How Britain Lost its Faith (but Found New Soul) By Cole Moreton Abacus (Little, Brown Group). (London 2011 pbk). 384 pages. £9.99.
I took to this book from the first few pages, and it continued to move and thrill me right through to the end. The author is a journalist, and brings to his subject the clarity of non-judgmental observation, and the ability both to involve himself deeply, and also to stand back, reflect and assess the meaning and consequences of what he has experienced. The book covers events in England from 1980 to the present, and repeatedly made me gasp at the clarity of Moreton’s descriptions of things in which I too had taken part; he also challenged my memory of things I had refused to take seriously enough at the time – notably the Hillsborough disaster and the death of Diana. Turning points in the development of England’s new soul. He interweaves this with vividly described personal experiences ‘to inform the bigger story of the soul of England’.
In the 1980s England was still Christian, and – though adherence to the Church of England was already waning – we were ‘on the verge of a great revival’. The marriage of Charles and Diana was a fairy tale and a disaster, and the Archbishop of Canterbury (Runcie) knew, ‘but simpered along with the illusion’.
A moving chapter about a deep tragedy, from which neither the Royal Family nor the Church of England came out well.
In relations with Margaret Thatcher Runcie did much better, standing up to her over the Falklands War (‘The boss is spitting blood,’ said her husband), and challenging her with the Faith in the City report: ‘altruism against egotism, community against selfseeking, charity against greed’ – Norman Tebbit was ‘like a Rottweiler with a chewed-up dog-collar between its bloody paws’. And there were the protests against nuclear weapons: CND, and Monsignor Bruce Kent.
And the miners’ strike which added to the loss of respect for authority (it’s hard to respect a bobby when he’s charging at you on horseback, wielding his baton like a demented cossack), and David Jenkins pulling no punches in his criticism of the government.
Interwoven with all this is Moreton’s own spiritual journey, from Billy Graham through John Wimber and David Watson, and speaking in tongues. (The teenage Moreton found this hard, till he was told to say ‘shecameonahonda showaddywaddy’ very fast. He describes the joy that resulted very movingly.) Then the Toronto blessing, and Holy Trinity Brompton and the Alpha Course. Services no longer a boring duty, but an expectation of thrilling fulfillment – unless those expectations were disappointed.
And the fraudulent claims and abuse of power!
I admired Moreton’s ability to see through the claims of powerful spiritual experiences, with hindsight, and without decrying their significance. The old God is losing his place in English society, he says, and the Church of England is no longer the church of the nation, but something else is growing up. The Church of Everywhere is our new national church. (I was reminded of Don’s ‘everyday speech’ books.) The description of the events at and after Hillsborough are powerfully told; and the failure of either organised religion or the Queen to respond adequately. A new way of ritualising tragedy with flowers was born, and would grow until it has now become the norm, notably in the public reaction to Diana’s death.
So where is the soul of England? Everywhere. In the traditional English villages that survive, actually or in fantasy (Dibley, perhaps), but much more in the huge variety of our nation. Is God still an English– man? Yes, but He (or She) is also ‘an Afghan, a Bosnian, a Croat, a Djibouti, an Ethiopian,….’.and all the way to ‘a Walloon’ (Moreton gave up on X). ‘Monoculture is over; but then we have always been a rainbow nation; now there is no denying it.’ The rise of Paganism is excitingly described, as one way in which the new freedom can be expressed, and a relationship with our land recovered in the global ecological context.
Moreton started with the story of his friend Ali, a young mother dying of cancer. ‘Where am I going?’ she asks. ‘Someone said, “You’ll always be there, watching the kids grow up”. That’s awful. You’d just have to watch, pressed up against the glass, unable to be heard or to touch. Is that what it’s like?’ The book ends with the author making a cairn, as Columba did, in silence on a beach. ‘No words, because I didn’t have them’. ‘We must find our own answers, and live and die by them.’ Former SOF Chair and Trustee David Paterson took part with Cole Moreton in the BBC tv Big Questions programme in January 2011 on: Is it possible to be a Christian and not believe in God?
Metacognition – the activity of stepping back and thinking about one’s own thinking. ‘Anything which alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity and realism is to be connected with virtue.
Reviewing Is God Still an Englishman? How Britain Lost its Faith (but Found New Soul) by Cole Moreton, Abacus (Little, Brown Group), London 2011 pbk, 384 pages, £9.99.