This review first appeared in The Catholic Herald
Apologetics for the Chattering Classes
By Dwight Longenecker
God Outside the Box
Not long ago I heard an Australian’s wry comment on the Anglican Church, ‘Listen
mate,’ he said, ‘Anglicanism isn’t a religion. It’s a set of table manners.’ What
he meant was that the Church of England isn’t really the Church of England,
it’s the Church of Middle England. Eammon Duffy observed in The Stripping
of the Altars that when the English church went Protestant (and therefore
iconoclastic and intellectual) it lost the working classes forever.
This has never been more true than now.
At the Reformation the Anglicans threw out the authority of the Pope.
With the advent of ‘higher criticism’ they
threw out the authority of the Bible, and as a result all that is left
is personal opinion, which is often no more than questions of taste.
Richard Harries is the archpriest of this Church of Good Taste. He has
already produced a book called Art and the Beauty of God, and
his new volume is a tasteful apologetic for the chattering classes. This
is a good book, with some strong and well reasoned arguments in favour
of God, religion and the Christian faith. But what it lacks is any dogmatic
foundation. It is a beautiful house built on sand.
It seems churlish to complain of a book,
which in many sections, is excellent. Harries confronts modern grumbles
about God and answers the
grumblers with straight logic and common sense. In five sections composed
of readable short chapters he confronts 1. The Case Against God 2. Difficulties
in Belief 3. The Case Against Religion 4 The Case Against Christianity
and 5. Spirituality for Today. In the first section he counters arguments
that God is a male despot who demands praise and punishes people eternally.
His answers are good. He shows that the popular critics haven’t considered
the whole question, but like most Protestants, Bishop Harries only goes
so far. He gives tentative answers based on his own opinion and experience.
So in the chapter on the gender question, the Bishop beats his breast
over ‘the pain and anger of women when they read the Bible or encounter
a male-dominated Christian liturgy.’ It is understandable that critics
blame the Protestant church for being overly intellectual and male dominated.
This is the result of chucking out the veneration of the Blessed Virgin
Mary. But the bishop’s remedy is not a return to the fullness of the
historic faith, but yet more feminist liturgies and ‘power sharing.’ He
hopes that ‘as women come to play an increasingly important role in the
leadership of the Church this mystery will not only qualify traditional
perceptions of the divine, mystery but will enlarge and enrich them.’ I
quote this particular passage, because it illustrates the bishop’s essentially
Protestant, intellectual, and English perception of the church and the
world. So, no pilgrimages to Lourdes and bottles of holy water shaped
like the Virgin Mary for this chap.
In the middle section he addresses criticisms
like, ‘Religion is Stuck
in the Past’ or that ‘religion is divisive’, ‘religion keeps people immature’ and ‘life
today is simply too good to need religion.’ Each question is tackled
honestly and Harries shows that while there is an element of truth in
each criticism, that often the criticism is the fruit of some abuse of
religion, or of the critics’ own limited understanding of religion. In
the fourth section he focuses on criticisms of Christianity: that Christianity
is negative, that it harps on guilt and sin, that Christians ‘eat God’ or
that it is only for wimps. In each of the short chapters the critics
are both listened to and answered with tact, wisdom and precision. In
the final section Harries proposes the current Anglican version of Christian
spirituality, which is low on dogma and high on self-fulfilment and a
kind of refined, agnosticism. The bishop is big on the ‘apophatic way’—the via
negativa that approaches the ‘great absence’ which is God. Has
the much- vaunted Anglican via media become the via negativa? If
so, it may be symbolic of the entire trend in the Anglican Church. The
section of ‘spirituality’ is the greatest disappointment, but it is also
the greatest revelation. It shows what a modern Anglican bishop has on
offer, and his stall is pretty bare. All the bishop has for sale is the
subjective, watered down, non-dogmatic, aesthetic agnosticism of present
day Anglicanism. This is the religion of the educated establishment today.
If you like it is not the Universal church; it is the University Church.
The aesthetic, intellectual context of the
bishop’s book means that
it can really only appeal to a niche audience. C.S.Lewis said that writing
about religion for ordinary people was one of the most difficult forms
of communication. Hoi polloi are suspicious of religion as being ‘establishment’.
They are intimidated by footnotes, quotes and literary references, and
immediately assume that you are talking down to them. But if you try
to use relevant illustrations from popular culture you tread through
a minefield set in quicksand. Miss the mines by using a reference that
is out of date and you fall into the quicksand of being ridiculously
trendy and naff.
Bishop Harries doesn’t seem to have noticed Lewis’ advice
to would-be apologists. Harries writes well and clearly, but he crams
the book with
literary references: poetry from R.S.Thomas, T.S.Eliot, Stevie Smith
and D.H. Lawrence etc. etc. Long passages from Shakespeare, and other
writers intrude and he pulls off delicious personal passages like this
about the Last Judgement: ‘It {the severity of the judgement] can
be seen in early medieval icons in the monastery of St Catherine at Sinai,
as well as in the Byzantine mosaics in the church in Torcello, in the
Venetian lagoon…’ Such passages assume the reader is from the class
who casually travels on the grand tour with Baedeker in one hand and
a pair of white gloves in the other.
I do not lampoon the Bishop of Oxford for having good taste. Neither
do I endorse that peculiar reverse snobbery I have sometimes come across
in Catholic circles in which art, literature, fine liturgy and architecture
are pooh poohed on purpose. Beauty is certainly a pointer to God, and
no one has written of the link between beauty, truth and divinity better
than the Catholic theologians Hans Urs von Balthasar and John Saward.
In this barbaric age we certainly need more fine Christian culture. What
I object to is that Bishop Harries has set an apologetic work firmly
within the context of the tasteful, literary world, and therefore not
only automatically limited his audience, but also implied that those
who cannot rise to his high aesthetic standards are not worth addressing.
Indeed, one gets the impression that he is almost unaware that there
are souls who may not understand or care about his refined literary enthusiasms.
Perhaps we should praise the bishop for writing a good apologetic for
the intellectual and aesthetic elite, after all, he is the Bishop of Oxford. But
I worry that he hasn’t really addressed ordinary people. He may be the
Bishop of Oxford, but there is not much for Cowley or Blackbird Leys
in this book.
I fear Bishop Harries has limited his audience, but my greater worry
is that once he answers the criticism of his audience he offers them
not full blooded, historic, universal Christianity, but a subjective,
non-dogmatic religion. Harries offers a kind of bubble gum Christianity.
It is sweet tasting and keeps the mouth busy, but it has no nutritional
value. In this respect aesthetic Anglicanism is the same as Protestant
Pentecostalism. Both are extremely attractive to a certain caste. Aesthetic
Anglicanism is just as subjective, sweet and emotional as Protestant
Pentecostalism. It is just not so vulgar.
Dwight Longenecker’s latest book is an
apologetic work called More
Christianity. He has also been commissioned to write a series of
booklets for Catholic Truth Society to be used in primary evangelisation.
