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Excellent article. The Greatest Show on Earth is getting a lot of press attention, which should help to spread the word.Glad to see you are doing your bit to promote it Will!

This is not a particularly surprising comment, really it's just another version of Heliopolitan's Christian Atheism, and I suppose that's something I 'get', in fact, it is something I 'get'.

I mean of course that it's something I can understand.

I understand the appeal, (or just, perhaps, the 'peal' !), I understand the cultural attraction, I understand the sense of identity, the reassurance and security it can provide.

In Dawkin's case it's the quintessential picture of England. I can see it all, the village green, the (dry) water pump, the thatched gateway to the church, the vicarage, the post office, the maypole, the river walk, the Christmas Mass candles. I can hear it, and smell it. The images jump and flicker before me in soft washed out tones reminiscent of a 'Super 8' home movie. I can even hear the tickity, click, whirr of the reel and I'm seduced by the diffused glow on the 'through the Play School square window' screen.

It provides the quiet affirmation of State and certainty, like Listen With Mother, the pips on Radio 4, or the 'Speaking Clock' (do they still do that?) It is A.A. Gill, The Times and The Telegraph. It is British Racing Green, Ascot, home made jam and lace doily sugar dusted Victoria Sandwiches. Sometimes it's even fish and chips.
It is nostalgia and it is nostalgia in the making, and I actually quite like the idea of much of it.

It plays with me, like stained glass dappled on Yorkstone, or the trace of candle smoke in a depleted October sun. I want to wrap it round me and have it muffle me from the whine of a broken world.

It ought to be an allegory... but it isn't.

It is a beautiful story, but "Sentimentality robs forgiveness of its redemptive shine" (Andrew Walker on Ship of Fools) and I'm absolutely certain that any Christianity forged and sustained in the mildly hypnotic atmosphere of national culture isn't really faith at all. What concerns me is that any faith, any trust in the Jesus we happen to say is God, is a faith that works in the quern we call life rather than a saccharine sweet, sickly hot chocolate, desaturated, dreamy kind of faith that slides down easily, but has a tendency to flicker out come the first light of morning.

Christians are not the people of 'once upon a time,' they are the people of 'in the beginning,' they are the people of the story of God, the story is true and there isn't a frog prince or a fairy's tale to be seen.

Christian Atheism is something I definitely 'get', but it isn't something I want.

Hi Peter, We're not looking for converts, nor on a mission to say that we are "right" (about the "Christian" tag to atheism - Muslim Atheism & Hindu Atheism is OK by me). There are a lot of people who *do* go to church (and preach in church) for whom the *truth claims* of religion ring hollow. They know that Jesus didn't "die for their sins" - he died and remains dead, and had no idea of what would happen with his story. But when you talk of the real world, that interaction actually has nothing to do with the story being "true" in any meaningful sense. As I've described it before, it's like a mnemonic, or a Windows desktop background. It's a mind aid to help you integrate things, and many people find the church culture to be supportive (of course many others find it stifling and ditch it).

I appreciate that you do "get" Christian Atheism (from your postings I really do think you have a fair perspective), but you don't "want" it. That's fine. But you do need to realise that about 10% at least of the people in your church each morning do NOT believe. It's not that they haven't "given their life to Jesus" or "got saved" or similar meaningless inanities - they really DON'T believe it. They maybe think there is "something behind it all" (like Will), or they maybe appreciate that the world would be no different if there were no gods or christs or any of that nonsense, so why complicate matters?

In the end, religion is like sport. You can enjoy cricket, but that doesn't mean you have to kill someone who enjoys tennis, or that you are necessarily emhasising the superiority of your sport to theirs. Your day to day life is humanistic. You interpret it through Christian goggles. That's all.

Helio

I appreciate your comments and can envisage a time when the 'Church' in, for example, the UK is almost entirely cultural and institutional. In some ways the current Rome/Anglican process is contributing to this.

I can imagine a time when the office of Archbishop will be something similar to Lord Mayor or Town Crier, and when it might be held by an atheist or a person of another faith. A Sikh Archbishop for instance. Perhaps society will vote someone into the position, perhaps it will change annually, perhaps there will be a chain of office and perhaps that incumbent will perform the duties of shire and state like celebrities and other dignitaries do today. It is the inevitable end of a State or National religion.

In such a context, one which already exists to one degree or another, our great church buildings, be they cathedrals or Norman village parishes will be concert halls, art galleries, restaurants and cultural venues. (Some already are.) They will fulfill the role of 'The Tate', the 'V&A' or the Town Hall, all at a local level of course, but that's what they will be for. They will resound to Handel's Messiah, or 'West Side Story', of course for Messiah one might read Britannia and they will be maintained with all the trappings of Christendom, for the purposes of nostalgia.

Visitors will cup glasses of spiced cider and Christmas punch to keep the cold nip of December at bay, and prostrate themselves before the story of their nation. They will appreciate the masons, the artisans, the architects and the peasant labourers who erected such monuments. There they will marry and dedicate their children (to themselves of course) and they will feast, and rejoice and weep. And so Christendom will continue to be a kind of glue which holds society together, after all, as you note, everyone needs a story (a 'Windows 7'), and for us, here, Christendom is it. And I suspect, once it has been stripped of any potency or fairy tale it had, even the most militant atheist will be glad to promote it.

It's just another way of 'giving your life to a cultural Jesus', but then, 'giving my life to Jesus' isn't something I've ever done! ;-)

And 10%? Bit of an underestimate, don't you think!

Peter, that is it in a nutshell. Sounds good, doesn't it? And yes, 10% is probably an underestimate.

Helio

"Sounds good...?"

I don't give my heart to *anyone* or *any story* that easily.

:-)

Good lad, Peter - you shouldn't. Always keep a remove. Like a Windows desktop, I can change bits I don't like - ditch the genocidal mania of Samuel, recognise Genesis as simple (and wrong) folklore, recognise that the resurrection is just a story that didn't actually happen. I could even bring in Amun-Re and Zeus if I wanted to. Religion is a scrapbook. When people start pretending that it is *real* - well, that's just silly nonsense.

"Good lad, Peter"

Aw shucks, thanks for the affirmation... if you'd stuck with the praise band malarky you'd have made a good pastor!

But all that baloney I wrote, you don't expect me to buy into that any more than I don't buy into the mini culture of evangelicalism, do you?

Oh, and I'm not pretending it's real. Crap, that would be dumb!

Peter, I know you're one of us. The Virgin Birth, for example, is a lovely wee story. Totally false, but heartwarming. Jesus dying "for our sins" - evocative, but completely untrue. God watching the sparrows fall - quaint, folksy, inane. Look, we can *do* things with these wee stories, like we do things with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or Independence Day or The Iliad. Even Genesis works as a story, even though it is hopelessly wrong in most of its details. It's amazing what you can find floating around in bathwater.

Helio

"It's amazing what you can find floating around in bathwater."

What, you mean after you've thrown out the baby?

;-)


And I'm beginning to think you're one of us dumbos too!



Love, Helio, it's out t' get ya.

Hi Pete,
Yep - throw out the baby Jesus, and you have all this marvellous bathwater. Probably cleaner than the Jordan, which I'll be cycling along (DV - Dawkins Volens) in a couple of days :-)
Agreed. Love.
-H

Helio,

"(DV - Dawkins Volens)"

Don't be a 'silly billy' (!), Dawkins doesn't exist!

I mean, I've never met him, have you?

He appeared to me in a vision on the Road to Dungannon, and urged me not to kick against the goads. Or something like that.

So that's what the illumination in the sky was. And there was me thinking it was just the glow from the M1 Roundabout lights.