fairly close to reality as well. Atheism is the easy stance really. You don’t need to believe in a celestial being, you don’t need to adhere to pointless moral laws, and you don’t have to be subservient to prehistoric humans. To actually try to be a Christian is an active move. It requires faith, servility, masochism, arrogance, modesty, gullibility and a complete disregard for evidence. You may be drinking the wine and eating the bread, but do you really consider yourself a manifestation of all of the above? However long humans continue to believe in the supernatural, faith will remain. It won't always be of the Judaic sort though.   

If all of this is indeed true then we cannot really call Britain a religious country, let alone a Christian one. We do however have a head of state and church that is about to celebrate 60 years at the top. She’s had a good run; can’t we have a constitution now?!