Theo Hobson

Two years ago the Church of England decided to delay any public discussion of its deepest division, over homosexuality, until 2022. So this might be the year in which an already troubled institution has a dramatic public meltdown. Or it might be the year in which the Church of England sorts itself out a bit. Yes, really. Stranger miracles have happened. There are grounds for hope, and not just on the gay issue. The Church has a core strength that it could draw on, and a core identity that could stand it in good stead, though one it is weirdly shy to assert. First let’s admit that things haven’t been going so well, even while the gay issue has been kicked into the long grass.

When my son was about six he heard something at school about slavery but was not quite clear what it was all about. So I spelled it out. I told him that a slave was someone that someone else owned and ordered around and probably mistreated. I waited for the proper response of moral horror to show on his innocent features. Instead he said, ‘Cool, I want one!’ I offer this recollection in support of Katharine Birbalsingh’s supposedly controversial opinion that children are not naturally full of the right moral impulses. ‘Britain’s strictest head teacher’ has bolstered her reputation by saying that children are born with ‘original sin’ and must be ‘habituated into choosing good over evil.

Not long ago I was a regular Tinder user. Having heard that gingers were romantically incompatible, I decided to mix work and pleasure and put this controversial claim to the test. I set up a sort of interview-date with a nice young lady called Laura, a former international gymnast who was working as a waitress, but looking for more permanent work. She sported a lovely glossy dark ginger mane. We weren’t getting on too badly, but not much of a story there. Luckily there was scope for deepening the research: we went back to mine, and a bit of horizontal research definitively established that the alleged incompatibility of gingers is utter nonsense, doubtless put about by jealous eugenicists. None of the above is true.

I’ve just been looking at photographs of Emma Raducanu again, this time focusing on her upper chest. She usually wears a pendant cross, which suggests that she is a Christian. Yes I know that some people wear crosses for fashion reasons, but I don’t think she’s in that camp. Maybe it’s more a sign of cultural than religious allegiance, maybe a treasured gift from a grandparent? Or maybe a sign of solidarity with China’s persecuted Christians. To what extent is it legitimate to inquire into this? The orthodoxy is, not at all, you meddling creep. It’s her business, and it’s utterly irrelevant to her tennis success. But it is not too out-of-order to ponder the symbols that people in the public eye choose to wear.

When the Church of England talks of trying new things, I prick up my ears. Back in 2004 it announced the need for ‘fresh expressions’ — new ventures alongside the normal parish system. Maybe some vibrant arty experimentation would ensue, I felt. But the main result was lots of nimble little evangelical pop-up churches, mostly lay-led. The idea of innovation seems to energise the evangelicals, although their version of innovation doesn’t always energise me. On Easter Day this year I dragged my kids to church, but there was no room at the socially distanced inn. The evangelicals round the corner let us in, so I had a glimpse of a style of Anglicanism that I normally avoid.

There’s an Old Testament story that ought to be better known (who does God’s PR these days?). King David is in his palace, and a servant announces that he has a caller. It’s Nathan the prophet. Good old Nathan — committed to maximizing the life-chances of the poor, a real old-school man of the people, and often a bit spiky with it — a man to keep onside. Yes, yes, send him in. Nathan launches into a story about a humble farmer who has been conned by some smooth-talking landlord and has now lost his land and his last remaining lamb to this greedy sod. The king’s a bit disappointed that Nathan has brought such a tiny issue to his attention — he was hoping for a big juicy cause he could champion, so as to remind the people of his compassionate-conservative credentials.

The Meghan and Harry show is a window into our spiritual predicament — in Britain, America and beyond. Through breaking free from royal life, amid much unhappiness, they have acquired a powerful story of self-realisation. This is our culture’s new idea of the spiritual life. What exactly is this new idea? How does it relate to what came before? Is it replacing the old or is its appeal limited to certain sectors of society? The rise of the new spirituality has been gradual. We can neatly chart its rise with reference to Harry’s mother, Princess Diana. First we might pause to ask: why is the British royal family such an important showcase for this shift? It is a place of intense psychological pressure and of spiritual significance.

To mark International Women’s Day, I decided to attempt a conversation about feminism with my wife. I reproduce it, or a version of it, here. I should say that I offered her the chance to write her own words, but she declined, reminding me of her low opinion of journalism. You can ventriloquise me, she said — isn’t that the sort of thing you claim to be quite good at? To put my opening words in context, I had just brought her a cup of tea in bed. Me: I know it’s early in the morning, but what is feminism? Wife: Go on then. Me: What? Wife: I suppose you have some new theory you want to tell me about. Go on then, let’s see where you’ve got to. Me: Well, OK. I was thinking, feminism seems to be a mix of two things.

Was Harry and Meghan's departure from royal life inevitable? At the heart of our monarchy is an ideal of serving the public good that is not the same as the currently dominant form of progressive idealism espoused by the likes of Meghan. It is not the same as it, and when it comes down to it, it is not compatible with it. The British monarchy’s ideal of the public good is fairly vague, fairly flexible. But it entails a basic respect for tradition. And it entails the ideal of self-sacrifice. To serve the good means accepting constraints, accepting that you might not get what you want. It means accepting the possibility that you might have to suffer, even in some sense give your life for the sake of the public good.

The bishop of Manchester has warned that many Church of England churches are unlikely to survive the pandemic. The normal trickle of church closures (around 25 per year) is set to become a steady stream in the next few years. 'I suspect the pace (of closures) will increase as a result of Covid', the Right Rev David Walker has said. It will be a sad loss to the nation’s social fabric if hundreds of churches become flats, or offices, or are demolished. But there is another possibility. The pandemic has highlighted our need to invest in local communities, and this is an opportunity to do so.