The Rise of Cultural Christianity
Is a Nominal Layer on Christianity in Society Really So Bad?
According to Madeleine Davies writing for New Statesman, on The Rise of Cultural Christianity, there is an increasing number of public intellectuals and commentators who identify as cultural Christians. Among them are Richard Dawkins (gasp), Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Nick Cave, and Hirsi Ali among others.
The stimulus for this Davies explains is that people are realizing that Christianity and its worldview are a bulwark against both a Caliphate and Communism. Or else, we might say that Christianity is an ideology of resistance against both political Islam and Rainbow Orwellianism.
Davies notes how others are making this explicit case!
James Orr, a professor of the philosophy of religion at Cambridge University, made the case that a “constitutionally and culturally Christian nation” offered the best defence for followers of every faith against a “new progressive theocracy”. National Conservatives kept “banging on about religion”, he explained, because they were alive to the dangers of the new public faith emerging, in which “a new priesthood” was “policing conformity to the new dogmas and doctrines of an elite Gnostic theology”.
I agree with that in part, a state rooted in its Christian tradition should lead to a secular and liberal society. Also, progressive parties do exhibit authoritarian impulses and even some theocratic tendencies. But there is a danger here that cultural Christianity becomes nationalistic and a nominal affair of heritage rather than one of the heart.
As to the cure for this nominal Christianity, Davies leans on Tom Holland, and his prescription rings true for my mind.
Tom Holland’s prescription for the Church of England is that it should emphasise the “weird” nature of the faith. He’s critical of the leadership for a perceived failure do so. “Rather than speaking with the voice of prophecy, rather than explaining to a grieving and anxious people how the dead will rise into the blaze of eternal life, rather than proclaiming the miracles and mysteries that they uniquely exist to proclaim, church leaders seem to have opted instead to talk like middle managers,” he wrote during the early weeks of the Covid pandemic.
The Church has been “too successful”, he said. Christianity’s gifts to the culture, rooted in belief in the fundamental equality of all and including education, healthcare and welfare, are no longer recognised as such.
“The future for the churches is to remind people where these ideas come from,” Holland contended. “They come from believing in mad things, that there is a God who created all human beings equally, gave them an inherent dignity because they’re created in God’s image. You know, it comes from the belief that these were taught by a guy who got nailed to a cross and then rose from the dead and offers the promise of eternal glory in life. These are obviously, objectively to a rationalist perspective, mad things. But the madness is precisely what makes them so powerful and has made them so powerful… People want the supernatural, they want the strange, they want what they don’t get out of a Labour Party manifesto.”
I think those points are valid. Part of the church’s public witness should be to:
Show how Christianity is weird.
Show how Christianity is otherworldly.
Show how liberal and secular values are rooted in Christianity.
How should we do that, well, I have some ideas!