Near to my mother’s house in Kent, where our family has lived since 1969, there is a cherry orchard which has certainly been there for as long as we have lived there. When I stay with my elderly mother, I often go for a walk past the cherry orchard, which is particularly lovely at this time of year, with all the blossoms coming out.
I say there is a cherry orchard, but I ought to have said was. A few weeks ago, on my ramble, I stumbled upon a horrific sight. This magnificent orchard, there for decades, certainly the sixty winters I have lived, was gone. Like the scouring of the Shire, the trees were cut to the ground, uprooted, and diggers were at work pulling up everything they could. What a vivid and tragic metaphor for the state of conservatism and Christianity and even nationalism, in England at least (I can’t speak of the other nations with any great knowledge; I speak of England). Apart from being yet another sign of the decades of disastrous farming policy in this country—apparently it’s cheaper to destroy our native fruits and buy European; that seems far sighted and “conservative”—literally all that was missing were the Orcs (they are probably all in government or quangos), it appeared, as I was thinking of the topic of this panel, namely ‘God & Country,’ to be, as I said, a perfect metaphor.
There is no place for optimism in a discussion on ‘God & Country’ in a place like England in 2023, or in the near future. That is not being negative, it is rather a statement of reality. Optimism is not a Christian virtue, Hope is. Hope sees the future with clarity, optimism offers short-term aspirations, often without foundations. Those of us who believe that England, and possibly the entire United Kingdom, was built on Christian foundations, and will only survive and prosper if those foundations are re-discovered, repaired, renovated, and re-presented, must look at the situation with a ruthless honesty, a ruthless glance. With faith and hope, yes, but certainly not with optimism.
“We don’t do God,” we were told once by a representative of the new Squirearchy of the media, academia, and professional politics. If we don’t do God, then I would contend in this little talk that we don’t do country, and we don’t do future. It was Hilaire Belloc first, not Robert Schuman, who said, speaking of Europe, that “Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish.” Following Schuman’s reiteration of this point, decades later, the European Union was unable, or rather unwilling, to include the foundational role of Christianity in its constitution. A house built on sand, Jesus declared, a house without a firm foundation, will collapse.
It is becoming tiresome to be told that we are a Christian country. We were a Christian country, but that foundation, that essential structure for the building to stand, is now a veneer, a hollow shell, rather like a stage set—magnificent to look at, but empty behind. What of the magnificent events of just weeks ago, people say; surely that exemplified the Christian foundation of the nation. Yes, indeed, it is true—the foundation, almost forgotten, but with little effect on the tottering house above.
Once again, we must be brutally honest: those peculiar ceremonies happening in the building not far from us here were as comprehensible to the average Briton as the accession ceremony of the Dalai Lama. We don’t do God, perhaps, because God has not been presented; we don’t know our roots because they are not taught and presented and we are in the process—far advanced, in fact—of imagining that this formerly Christian nation can survive without its foundation. Something called Britain, called England, may indeed, have some kind of future, but it will not be a sturdy building, but rather a prefab building, likely to collapse at the first real storm.
Whenever there is a terrorist attack, or some tragedy, calls are made to respect “British values”—but what are those values without the system that underpins them? Tolerance, we are told; but tolerance of what? Tolerance of free speech (even if unpopular), tolerance of praying in silence, tolerance of teaching the biblical plan for human sexuality? No. Tolerance is another empty structure with no foundation—tolerance for everything, in fact, except that which is found intolerable, namely orthodox Christianity.
Andrew Cusack, writing in a recent issue of The Critic, described British conservatism, as “listless.” Accurate, but I prefer the synonym, “spiritless.” It is spiritless because, it’s my belief, once the spiritual is rediscovered, energy is provided. It is natural for an orthodox believer to be a conservative. It is not necessary, but natural. I do not, as I said in another place, speak of the Party, which is the truest example of the ravaged cherry orchard: a Party conservative in name only.
If the foundation of this land is Christian, and the foundation is broken, forgotten, or even attacked, what, in this discussion of ‘God & Country,’ are the hopeful (not optimistic) contributions that the Church can make towards that restoration? Obviously I refer to the ancient roots of the Church, in Communion with Rome, but I encourage my brethren in the established Church to see in this work their bounden duty. When the culture was at least nominally Christian, it was much easier for the national Church to be accepted and appreciated. The danger for it now is to go along with the zeitgeist, which is indifferent or even hostile to Christianity.
Our work—and I’m speaking of committed, orthodox Christians—is to rebuild, repair and re-present the foundation. This is work which may not bring results for a long time, perhaps even in our lifetime. This is a work of faith and hope—and, it might need to be said, of humility. Did the men who dug the foundations of Westminster Abbey or Canterbury Cathedral see their finished work? Do we even know their names? C.S. Lewis said somewhere that a new paganism would have to come before Christianity can be rediscovered. We are facing something of what the theologian Stephen Bullivant has called “herd immunity” to Christianity, although that implies an inoculation; we would contend that we are the inoculation to the disease of forgetfulness of God.
Our work is that of a re-presentation of the ancient paths to God—Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. Speaking of the English hierarchy in the 1930s, Hilaire Belloc, writing to his friend Evelyn Waugh described them as a “fog of mediocrity”—the fog, of course, has yet to clear. When the new paganism is seen to be empty and joyless, the Church must be ready and willing to offer something much better. As the American novelist Walker Percy once said, at some point, young people will be so sick of what is on offer, they will come to the Church. That will be our moment, but we had better have something to offer, and believe that we have something to offer, and not just an ersatz copy of what’s outside.
Our work, despite its overuse, is to be the “little platoons”—but in this context I prefer the image employed by the great Pope Benedict XVI of being “creative minorities.” Creative minorities, if they are engaged in the work of restoration and re-presentation—allow for the kind of nationalism which Golda Meir described as “constructive and wholesome.” “fruitful,” she said, rather than “sterile,” “creative instead of destructive.” This restoration of true foundations has nothing to do with the fantasy world of John Major’s plump matrons cycling around village Green’s looking for warm beer—a world as realistic as John Nettles on daytime TV solving more murders in an English village than happen in Chicago on a bad weekend.
The foundational restoration will be from the ‘little platoons’ or ‘creative minorities’ which make up the willing and the able—actually the expression of baptism. Every sacramental Christian is anointed priest, prophet, and king. Our priestly and kingly role will involve both a true environmentalism which does not worship nature, but worships the creator of nature and respects man’s role as co-creator, or even consecrator, and the kingly role of proper government, which respects the natural law, rights and human dignity, understanding and reverencing the image of God in every human, from conception to natural death.
Our prophetic role is not to be a fortune teller or a soothsayer. A prophet, as Ronnie Knox said of Belloc, is a person who sees the evils of the day “with a clear eye.” To see—and to speak. Where, for example, was the prophetic voice of the Church during COVID? At the very moment when the saving Gospel of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ needed to be heard, we got directives on pew wiping and hand cleaning.
Part of our prophetic role is that of re-presenting orthodox Christianity with a new voice and a new language. This is, I admit, a difficult role, and not one that many in leadership seem to realize will be essential if this hopeful but not optimistic vision, somewhere in the future, of restored foundations is to come about. For all the pound-shop theology of Matthew Parris, he was right in one of his recent pieces in The Spectator that the language of orthodox Christianity is not understood by most people—including Christians themselves, I might add. It was at the Areopagus that Paul found the language to speak in a way that convinced. Many, it is true, laughed at him, perhaps The Guardian readers of the first century, but some said, “we will hear more of this.” We find ourselves in a new Areopagus moment.
Walking past the cherry orchard again the other day, I saw four saplings that the Orcs had left in the midst of their destruction. I offer naught for your comfort, but those saplings are a sign of hope.
Renewing Foundations
Near to my mother’s house in Kent, where our family has lived since 1969, there is a cherry orchard which has certainly been there for as long as we have lived there. When I stay with my elderly mother, I often go for a walk past the cherry orchard, which is particularly lovely at this time of year, with all the blossoms coming out.
I say there is a cherry orchard, but I ought to have said was. A few weeks ago, on my ramble, I stumbled upon a horrific sight. This magnificent orchard, there for decades, certainly the sixty winters I have lived, was gone. Like the scouring of the Shire, the trees were cut to the ground, uprooted, and diggers were at work pulling up everything they could. What a vivid and tragic metaphor for the state of conservatism and Christianity and even nationalism, in England at least (I can’t speak of the other nations with any great knowledge; I speak of England). Apart from being yet another sign of the decades of disastrous farming policy in this country—apparently it’s cheaper to destroy our native fruits and buy European; that seems far sighted and “conservative”—literally all that was missing were the Orcs (they are probably all in government or quangos), it appeared, as I was thinking of the topic of this panel, namely ‘God & Country,’ to be, as I said, a perfect metaphor.
There is no place for optimism in a discussion on ‘God & Country’ in a place like England in 2023, or in the near future. That is not being negative, it is rather a statement of reality. Optimism is not a Christian virtue, Hope is. Hope sees the future with clarity, optimism offers short-term aspirations, often without foundations. Those of us who believe that England, and possibly the entire United Kingdom, was built on Christian foundations, and will only survive and prosper if those foundations are re-discovered, repaired, renovated, and re-presented, must look at the situation with a ruthless honesty, a ruthless glance. With faith and hope, yes, but certainly not with optimism.
“We don’t do God,” we were told once by a representative of the new Squirearchy of the media, academia, and professional politics. If we don’t do God, then I would contend in this little talk that we don’t do country, and we don’t do future. It was Hilaire Belloc first, not Robert Schuman, who said, speaking of Europe, that “Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish.” Following Schuman’s reiteration of this point, decades later, the European Union was unable, or rather unwilling, to include the foundational role of Christianity in its constitution. A house built on sand, Jesus declared, a house without a firm foundation, will collapse.
It is becoming tiresome to be told that we are a Christian country. We were a Christian country, but that foundation, that essential structure for the building to stand, is now a veneer, a hollow shell, rather like a stage set—magnificent to look at, but empty behind. What of the magnificent events of just weeks ago, people say; surely that exemplified the Christian foundation of the nation. Yes, indeed, it is true—the foundation, almost forgotten, but with little effect on the tottering house above.
Once again, we must be brutally honest: those peculiar ceremonies happening in the building not far from us here were as comprehensible to the average Briton as the accession ceremony of the Dalai Lama. We don’t do God, perhaps, because God has not been presented; we don’t know our roots because they are not taught and presented and we are in the process—far advanced, in fact—of imagining that this formerly Christian nation can survive without its foundation. Something called Britain, called England, may indeed, have some kind of future, but it will not be a sturdy building, but rather a prefab building, likely to collapse at the first real storm.
Whenever there is a terrorist attack, or some tragedy, calls are made to respect “British values”—but what are those values without the system that underpins them? Tolerance, we are told; but tolerance of what? Tolerance of free speech (even if unpopular), tolerance of praying in silence, tolerance of teaching the biblical plan for human sexuality? No. Tolerance is another empty structure with no foundation—tolerance for everything, in fact, except that which is found intolerable, namely orthodox Christianity.
Andrew Cusack, writing in a recent issue of The Critic, described British conservatism, as “listless.” Accurate, but I prefer the synonym, “spiritless.” It is spiritless because, it’s my belief, once the spiritual is rediscovered, energy is provided. It is natural for an orthodox believer to be a conservative. It is not necessary, but natural. I do not, as I said in another place, speak of the Party, which is the truest example of the ravaged cherry orchard: a Party conservative in name only.
If the foundation of this land is Christian, and the foundation is broken, forgotten, or even attacked, what, in this discussion of ‘God & Country,’ are the hopeful (not optimistic) contributions that the Church can make towards that restoration? Obviously I refer to the ancient roots of the Church, in Communion with Rome, but I encourage my brethren in the established Church to see in this work their bounden duty. When the culture was at least nominally Christian, it was much easier for the national Church to be accepted and appreciated. The danger for it now is to go along with the zeitgeist, which is indifferent or even hostile to Christianity.
Our work—and I’m speaking of committed, orthodox Christians—is to rebuild, repair and re-present the foundation. This is work which may not bring results for a long time, perhaps even in our lifetime. This is a work of faith and hope—and, it might need to be said, of humility. Did the men who dug the foundations of Westminster Abbey or Canterbury Cathedral see their finished work? Do we even know their names? C.S. Lewis said somewhere that a new paganism would have to come before Christianity can be rediscovered. We are facing something of what the theologian Stephen Bullivant has called “herd immunity” to Christianity, although that implies an inoculation; we would contend that we are the inoculation to the disease of forgetfulness of God.
Our work is that of a re-presentation of the ancient paths to God—Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. Speaking of the English hierarchy in the 1930s, Hilaire Belloc, writing to his friend Evelyn Waugh described them as a “fog of mediocrity”—the fog, of course, has yet to clear. When the new paganism is seen to be empty and joyless, the Church must be ready and willing to offer something much better. As the American novelist Walker Percy once said, at some point, young people will be so sick of what is on offer, they will come to the Church. That will be our moment, but we had better have something to offer, and believe that we have something to offer, and not just an ersatz copy of what’s outside.
Our work, despite its overuse, is to be the “little platoons”—but in this context I prefer the image employed by the great Pope Benedict XVI of being “creative minorities.” Creative minorities, if they are engaged in the work of restoration and re-presentation—allow for the kind of nationalism which Golda Meir described as “constructive and wholesome.” “fruitful,” she said, rather than “sterile,” “creative instead of destructive.” This restoration of true foundations has nothing to do with the fantasy world of John Major’s plump matrons cycling around village Green’s looking for warm beer—a world as realistic as John Nettles on daytime TV solving more murders in an English village than happen in Chicago on a bad weekend.
The foundational restoration will be from the ‘little platoons’ or ‘creative minorities’ which make up the willing and the able—actually the expression of baptism. Every sacramental Christian is anointed priest, prophet, and king. Our priestly and kingly role will involve both a true environmentalism which does not worship nature, but worships the creator of nature and respects man’s role as co-creator, or even consecrator, and the kingly role of proper government, which respects the natural law, rights and human dignity, understanding and reverencing the image of God in every human, from conception to natural death.
Our prophetic role is not to be a fortune teller or a soothsayer. A prophet, as Ronnie Knox said of Belloc, is a person who sees the evils of the day “with a clear eye.” To see—and to speak. Where, for example, was the prophetic voice of the Church during COVID? At the very moment when the saving Gospel of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ needed to be heard, we got directives on pew wiping and hand cleaning.
Part of our prophetic role is that of re-presenting orthodox Christianity with a new voice and a new language. This is, I admit, a difficult role, and not one that many in leadership seem to realize will be essential if this hopeful but not optimistic vision, somewhere in the future, of restored foundations is to come about. For all the pound-shop theology of Matthew Parris, he was right in one of his recent pieces in The Spectator that the language of orthodox Christianity is not understood by most people—including Christians themselves, I might add. It was at the Areopagus that Paul found the language to speak in a way that convinced. Many, it is true, laughed at him, perhaps The Guardian readers of the first century, but some said, “we will hear more of this.” We find ourselves in a new Areopagus moment.
Walking past the cherry orchard again the other day, I saw four saplings that the Orcs had left in the midst of their destruction. I offer naught for your comfort, but those saplings are a sign of hope.
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