Our lost religion

Special report: religion in the UK

Polly Toynbee
Friday April 13, 2001
The Guardian

The atheists may cheer the exit from organised religious belief, but there's no virtue in wholesale ignorance.



"Thank God it's Good Friday!" exclaimed a DJ yesterday. Forgive him, he probably knew not what he said. A recent Mori poll found that 43% of the population do not know what Easter celebrates. A large number of the young haven't a clue, beyond hot cross buns, bonnets, chocolate eggs, lambs and daffodils. Maybe death and redemption do lack a certain zingy selling power. But this kind of ignorance and loss of heritage sets off a crisis of culture panic.

How can people look at a painting or sculpture or read a book of previous centuries or understand anything about history if they don't know this most essential Christian story - let alone the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant? Without a basic knowledge of Christianity the past is a closed book. Mythology, iconography, the common roots of stories and ideas are all missing. Resurrection may be a solstice theme stolen from a pagan rite of spring, but how can anyone appreciate the depth of passion and the overwhelming humanity in the face of Piero della Francesca's redeemer rising from the tomb, without understanding his story? A surprising poll in the Tablet yesterday shows that only half the practising members of the Church of England genuinely believe the resurrection happened. But it does not require belief to appreciate the myth's iconic power. Freud used the Greek myths, Shakespeare drew on any number of classical and historic sources, the truth of which are unimportant. Basic Bible stories are one of the foundations of western culture, without which much of it is incomprehensible.

Without an elementary grasp of religion, much of the news becomes meaningless. It is impossible to expound the politics of the Middle East or India and Pakistan without some notion of Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. No sense can be made of the conflicts we are helping police in the Balkans without knowing something about the differences between the religions that act as artificial ethnic identifiers. Nightly the news brings pictures of yet more bloodshed from the accursed city of Jerusalem, that ill-fated breeding place of three of the world religions that have caused such calamity. The tribal slaughter makes no sense to anyone without a smattering of religious knowledge.

The good atheist/agnostic may be gratified at the departure of organised religion from most of British national life, but there should be no pleasure in wholesale ignorance of their history. Lack of knowledge and analysis seems to leave people still susceptible to other sorts of superstitions - crystals, the zodiac, pentangles or Hopi ear candles - less lethal if equally misleading.

It is curious how this government clings to religion. Here we are, the most secular nation (48% proclaim no particular religion, only 7% are Christian churchgoers and 3% practising Muslims and Hindus), yet a Cool Britannia leadership eagerly courts its tattered remnants. They chase after religion as if it were a short cut to the national soul. When David Blunkett says he wishes he could bottle religion to spread its values throughout his school system, or Tony Blair lavishes praise on religious organisations, it only suggests that New Labour's own core values may be a bit weak. The convictions that fired the party's founders were quite enough to sustain their sense of purpose and moral impetus, without resorting to the supernatural. Does the party leadership feel a lack of sufficiently passionate secular values to give them moral ballast?

This pervasive ignorance of Christianity might mean religion really does not matter any more. Like the monarchy and the remaining hereditary peers, the established church is often seen as just another moribund shell, signifying nothing beyond ceremonial and tradition. But these ancient institutions are insidious in the ways they seep into the imagination and the self-image of the country. The Guardian is challenging the Act of Settlement in the courts, testing whether the new Human Rights Act will outlaw the discrimination that forbids Catholics or those married to them ascending a throne only open to C of E communicants, while giving sons precedence over daughters. Is it just tilting at windmills? We think not. The power of religion in the constitution is set to grow, not shrink, in a new House of Lords where the 25 bishops will be joined by guaranteed seats for other faiths. (Will Moonies and Scientologists sue if they don't get their places too? There is no legal definition of religion.)

Now the Home Office is considering legislation to ban religious discrimination whose effect would be to stifle free speech and ridicule, extending blasphemy laws that should be abolished. The ever vigilant campaigners of the National Secular Society keep pointing up the anomalies in the state's wooing of the church. Why in the last budget was there VAT relief for church buildings, but not for secular historic monuments?

Yesterday a new Muslim school in Birmingham was given state school status. Since various Christian sects have control of one in four state primaries already, while the Sikhs and Seventh Day Adventists have their own state schools too, there is no way to prevent other faiths demanding separatist schools. Once established, they are almost impossible to close down again. Although they are by nature discriminatory and contrary to Labour's proclaimed pluralism and multiculturalism, the government is promising yet more. The miraculous special "ethos" of church schools extolled by David Blunkett is quite simple to explain. Their popularity has less to do with God than selection, often done with waiting lists which help the quick-off-the-mark middle classes congregate together there. Parents mumbling through psalms and catechisms to get a vicar's letter for school entry is a good pew-filler. Church schools deter Muslim parents, while more Muslim schools only add to the risk of keeping children culturally segregated. Religious schools are by faith likely to be anti-gay, anti-abortion, Catholic and anti-contraception or Muslims teaching that women's place is "one step behind".

However, teaching about religion is not the same as religious teaching. People need some historical grasp of world faiths but somewhere in the muddle of legislation, this concept has been lost. Tory education secretary Kenneth Baker's disreputable law which still obliges all schools to conduct a daily act of Christian worship so angered teachers that it was entirely counter-productive. Not enough teachers can be found willing or able to conduct services with a straight face so it is widely flouted. But resentment seems to have led to a failure to teach anything about religion, even from a secular perspective - resulting in nearly half the population not knowing what Easter is.

The Fabians today call for more national holidays. We have the fewest in the EU: Italy has 15 days, over-worked Britain has 8. The stricken tourism industry desperately wants more. Most mark religious festivals, so the Fabians want secular celebrations. Shakespeare day, perhaps? Or is he destined for the same black memory hole as the Bible?

polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk