Christians must return to their ancient roots
The pandemic shows that the public still needs faith, and churches can serve it with reason and beauty
It is pretty obvious that Britain’s religious leadership has fluffed the pandemic. It wasn’t just the decision to shut all the churches (implying that St Paul’s Cathedral is less essential than an Oddbins), but also the failure to say much beyond “stay indoors”, which is strange given that Easter is precisely about isolation, death and resurrection. We needed hope. We got health and safety. If Jesus announced he was going to walk across the Sea of Galilee in 2020, a bishop would ask if the journey was essential.
But be not afraid. Christianity has survived the Romans, schisms, communism and the miniskirt – and it has done so through constant reassessment, innovation and reinvention, often in defiance of the establishment. It is in the very DNA of Christianity to face death and survive. The task of this generation isn’t to mourn the ashes but rekindle the fire.
People keep comparing coronavirus to the Second World War, and if one follows the logic then it is interesting to note how uneasy many Christian intellectuals felt during that crisis, too. They knew they were on the right side but they regretted the killing, and they were worried that the Allies and the Germans were not that different. Germany was a Christian country; it had been a democracy. So if fascism could happen there, why not here?
Many of their observations were eerily familiar: society was materialist, hypocrites flaunted false virtue, capitalism had failed and the universities churned out conformists. To thinkers like CS Lewis, TS Eliot and WH Auden, the outbreak of war was a symptom of the weakness of Christian civilisation, and yet it also reinforced the case for the Christian ethic, which compels people to love one another whether they like each other or not.
They responded to this existential problem with creativity. They went back to the roots of their faith, without sacrificing tradition, to try to communicate it in modern forms, some of which are still in use today. If you tell a Christian that you are thinking about religion but you don’t know where to begin, don’t be surprised to be handed a copy of Mere Christianity by CS Lewis – his wartime lectures on the case for God that proved a hit among his contemporaries.
The BBC might be reluctant to broadcast such open (if subtle) evangelisation today, but that doesn’t matter because now we have the internet, and it is striking how many ministers have been transformed by the pandemic into latter-day Lewises, broadcasting services, prayers and talks online. I’d wager that church “attendance” is up. I watched the Good Friday service at St Joseph’s in Blantyre, Scotland, and was impressed to see that the Facebook video was watched live by around 2,000 of us. Again, there is an element of “getting back to the essentials” about this because an online service has a magnificent simplicity: just the priest, the sacraments and, in the case of St Joseph’s, singing that would make an angel weep.
That there is an audience for this is no surprise because Christians believe that the desire to worship is hardwired into human beings, just as we might be fallen (capable of evil) but we also have an instinct to want to be good. If coronavirus is a test of the Christian understanding of virtue, I’d say we are passing it. There is a tendency among believers to weigh the strength of a society in how many punters can recite the Lord’s Prayer, but if we were to measure it in how many nurses and doctors risked their lives to save patients, then we are doing more than OK.
By many metrics – treatment of the mentally ill, intolerance of abuse, tolerance for minorities and state provision for the poor – we are a more Christian society than we were in 1939, the major difference being that we no longer call ourselves one. I think that is a tragedy, because I believe the gospels to be true but also because I fear that a moral order that has no sense of roots could easily crumble beneath our feet. It’s not enough for Christians to moan about this or to issue dire warnings; they have to go right back to the basics and explain to people in plain and simple language what they believe and why.
The churches, once reopened, will play a part in this. I cannot tell you how much I have missed the freedom to wander into a village church in spring, to smell the damp and incense, and go in search of lost time. Churches are not only where people meet, with our coughs and sneezes, but also where centuries reside, suspended in silence. God is present. If you listen, you will hear.