Christianity

I recently met an old friend at a party. She works for a Christian NGO. Later that evening we were introduced to a man with a background in software engineering. Having learnt about my friend’s job and then discovered that she goes to church, he asked her how old she thought the universe is. Her jaw dropped a bit. But she was composed enough to reply with a counter-question. ‘Did you know that it was a Catholic priest [the cosmologist Georges LeMaître] who proposed the Big Bang theory in the first place?’ Now it was the engineer’s turn to look shocked. Some may dismiss this exchange as a flash in the pan. To others it will reflect a phoney war evident across Western culture and beyond. The frustration felt by this second group is well founded.

Following Donald Trump’s election, there was hope that the US would aid Christian communities overseas, especially in Iraq where the population of Christians was reduced by over 80 percent since the US invasion. The Obama administration was less receptive to a focus on persecuted Christians, often opting to use euphemistic terms. Christian persecution became known more as a series of sporadic, unrelated incidents rather than a phenomena. The US has invested significantly in helping rebuild Iraq, but the effectiveness of our aid has been limited, and some people on the ground in Iraq claim they never saw the entirety of the aid themselves.

There is no faster way to get yourself classed as dim than by admitting that you hold religious belief, especially Christian belief. Anti-Catholicism used to be the anti-Semitism of intellectuals; now Catholics get no special attention. All believing Christians are regarded as stupid, eccentric or malevolent. Some conservatives will make the case for the social usefulness of Christian values. The conservative asks: if society prospered with these traditions and customs, is it really wise to throw them away without a moment’s hesitation? That is just what the West is doing, especially the Anglophone West. Britain, Australia and even the God-fearing United States are becoming atheist societies.

The time has come to disestablish the Church of England. As a deeply partisan Prayer Book Anglican – a churchmanship naturally inclined to support the cause of antidisestablishmentarianism – I say that rather grudgingly. But it pains me to admit the established church and mother church of Anglicanism is no longer fit for purpose. Atheists, militant secularists and those of non-Christian faiths have long supported my newly-held position, yet they often do so for other reasons, namely declining church attendance. They might claim that the Anglican expression of Christianity has little creditability as a state church if, practically speaking, nobody goes to services on a regular basis. And they might have a point.

They were putting the finishing touches to the giant tent as I drove up to Schloss Wolfsegg after an hour’s flight from Gstaad to a tiny nearby airport. With me were my son and two good friends, and the Pilatus felt like a Messerschmitt 109 cutting through the clouds and landing on a dime. The Pilatus is a great airplane. It can cruise for seven hours at 280 knots, and land at less than 500 metres. It seats six people very comfortably. The only man who has complained about this aircraft is my old friend Charlie Glass, who like a true lefty whined about the lavatory’s headroom. (I told him to try EasyJet next time, but lefties like to fly private and not mix with hoi polloi.