Theo Hobson

There’s an interesting article in the Guardian about the study of English at university. It’s in decline, says Susannah Rustin, which is a shame. Bright youngsters who might once have signed up to a few years of sonnets and Chaucer are feeling pressured to study something more useful like engineering. Let them, and those influencing their choices, not suppose that English is self-indulgent thumb-twiddling; let them not forget that it sharpens the critical faculties, and ‘has a humanistic role… in advancing a more expansive and democratic version of Englishness than the nativist one.

Sorry to sound sectarian, but the Archbishop of Canterbury should really be able to articulate a preference for Anglicanism over other variants of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism. Interviewed here in this week's Spectator, he was more or less invited to do so; instead he said that he was entirely positive about Anglican priests converting to Rome. Hard to imagine the Pope saying the same thing in reverse. Ecumenical enthusiasm is all very nice, but a Church is in trouble if it can’t say why people should stay within it, or choose it over other options. So what is Anglicanism’s selling point? The answer is unfashionable but unavoidable: its socio-political liberalism. Note that I do not say simply ‘liberalism’.

The fact that Naked Attraction is still being broadcast after a year or so strikes me as proof that there is something very wrong with our culture. In a healthy culture it would have been howled offstage after a few weeks, and the moral babies who made it shunned, and firmer procedures put in place to ensure that this sort of thing is not inflicted on us.  This show, in which people peer at the private parts of potential dates before meeting them, is not funny or daring or witty or brave or ironic or cheeky or iconoclastic or anything else. It’s just wrong. Why is it wrong? It is a very pure act of dehumanisation. It contributes to a culture of superficiality, insecurity, body-fascism (while of course telling us that it is fighting these things).

According to the Times, a new academic study finds that nations become richer when they become more secular. It contests the traditional idea that a nation gets rich, probably with the help of Protestantism, and then loses interest in religion. Instead, a nation first becomes secular, then becomes rich. There might be some truth in this: the keenest capitalists are often rational individualists who idolise financial success. Enough such people can affect a nation’s economy. But the study, judging from the Times’ report, explains the trend differently. The authors found ‘that a decrease in religious belief was linked to an increase in tolerance for individual rights, including of women and gay people and those who seek divorce or abortions.

My opinion of Justin Welby has been rising over the last few years. At first he seemed a text-book public school Evangelical, a sad contrast to the Welsh wizard Williams. But he proved himself good at the job, which is largely about seeming a good egg while evading awkward doctrinal questions. Having read his book Reimagining Britain, my opinion of him has not exactly fallen, but it has ceased to rise. The book doubtless has its virtues. Its discussions of practical matters such as housing and finance are acute and helpful. But Welby’s treatment of the question of Christianity’s relationship to secular culture is a predictable mix of evasion and muddle. He sounds like a man who is not allowed to say what he wants to say.

Heterosexuality is marginalised by our liberal arts culture. Not by culture in general: it still allows boy-meets-girl to be celebrated by the masses, sort of (Love Island, Harry and Meghan). But liberal arts culture scorns the crude mechanical drudge of heterosexual coupling. Last night I saw a short monologue on BBC4, one of the series called Snatches, which is part of the Hear Her series. It was about a Liverpudlian typist, circa 1963, discovering the joys of the orgasm. But of course without the aid of a dull old man: it was a female colleague who initiated her. It was well written, well acted, and I make no complaint about the soft-porn content. But it did make me think: our culture has gone a bit weird.

Now that London has a female bishop, you might assume that the whole saga is over: surely the liberals have effectively won? Well, yes and no: because the traditionalist rump that opposes women’s ordination is still officially affirmed as authentically Anglican, and has its own episcopal structure, the liberals’ victories have a hollow feel. Of course liberals have grumbled about this odd situation since its origin in 1992. But charitable rhetoric about co-existence has kept such grumbling in check. Might this now change? You might wonder how this rump has survived, and found new recruits. What is its appeal? It’s hard enough for a vicar to keep a congregation going: why tie one hand behind your back in this way? Well, you could say some clergy like the constraint.

As well as writing about religion, I have always been an amateur religious artist. Recently I’ve been getting a bit more serious about it, and have made a few art works for churches. I recently created one for a City of London church. The vicar, a friend, suggested it might appeal to youngish people somewhat at odds with conventional church (his church hosts such a group). I made a large fabric collage depicting an exorcism: Jesus casting out a demon. I said a few words at its unveiling, which seemed to go well. But not everyone was happy. A few weeks later the vicar told me that the picture had been taken down, following a complaint. Well, my slapdash neo-primitive style is not for everyone, I conceded, a bit baffled.

So Stonehenge was built for the communal fun of it. Maybe. Some archaeologists now wonder whether the main point of the monumental erection was the mass participation involved in getting it up. There were years of feasting and frolicking at the site’s construction, as well as lots of head scratching and mansplaining about whether wax-treated rope could produce maximum torque with minimal tension, or something. It was a cross between Glastonbury and Homebase. Or maybe this theory says more about us than about our oldest public art work. We have a vague awareness that this is what we lack as a culture: a sense of communal religious purpose.

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.

The coincidence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day seems the right moment to air my dark, wintry perspective on human commingling. I think the new sensitivity to sexual misconduct is partly a good thing. We have begun to admit that there is dark difficulty in sex, that it’s not innocent adult fun. It pains young feminists to admit it, but they sort of are. They want to pin all the blame on male aggressors, but only most of it lies there. In both genders, sex accentuates pride, ego, insecurity, and little moments of cruelty can mutate to monstrous proportions. I got round to reading ‘Cat Person’, the New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian that has prompted much reflection on sexual mores.