Religion

I have mixed feelings about Jordan Peterson, whose 12 Rules for Life I have just ploughed through. There is much socially conservative psychobabble, and life-coachy earnestness, and it’s far too long. But I am in some sympathy with his project. I am interested in its semi-religiosity. His core message is that people should aim high, ‘take the heroic path’, serve a vision of goodness and truth, though this entails sacrifice, and acceptance of the suffering intrinsic to life. No Christian should sniff at such rhetoric, and I do not. But we should sniff around its edges, to ask what exactly he’s up to.

One of the pleasures of being a Catholic convert from Anglicanism is that I feel much warmer towards the Church of England than when I was in it. Last week, I went to a truly endearing Anglican ceremony in Westminster Abbey. After evensong, there was a short service to unveil a plaque in memory of the Chadwick brothers, Owen and Henry. Both were clergymen, both were Regius professors (Owen at Cambridge, Henry at Cambridge and Oxford). Both were tipped to be Archbishops, but preferred the life of the mind. They are the first brothers to be thus linked in an Abbey monument since John and Charles Wesley. Professor Eamon Duffy — who is, as his name hints, Catholic — gave a brilliant tribute to the two.

It is quite unnecessary and truly sad that the Archbishop of Canterbury has painted himself into a corner over the case of George Bell, the heroic, long-dead Bishop of Chichester. Last week, several historians who have studied Bell wrote to him to say that the Carlile report (which the Archbishop had himself commissioned) had clearly shown that the church’s procedures in finding that Bell had abused a girl in the late 1940s were shockingly deficient. Archbishop Welby replied to them this week, emotionally, but without answering their point. He compared the case of Bell with that of Peter Ball, the former Bishop of Gloucester, who had many powerful defenders who thought they knew him well, but was rightly convicted of abusing young men and sent to prison.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has once again been dragged into a battle between traditionalists and modernisers. This time though it’s not about gay marriage or women bishops, but the tattered reputation of one of the Church of England’s most-celebrated figures, Bishop George Bell. Justin Welby was sorely mistaken if he hoped commissioning an independent report into the claim that Bell was a child abuser would draw a line under this messy two-year row. Instead, the report found that the church has made mistakes in the way it handled the accusations. This infuriated Bell's supporters, who always maintained his innocence. Now, some are calling for Welby to walk, or at least apologise. But he refuses to do either.

Suppose you were a white supremacist who wanted to keep Muslim children down. Or suppose you were a Machiavellian middle-class parent, who wanted to handicap the competition your child would face when the race for university places began. In either case, you would be delighted by what is happening at St Stephen’s primary school in Newham. Despite having an intake of poor children from Pakistani and African families, the head Neena Lall and chair of the governors Arif Qawi transformed it into one of the best state primaries in England. Now it is falling apart. Qawi resigned last week. Lall faces angry parents, mosque leaders, and activists whipped up by the clerical agitators in MEND, tonight. By all accounts she is in despair.

I was listening to Thought for The Day on Radio 4 the other morning. Well, I say listening, as most parents will know, that is something you can do only in an empty house. What I mean is: the radio was on, a religious man was speaking and I caught probably every fourth or fifth word in between shouting at my kids to hurry up. Anyway, the gist of what the man was saying was that it is good to be bored as it frees up the brain, and going to church may well be one of the last places on earth where that is entirely and routinely possible. I realised this was true. Full disclosure: I semi-regularly trot off to church. A Methodist church.

Ever willing to exploit my children, I asked them yesterday just how many actual English children there were in their class at school – one’s at primary, the other, secondary. What, English-English, they said reasonably? You mean, both parents, plus born here? Yes, I said, which meant they couldn’t count themselves – they were born in Dublin. They thought about it for a bit. The elder said, counting on his fingers, that five out of 27 were English-English, with another three more half and half. My daughter counted 10 out of 27, if you include pupils from Guernsey and Northern Ireland, which I unwillingly conceded might count as British from some perspectives; a child whose granny is from Sierra Leone counts as English. The rest were a ragbag.

Twitter brings out a mean streak in some people that can take the breath away. And I should know. I was re-reading my old tweets the other day and thinking: good God, if this was my actual conversation at a dinner party I’d have to get my coat - remember the bloke in The Fast Show? - right after the soup. In the new Holy Smoke podcast, I’m joined by Harry Mount, Lara Prendergast and Freddy Gray to discuss the warping of our personalities by social media. Also, the complete failure of religious leaders to address the moral dilemmas it throws at us every day: bishops, being hopeless at Twitter and Facebook themselves, ignore them, preferring to lecture us on the finer points of government welfare and immigration policies. It’s a no-holds-barred conversation.

The doctrine of progress implies that things get better. This is clearly true in terms of scientific knowledge, though not necessarily of how that scientific knowledge is applied. It has proved broadly true, in our lifetimes, about economic and political freedom, though not so decisively that we can all sit back and relax. Is it also true of virtue? We often praise ourselves for having cast aside prejudice, taboo, imperialism, sexism and so on, but can we truthfully say that we are, on average, morally better people than our ancestors? We might simply be blind to different things. It is not difficult to make a list of virtues that are in decline (honour, patience, respect for the old) or not seen as virtues at all (virginity, obedience).

We’re closing 2017 by republishing our twelve most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 9: Damian Thompson on Pope Francis: On 2 January, the Vatican published a letter from Pope Francis to the world’s bishops in which he reminded them that they must show ‘zero tolerance’ towards child abuse. The next day, the American Week magazine published an article that told the story of ‘Don Mercedes’ — Fr Mauro Inzoli, an Italian priest with a passion for expensive cars and underage boys. In 2012, Pope Benedict stripped Inzoli of his priestly faculties, effectively defrocking him. In 2014, however, they were restored to him — by Pope Francis, who warned him to stay away from minors.

So the BBC resolves to improve its treatment of religion, to take it more seriously as a major force in our culture. Good. But if clumsily undertaken such intentions can backfire, and deepen the liberal elite’s disdain for religion. Imagine if Thought for the Day was doubled in length, or if Songs of Praise was aired twice a week. The challenge is to find new forms of religious broadcasting that unsettle assumptions. I can only think of one example of this in the last decade: Rev, the sitcom that combined affection for the C of E with satire. Because it was irreverent, it could also be profoundly sympathetic – it even showed a man praying, with engaging honesty and wit.

A bishop of the Church of England cannot really express his or her view on gay marriage. The secular media has little interest in asking about anything else. Result: bishops sound comically evasive, having to ignore repeated questions on the issue with Michael Howardish determination. This is what happened in the newly-appointed Bishop of London Sarah Mullally’s first grilling on the Today programme. This is what she should have said: ‘I don’t know. Sorry, but I don’t know what line the Church should take on gay marriage, or the ordination of homosexuals. I reject the secular assumption that everyone ought to have a firm opinion on every issue. So I affirm the Church’s teaching on the issue.

The Church of England being what it is, it was pretty well inevitable that the new Bishop of London should be a woman and as it happens the woman in question is Sarah Mullally, 55, at present suffragan bishop of Exeter. I spoke to her this morning before Downing Street made the announcement – wouldn’t you just love to know if the PM added her mite? – and the bishop designate gave every impression of being a nice and decent person, and a committed, almost certainly evangelical, Christian. Very much in the mould then of another evangelical, the Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s also a former Chief Nursing Officer who worked in the Department of Health for five years and was educated in a comprehensive (the last, a very good thing).