Fan mail

Compliments are always pleasant to receive, even if they come with a barb. So it is nice to know that Laban Tall likes me. That's not to say that he approves of me: he does, of course, think that I am wrong.

He describes me as someone who:

thinks you can take away the cultural underpinnings (chiefly liberty and Christianity) from Western society without it crumbling

I am at a loss to know where or how I have advocated the removal of liberty from Western society. Perhaps Laban and I have different views on what liberty entails.

As for Christianity - I do not know how one goes about removing it as one of the 'cultural underpinnings' of our society, anymore than one can remove 1066 as one of the defining moments of our history. It is true that Britain is one of the most secular countries on earth, and has been for some time. Indeed, I would argue strongly that part of Britain's make-up and personality is the questioning and probing of religion that came with the Enlightenment.

I suspect Laban sees the problems that beset modern society as a result of the crumbling of active Christian faith in Britain. Yet here in the US, Christianity holds sway like nowhere else in the developed West. But divorce rates, crime levels and births outside marriage are all higher than those of heathen Western Europe. So the correlation is at the very least not a direct one. In my view Western society is a healthier beast than the delicate sapling that Laban seems to think it is.

So what do I think of Laban's blog? I read him regularly and, of course, I think he is wrong (and he doesn't allow comments, which is very frustrating). He seems to me to have dined too frequently at the table of Peter Hitchens, taking large side orders of Melanie Phillips and Theodore Dalrymple. The House of Hitchens is one where every negative anecdote or statistic is pored over with lugubrious schadenfreude, while every positive development is dismissed as a trick of the light perpetrated by those evil liberal elites trying to hoodwink people into believing that their lives consist of anything other than unmitigated misery. I find such negativity quite frankly exhausting - and rather fruitless. Banging on about how dreadful a country Britain is, how degraded its population and how debased its culture doesn't really get us anywhere (quite apart from alienating people who have the temerity to think that, shock horror, Britain might actually be quite a nice country that one could, every now and then, be proud of).

How far Laban himself shares these views is hard to judge. From comments he leaves on other sites, I suspect he takes a rather more nuanced view than his own website might suggest. But then, perhaps I'm being excessively charitable...

Comments

[Shuggy]

" I find such negativity quite frankly exhausting "

Funny you should say that: whenever I hear or read ol' Mel, I always think how exhausting standing to moral attention all the time must be.

There is, as you say, very little correlation between a country's rate of religious observance and crime/divorce levels (the RSA is another good example of a very religious country with pretty wild crime rates).

But the other thing I don't get is why do Christians argue this social utilitarian case for their religion? It's unsound philosophically because in doing so, you undermine the reason why people are attracted to religion (people don't convert to religion in order to lower the crime rate or divorce rate; they do it in order to receive salvation) and it's unsound theologically (you'll search the NT in vain for the sort of social utility argument peddled by Pter Hitchens and co.)

People who think Jesus preached "family values" really need to re-read the gospels, in my view.

[Blimpish]

Shuggy: and people who think that Jesus preached unconstrained inclusion and lovey-doveyness ought to do the same.

Laban can more than speak for himself, but I doubt severely that he believes people should be a Christian simply to improve social outcomes. I fail to see, though, why holding sincerely to faith as true excludes you from observing (correctly or not) that the failure of other people to hold to faith might have a corrosive social effects. If I were to argue, you should be a Christian or watch society collapse, then I'd be a prat. But if I were to argue you should be a Christian because it's true, and separately say that the decline of religion will have bad temporal consequences, there's no conflict.

Let's face it, if Hitchens spent his whole column deploying scripture and demanding the conversion of his readers to Christianity on the basis of Hebrews 11:1, then his pundit career might be over pretty quickly. In our secular, multi-faith, blah-blah... society, those making arguments for faith are dismissed as 'religious loons'. So is it any great surprise they focus on the more earthly dimensions of their concern?

[dave heasman]

"In our secular, multi-faith, blah-blah... society, those making arguments for faith are dismissed as 'religious loons'."

And punished by being given demeaning tasks like President of the US, or Prime Minister of the UK. Poor victimised dears.

[Shuggy]

"I fail to see, though, why holding sincerely to faith as true excludes you from observing (correctly or not) that the failure of other people to hold to faith might have a corrosive social effects. If I were to argue, you should be a Christian or watch society collapse, then I'd be a prat."

I take that well-made point. I was thinking more of Jesus' references to bringing not peace but a sword etc. At no point in the gospels are we led to expect that a majority of people will convert and bring about a renewal in society's morals. I would also argue that any notion of a policial role for the church is completely absent from the New Testament. One could also make the point that social corrosion is caused in no small part by poverty and there's s quite a few very wealthy Christians who could do with unburdening themselves in order to pass through the eye of that ol' needle.

[Blimpish]

Dave: indeed - and still called religious loons. Every time Bushy mentions God he's accused of planning a theocratic putsch.

Shuggy: not peace but a sword was what I was thinking of too, funnily enough (Matthew 10 - I just checked).

I see your point about expecting people to convert, and from what he's said, the new Pope pretty much thinks the same too - but that doesn't mean there's no hope either. On that one, and about the lack of a declared political role for the Church, we should be mindful of context - secular societies are a modern thing (perhaps THE modern thing?), and pretty much inconceivable in the world into which Christianity sprang. (Incidentally, where the NT does talk about politics directly, it's not without its difficulties for many - thinking here of Romans 13.)

And your point at the end is fair, yes - but I guess that's for their conscience to decide.