Theo Hobson

There are two articles in yesterday's Guardian that are critical of something called ‘liberalism’. Giles Fraser vents his irritation at an advertisement for a hotel chain, aimed the global business elite. It celebrates the idea of the individual’s freedom from boundaries, constraints – be a ‘beautiful nomad’ it urges. This epitomises the worst sort of ‘liberalism’, he says. And Martin Kettle suggests that we are seeing the demise, or at least the failure, of the two versions of liberalism that have dominated national life for decades: the social liberalism of the 60s and economic liberalism of the 80s. Brexit was in part a protest against both, he says.

The Church of England’s relationship with state education seems simple enough. Its schools have been a major source of strength, significantly slowing its rate of decline over the past few decades. Many congregations have been swelled by parents seeking a better-than-average state education for their offspring. From an Anglican point of view, what’s not to like?  Well, this: selection by church attendance is unpopular with those who do not benefit, giving the Church an image problem with its non-members. This makes some of its members, including me, uneasy. Also, the integrity of church attendance is in doubt, in parishes near a popular school. The cliché of the pushy parents faking their piety is partly true, and it affects the meaning of contemporary churchgoing.

Let’s say that a man kills a few people at random in your neighbourhood – on the street in broad daylight. Is it better or worse if he justifies his killing spree as part of a holy crusade? In other words, which is worse – terrorism or meaningless psychotic violence? I am aware that this is something I perhaps should not admit, but when reports emerge of such attacks, I sometimes catch myself hoping that it is terrorism, not just meaningless madness. Maybe the journalist in me wants a chunkier story, linked up to world events. But the main motive is wider, I think: we can view the evil of terrorism as theoretically curable – by replacing religious extremism with better ideas. This is not so with insanity, which makes it even more terrifying than terrorism.

Andrea Leadsom presumably considers her aggressive pride in her maternity to be something to do with her Christian faith. To quote her heroine (who now seems wonderfully subtle): No, no, no. Pride in procreation is dull, banal, pagan stuff, not completely unrelated to fascism. Christians ought to steer clear of it. Did Jesus or St Paul lack a stake in the future by virtue of failing to breed? Christianity broke with the Jewish and pagan assumption that having a big family is essential to a fully meaningful and fulfilling life. It said that the community of the church was more important, and in this community the childless, including dedicated virgins, were seen as at least as valuable as family types.

Alain de Botton, to judge from his new novel The Course of Love, is trying to be the Freud for our day, the Facebookers’ Freud. For a book that presents itself as an affirmation of married love, it is rather bleak. And the bleakness echoes that of the Viennese know-it-all. Freud, remember, said that our sex drive makes life basically tragic. To have orderly lives, we must renounce our desire for promiscuous fun. To be mentally healthy, we must be honest about this; we must admit the force of our primal instinct, and not deny it or suppress it too rigidly, or we go neurotic. But we must suppress it. The funny thing about de Botton is that he comes to such conclusions against the grain of his temperament, which is doggedly upbeat.

When there’s a story about Christianity in decline, or in crisis, you always get a few loudmouth lifestyle columnists gloating – sorry, imparting their secular wisdom. Barbara Ellen was not very surprised that a new report says that Christians (at 44 per cent) are now outnumbered by ‘Nones’ (at 48.5 per cent). After all, the main thing religion claims to offer is ‘community’, and in practice that probably means ‘sitting in a draughty hall with a Bible group and a digestive biscuit’. This is a good snapshot of secularist arrogance. If Ms Ellen attended a local group in which a genuine social mix assembled (unlike at her book group) in order to practice literary analysis and share life-stories, imagine how excited she’d be.

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian by Julian Baggini. Now that nearly half of Britons say that they have no religion, he observes, some believers are saying that atheism is also a sort of faith. Though an atheist, he is not of the Dick Dawkins school, and so does not respond with Dickish bluntness. He is not one of those ‘zealous’ atheists who sees religion ‘as an offence to human rationality.’ People like that do seem to have a sort of crusading faith, he says. Excessive trust in the power of reason can be dangerous, he adds. He admits that the ‘meaning and value’ that atheists find in life is not strictly evidence-based, and so has a faith-resembling aspect. But it’s misleading to call this ‘faith’, he concludes.

Our political culture contains some tension between Jews and Muslims. And some secular anti-Semitism, particularly on the left, and some Islamophobia. But, at the risk of getting Pollyannaish, let us see the positive. This country's main religious culture, Christianity, is not involved in any of this nastiness. It does not contain any substantial prejudice against Muslims or Jews. It is not significantly invoked by our (rather mild) nativist movement, Ukip. Yes, Farage sometimes says that he stands for Christian values, but this is just a harmless and desperate bit of rhetoric. The louder message is that the Queen asked that lovely Muslim baker to her party. Let us be quietly proud that our Christian culture is above the fray.

In his new book God is No Thing: Coherent Christianity, Rupert Shortt notes that religion is in some ways taken more seriously now than a decade or two ago. But huge habits of ignorance and condescension remain: ‘When secular humanists attack Christianity, they often fail to realise that it is the gospels which provide unseen elements in their own outlook.’ He rightly draws attention to the ‘tension between the enormous cultural footprint of Christianity on the one hand, and its concealment in a secular multicultural society such as Britain on the other.’ And he tentatively criticises the subtle marginalisation of Christianity from public discourse.

Louis Theroux’s latest documentary on alcoholism confirms the fact that he has become an interesting broadcaster. He has grown up. This was already clear from his last couple of films from America, on a secure mental hospital, and on transgender children. This might sound excessive, but he has become capable of expressing a more nuanced humanity than the average television journalist. In his callow youth he was fun to watch, but overdid the sneering ironic act. He kept a straight face in order to allow idiots to expose themselves. Such an approach is tainted by a sort of self-righteousness: let’s look down on these ridiculous human specimens. Then he began to focus on fairly ordinary people with interesting struggles. And he paid attention, gave them space.

Helena Kennedy’s two-part radio programme on human rights was very predictable. She did a lot of hand-wringing. She spoke some passionate rhetoric about our common humanity. She quoted Hannah Arendt. She consulted a lot of non-Western thinkers, a lot of fellow human rights lawyers, and a token critic of the concept of human rights. The first part put much emphasis on the ancient global roots of the concept. Look how it is anticipated in this ancient Iranian or Mesopotamian or Buddhist document. I think this is misleading. Though many ancient cultures had impulses in this direction, they were frail. It was the Christian West that gradually heaved such aspirations into politics.