Our favorite Anglican bishop is the Rt. Rev. Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, head of the diocese of Rochester in England. According to their website, Nazir-Ali is the first non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England. He is also an accomplished man, and his own history is fascinating. But then, I’m a sucker for poets.
His essay, “Breaking Faith with Britain”, is excerpted below, with editorial comments interspersed between his ideas.
NOTE: This is a Christian leader’s perspective on what is wrong with Britain. As such, it is written within the a priori tenets of Christianity as the Bishop believes and understands them. Since his ideas are congenial to those of Gates of Vienna, the decision to excerpt from him was an easy one.
For those of our readers who are agnostics or atheists, we beg your indulgence for going in a direction which interests us, but not you. No feelings will be hurt if you pass over this post in silence and move on to read something more agreeable to your point of view. However, for those who cannot resist getting into theist vs. atheist arguments, please forbear. There is plenty of space for that in the comments section of the original site, which is full of arguments along those lines.
The following quickly become boring for our readers:
- proofs for or against the existence of God,
- arguments about the evil or beneficence of organized religion, and
- claims for the superiority of one belief system over another.
Please refrain. You’ll either be preaching to the choir or your words will fall on deaf ears. The chasm is a large one and cannot be bridged by reason or careful arguments where you talk slowly so the idiot you’re answering — stunned by the intelligence of your position — will. finally. get. it. One thing I can guarantee: they won’t be persuaded and your efforts will bore everyone else to rigidity.
You are free to argue a different case for “what’s wrong with Britain”; if your notions have naught to do with religion, have at it.
Presenting other root causes for consideration is welcome. Sectarian “discussions” about the Bishop’s faith lie outside the frame of discussion for this post.
With the idea in mind that this is one very limited and fallible person’s opinion, let’s move on to some excerpts from the Bishop’s remarks:
The rapid fragmentation of society, the emergence of isolated communities with only tenuous links to their wider context, and the impact of home-grown terrorism have all led even hard-bitten, pragmatist politicians to ask questions about “Britishness”: what is at the core of British identity; how can it be reclaimed, passed on and owned by more and more people?
The answers to these questions cannot be only in terms of the “thin” values, such as respect, tolerance and good behaviour, which are usually served up by those scratching around for something to say. In fact, the answer can only be given after rigorous investigation into the history of nationhood and of the institutions, laws, customs and values which have arisen to sustain and to enhance it. In this connection, as with the rest of Europe, it cannot be gainsaid that the very idea of a unified people under God living in a “golden chain” of social harmony has everything to do with the arrival and flourishing of Christianity in these parts. It is impossible to imagine how else a rabble of mutually hostile tribes, fiefdoms and kingdoms could have become a nation conscious of its identity and able to make an impact on the world. In England, particularly, this consciousness goes back a long way and is reflected, for example, in a national network of care for the poor that was locally based in the parishes and was already in place in the 16th century.
In some ways, I am the least qualified to write about such matters. There have been, and are today, many eminent people in public and academic life who have a far greater claim to reflect on these issues than I have. Perhaps my only justification for even venturing into this field is to be found in Kipling when he wrote, “What should they know of England who only England know?” It may be, then, that to understand the precise relationship of the Christian faith to the public life of this nation, a perspective is helpful which is both rooted in the life of this country and able to look at it from the outside.
– – – – – – – – –
The quote from Kipling is a good one. “Outsiders” can sometimes see us better than we know. Not in all cases, of course, and we can resent the “outsider” who claims special knowledge — usually in the cause of showing us how wrong our culture is. But the Bishop’s position is a special one: he looks at Britain in some of the same ways that participant observers do when they visit a foreign place in order to study it. However, the Bishop’s immersion in British culture goes much further. He has become a subject of the Queen, a servant in her Church, and a member of the community in which he lives.
In fact, Michael Nazir-Ali has done what we hope all immigrants will do: he has assimilated without losing his identity as a Pakistani. He does not pretend to be other than he is, and he does not resent native Englishmen for their supposed “racism”. He probably even expects it after all these years.
What he does not like are the physical attacks against others — a complex and growing problem in Britain — and what he sees as the heart of Christian observance being reduced to the “icing on the cake”, something to serve up to tourists.
As I survey the field, what do I see? I find, first of all, “a descending theme” in terms of Christian influence. That is to say, I find that the systems of governance, of the rule of law, of the assumption of trust in common life all find their inspiration in Scripture; for example, in the Pauline doctrine of the godly magistrate and, ultimately, in the Christian doctrine of God the Holy Trinity, where you have both an ordered relationship and a mutuality of love. As Joan O’Donovan has pointed out, the notion of God’s right, or God’s justice, produced a network of divine, human and natural law which was the basis of a just ordering of society and also of a mutual sense of obligation “one towards another”, as we say at Prayers for the Parliament. Such a descending theme of influence continues to permeate society, but is especially focused in constitutional arrangements, such as the “Queen in Parliament under God”, the Queen’s Speech (which always ends with a prayer for Almighty God to bless the counsels of the assembled Parliament), daily prayers in Parliament, the presence of bishops in the House of Lords, the national flag, the national anthem — the list could go on. None of this should be seen as “icing on the cake” or as interesting and tourist-friendly vestigial elements left over from the Middle Ages. They have the purpose of weaving the awareness of God into the body politic of the nation.
These “constitutional arrangements” are under constant attack in Britain. There is the distinct possibility that they will be eliminated, and that something multiculturally correct will fill the vacuum. It is already difficult for the average person to display allegiance to the flag, or any sort of strong feelings about his — can one use the following terms anymore? — love of country and Queen without being accused of racism.
The eye of the needle through which all Britons must pass in order to be acceptable to those in positions of authority is becoming ever narrower. Those of us who care about such things (and there are many Anglophiles amongst our readers) are saddened by what appears to be happening to a once-robust English identity. Perhaps the first mistake was to make it a “British” identity. What happened to being English for heaven’s sake? The Baron often corrects me when I say the E word. But someone from Yorkshire is English, and someone from Cardiff is Welsh, and being from Dundee is a whole different mindset.
The Bishop notes what sets Christian nations apart historically:
One was the discovery of conscience. If the individual is morally and spiritually responsible before God, then we have to think also of how conscience is formed by the Word of God and the Church’s proclamation of it so that freedom can be exercised responsibly. Another result was the emergence of the idea that because human beings were moral agents, their consent was needed in the business of governance. It is not enough now simply to draw on notions of God’s justice for patterns of government. We need also the consent of the governed who have been made in God’s image (a term which comes into the foreground). This dual emphasis on conscience and consent led to people being seen as citizens rather than merely as subjects.
That was a radical jump, one which was due to the genius of the English. It is to England’s philosophers that Americans owe such gratitude for the basis of our own country’s freedoms. But as Nazir-Ali notes, all of this is predicated upon the idea of the individual and his responsibility to use the faculty of reason in order to form a mature conscience.
We are indeed moral agents. This agency makes us both free (to follow our own path) and responsible (to those who are affected by our choices):
Sociologists of religion have been telling us that the process of secularisation has been a very long one and, indeed, they locate its origin precisely in the Enlightenment’s rejection of heteronomous authority and its affirmation of autonomy. Historians, on the other hand, point out that faith flourished in industrial Britain in the 19th century and in the first part of the last century. Indeed, it is possible to say that it continued to prosper well into the 1950s. Was it long-term decline, then, or sudden demise? In fact, there are elements of truth in both approaches. It seems to be the case, however, that something momentous happened in the 1960s which has materially altered the scene: Christianity began to be more and more marginal to the “public doctrine” by which the nation ordered itself, and this state of affairs has continued to the present day.
Many reasons have been given for this situation. Callum Brown has argued that it was the cultural revolution of the 1960s which brought Christianity’s role in society to an abrupt and catastrophic end. He notes, particularly, the part played by women in upholding piety and in passing on the faith in the home. It was the loss of this faith and piety among women which caused the steep decline in Christian observance in all sections of society. Peter Mullen and others, similarly, have traced the situation to the student unrest of the 1960s which they claim was inspired by Marxism of one sort or another. The aim was to overturn what I have called the Evangelical-Enlightenment consensus so that revolution might be possible. One of the ingredients in their tactics was to encourage a social and sexual revolution so that a political one would, in due course, come about. Mullen points out that instead of the Churches resisting this phenomenon, liberal theologians and Church leaders all but capitulated to the intellectual and cultural forces of the time.
It is this situation that has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves. While the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place.
The scrambling and scratching around of politicians and of elements in the media for “values” which would provide ammunition in this battle are to be seen in this light. As we have seen, however, this is extremely thin gruel and hardly adequate for the task before us. Our investigation has shown us the deep and varied ways in which the beliefs, values and virtues of Great Britain have been formed by the Christian faith. The consequences of the loss of this discourse are there for all to see: the destruction of the family because of the alleged parity of different forms of life together; the loss of a father figure, especially for boys, because the role of fathers is deemed otiose; the abuse of substances (including alcohol); the loss of respect for the human person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks on people; the increasing communications gap between generations and social classes. The list is very long.
Is it possible to restore such discourse to the heart of our common life? Some would say it is not possible. Matters have gone too far in one direction and we cannot retrace our steps. Others would be hostile to the very idea. They have constructed their lives and philosophies around the demise of Christianity as an element in public life, and they would be very inconvenienced if it were to put in an appearance again. It remains the case, however, that many of the beliefs and values which we need to deal with the present situation are rooted in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Are we to receive these as a gift, in our present circumstances, or, once again, turn our backs on them?
A good question, one whose answer is shrouded in the mists of the future.
The thing is, when you consider that it is individuals who make the difference — or why else write the history of ideas? — there is a sense of hope that we may be able to move up from the present level of degradation to which public life is sunk. Yet on the horizon we see no one who speaks to the heart of possibility. For the moment the mediocrity of our current leaders appears to be the only thing on offer.
On the other hand, things have looked black before. Certainly the vast shadow Hitler cast still affects the present, but we did manage to rid the world of him. Stalin is dead, but Russia is a cripple on life support thanks to him and the other destroyers. China is massively brutal and murderous to its own people; it is hard to imagine that it could be any worse to outsiders, but of course it can be and is.
Being an individual with moral agency leaves one with the burden of freedom in a broken world. Facing the brokenness doesn’t mean we won’t attempt to “fix” problems; it just means we realize ahead of time that our fixes will naturally present new and more complex problems. This limitation is simply inherent in the human condition, whether we contemplate the individual or the group.
It is as hard to contemplate this ambiguity which lies at the heart of human experience as it is to accept the limit of mortality. We only ever achieve a partial resolution to either mystery until we are stunned once more with the gob-smacked realization that the only fixed point is change, and that we are truly and indeed quite mortal.
Why is it that we “live and move and have our being” as if the opposite were true?
The rest of Michael Nazir-Ali’s essay is here. You will also find a comment section in which to discuss the sensibilities of religious believers.
Hat tip: Serge Trifkovic
This comment has been removed by the author.
I think Michael Nazir Ali has a modern tendency towards ideology i.e. that what we believe is just a contingent mesh of ideas that help us get through the world. There is no actual truth.
This is born of the experience of existentialism.
Because Michael, at heart, is an unbeliever. Though his heart is kind and gentle and thoughtful and genuinely loving. But I don’t think he truly believes.
“conscience is formed by the Word of God and the Church’s proclamation of it so that freedom can be exercised responsibly.”
“we need also the consent of the governed who have been made in God’s image (a term which comes into the foreground).”
Most people today are existentialists. Secretly, their hearts are mad. They think life is a spastic meat puppet dance. Maybe that explains the inexplicably extreme and absurd violence among the youth today. Because they are angry with itself, they burn with barely concealed hatred for an absurd and cruel universe. (“the loss of respect for the human person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks on people”)
“Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence,”
People love the things that are closest to themselves. They love sensation, they love to be loved by other people, this vital “lifelike” process can be proved by experience, and turned into a whole political doctrine and epistemology to help us get through the world :
“a unified people under God living in a “golden chain” of social harmony has everything to do with the arrival and flourishing of Christianity in these parts. It is impossible to imagine how else a rabble of mutually hostile tribes, fiefdoms and kingdoms could have become a nation conscious of its identity and able to make an impact on the world.”
But the goal of Christianity, infinitely more than charity, infinitely more then peace, is salvation of the soul. Everything else is secondary. Talk of Christianity being good for humanity is for those, I think, who no longer have any real faith. Oweing to the experience of existentialism (of late).
H.H.
Thoughtful comment. You could say my ending is existential, too, but there are such beings as existential, Platonic, Socratic, etc., Christians. Choose your hyphen.
But when Nazi-Ali says —
conscience is formed by the Word of God and the Church’s proclamation of it so that freedom can be exercised responsibly, he is not being existential. He is simply being Anglican.
The ecclesia and its accompanying kerygma is considered indispensable to a Catholic or Anglican understanding of what it means to be Christian.
There is the vertical — i.e., the individual’s connection to God, and there is the horizontal — the connection among all believers. For Catholics and Anglicans, these can only be separated for the sake of talking about them. In lived reality, they are experienced together.
That is why a sacramental faith is central to both. We are corporeal and need more than words. We are spiritual and need more than bread.
I saw nothing un-Anglican in the Bishop’s remarks.
This just became moot after what Dymphna posted – she put what Iw as trying to say in a much more concise form – but I’ll put it up anyway since I took so long typing it out. 😀
HH, I’m not really sure why you’ve highlighted those particular words. A proclamation is a proclamation. As christians we are to proclaim – that is lay out, explain, spread and command – the word of god and the good news. That’s what a proclamation means in the christian context. Bishop Nazir-Ali has lived within this christian context for a great deal of time so he’ll use the language of that context – the language of christianity.
The goal of christianity for the individual is the salvation of the soul, yes, but on top of that we’re also called to live a christ-like life and to save the world. that means we have to proclaim the word of God through our actions – charity, humanity, defending the weak and so on. Associating with prostitutes and tax collectors, if you will. Saving the world involves a hell of a lot more than just accepting the saving grace of christ, it means saving the bloody world. Saving every person you come across will, by definition, make the world a better place because if they’re all living christ-like lives, they will be acting in a christ-like way. The best way to save is to demonstrate the nature of christ by carrying out all of those lovely, world-changing little things. Building roads is a good one but, also, such things as he mentioned, of caring for the poor, supporting the weak, guiding people toward rational choices over irrational choices and all of that stuff. You know, making the world a better place.
God wants all of mankind to be saved. If that’s not working for the good of humanity then I don’t know what is.
I suspect Nazir-Ali is more likely to be a genuine believer than most anglican bishops because of his background. A conversion like his isn’t something undertaken lightly, it would have to be done for very powerful reasons. Those reasons would be based in the faith he was converting to – he had to believe it or he wouldn’t have chosen to adopt it as his own.
I’ll stop here on this, because Dymphna asked us to talk about the actual issues raised rather than the theology behind his comments.
So, in a general sense what he’s saying is that the population of Great Britain lacks mental discipline. Like the tail-end of the Persian empire, or Indian royalty immediately prior to the arrival of the East India Company, we as a nation are less concerned with the well-being of our fellow man than we are with our own immediate pleasure. Sensuality and intrigue, the soap opera of life, instant gratification of every desire. That’s how this country lives today. Nazi-Ali tackles this from a christian viewpoint but you could easily tackle it from, say, a norse pagan one (CS, your cue!). and come up with a similar answer.
The presence of Islam turns moral decay from a mere inconvenience into an existential threat. Both these events are a threat to our on-going well-being and national integrity. On the surface Islam manages to look like a means to prevent that moral decay because it is so rigid and “moral”, it presents an apparent unifying force. What it lacks is rationality and ethics. What we as a nation lack is precisely the same thing. We are irrational in our daily dealings with each other and the world, because we abandoned rationality at the same time as we abandoned our faith and the ethical code that faith provided. I know someone will probably get onto an argument about that but it’s true. Rationality, logic and justice went out the window in the 60s along with everything else that was “old” and “oppressive”, that prevented the complete abandonment of discipline and the exploration of sensuality. Society is fragmenting because all of this was rejected, and we’re vulnerable because we aren’t able to perceive a threat any more and aren’t able to mount a unified defence when we do.
Hello people from the Gov comunity!
I still have no time to be around here as I usually have, and as so I’ve not been reading the essays…
But when I saw this I knew I had to share this with the people from Gates of Vienna.
Many commenters – and Dymphna and Baron – both Europeans or Americans, have said that the European peoples are defensless because they have no right to bear arms. Fire weapons that is.
Ok, that is true. The debate has been great and constant here over this. I have one thing to show you.
PLEASE PLEASE SEE THIS
SERIOUSLY, SEE IT! (is the same.)
Do you know where it happened?
Bolivia? Venezuela? Mexico? Colombia?
No. It happened in Western Europe, Portugal, just at the outskirts of Lisbon, the city that would borrow its name to the Lisbon Treaty. I must tell you that Portugal is considered the most “safe” country in Europe.
What you saw was a confrontation between a coalition of gypsies and blacks (at least 50 individual) against a rival group of blacks. You can see they are heavily armed and you can see that they are fighting in a urban area like some talibans fought in Kabul, with total impunity. Only one man was arrested, a man that was arrested two days earlier as well.
I’d say these ethnic minorities already do have weapons of war; it’s easy to get them in the black market all over Europe. They are still fighting each other, but being the general population (the Europeans) disarmed and the police caring less and less about our security (as the events at Gare du Midi have so shockingly demonstrated), when will this war be directed against us?
You know, our cars are still the best, our wallets are still the heaviest, our women are still the most atractive to be raped and our children are still the more prone to be beaten or robbed. Do you really think that their arsenal will not turn against us?
My premisse is that if the poorest people can manage to have war weapons in Europe, the European peoples (much richer) can import weapons as well, and easier. That is not really a problem.
I have also to say that this events may well take place once weak or twice a month in some areas here… and Portugal is a much “safer” country than any other Western European country.
Baron, if you could make a post just with this video and a title like “Lisbon, Multicultural Portugal, 10th July 2008” I would really apreciate and be very gratefull for the divulgation. (If not, I will respect it, of course.)
Archonix: HH, I’m not really sure why you’ve highlighted those particular words. A proclamation is a proclamation. As christians we are to proclaim – that is lay out, explain, spread and command – the word of god and the good news. That’s what a proclamation means in the christian context. Bishop Nazir-Ali has lived within this christian context for a great deal of time so he’ll use the language of that context – the language of christianity.
Thank you so much, Archonix, for speaking from your own Christian heart regarding that which I am somewhat less able to as an agnostic.
Nazir-Ali may well be the The Church of England’s saviour every bit as much as Jesus was for all Christianity. Unlike his erstwhile [cough] critics [cough], the Right Reverend daily RISKS HIS LIFE to make a worthy stand against the most pure form of evil to blight our world since Nazism.
Even if Nietzsche were right to proclaim that, “the last true Christian died on the cross”, Nazir-Ali would belie such abject pessimism with his own honorable witnessing in Christ’s name.
Nazir-Ali has the perks and privileges of a highly placed individual within the CoE. That he dismisses all those worldly adornments in favor of risking his very life to defy the most benighted influence upon our world in modern times cannot be waved aside with such a weak semantic challenge.
Watching Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address and his sojourn to Turkey, I had thought that Christianity might have finally found its voice against diabolical Islam.
Instead, it is a far more gentle lamb of God that places his neck upon the block to preserve every one of our rights against evil incarnate.
I would be less than a man to have let Nazir-Ali’s creditable efforts gone undefended. Agnostic or no, courage such as his must always be defended or else we all are lost.
Dymphna:
“The ecclesia and its accompanying kerygma is considered indispensable to a Catholic or Anglican understanding of what it means to be Christian.”
And what does it mean to be Christian today?
What HAS it meant to be a Christian?
Decidedly, the common denominator today and in the past has been passivity.
I ken that for some very worldy and profane reasons, Christians were encouraged to view suffering and the bearing of injustice as some kind of Christ-like sacrifice that would be rewarded in the divine hereafter.
Scripturally, I missed the part where the Christ demanded that I join him in being nailed up on a cross with him.
(Even St. Peter didn’t have the temerity to think that he should emulate the Savior’s death…and being crucified upside-down likely left him more time in agony for his humility).
“Sociologists of religion have been telling us that the process of secularisation has been a very long one and, indeed, they locate its origin precisely in the Enlightenment’s rejection of heteronomous authority and its affirmation of autonomy. Historians, on the other hand, point out that faith flourished in industrial Britain in the 19th century and in the first part of the last century. Indeed, it is possible to say that it continued to prosper well into the 1950s.”-The Rev. Dr. Nazir-Ali
The Marxists indeed did a number on Christianity…and quite consciously, too.
Seeing as how their atheism would allow no modus vivendi between the State and the Church, they couldn’t simply usurp the reins over the masses, as temporal powers had done through time immememorial.
Nor could they tear it down, since it’s existence is far too useful for secular purposes.
They needed to excise the Divinity from the Faith while leaving the structure and the forms intact.
And thus we have, in all too many places, a hollowed-out Christianity full of hollowed-out Christians, whose default worldview is that of passive suffering.
Such as they are either utterly mystified or totally infatuated with the adherents of a faith, Islam, that never suffered such wounds, (or ones so fresh) as their Mother Faith has borne.
To be a Christian has always meant that in the secular world, you were born with a set of handlebars sticking out of your head.
Today, there is no one firm set of hands, for good or ill, grasping them.
Had I not known who the author of this wonderful piece was, I would have thought him to be an Englishman, born and bred. Steeped in the traditions of it’s culture and religion from the womb.
If one can be infused with the culture and traditions of a nation, Nazir-Ali certainly has.
His message is of the style that used to be common in churches, concerned with the fate of it’s community, and designed to provoke thought and action by it’s congregants.
He needs to be praised and encouraged, to spread his thoughtful words to the citizens of England.
Actually, we could use the good sense of Nazir-Ali here in the U.S.
Armed Officers Guard Catholic Service From Deranged Leftists.
It is true. I have a conscience that would or would not allow me to do certain things. If I go against my conscience, I feel remorse. Why do I do this? Is it because I believe and follow God’s commandments, laws, and statues? Do these have any bearing on how my conscience controls or influences my actions? God knocked and I answered and let him in …….into my heart. I walk with God, though I stumble, I get up, and I continue down the path. Christ dwells in my heart. Those without conscience have Satan dwelling in their heart, and Satan has no conscience.