Lord, Sacks, for Chief Rabbi, has long been one of the ornaments of religious thoughts in this country, but his piece in this week’s Spectator should be read by anyone concerned with the future of our civilization. In an incisive article, he notes that:
religion has social, cultural and political consequences, and you cannot expect the foundations of western civilisation to crumble and leave the rest of the building intact.
He argues that the attempts in Europe across the last couple of centuries to find an alternative to God as an object to worship have led us from ideological false idols to a laissez-faire consumerism which amounts to saying that anything goes as long as we can square it with whatever is left of our consciences, and as long as it is not actually illegal, or could be made legal with some lobbying.
Well, if there is no morality beyond personal choice, why are we blaming politicians and bankers for behaving as our society now seems to think is acceptable? They were simply maximising the pleasure principle, and, at least at the time, none of them realised quite the damage they were about to do. And yet still we argue that marriage breakdown does no real harm to children, and pretend that the levels of stress and mental illness prevalent are somehow unrelated to the wider malaise which afflicts our society.
Atheists argue that you don’t have to be religious to be ‘good’, but who defines ‘good’ in an individualistic and relativistic world? Upon what common basis does a society agree on common norms? For the recorded history of these Islands, that has been a Christian basis; it seems unclear we have, or will find, another basis. Can an atomised, individualistic relativism provide any stable basis for social cohesion? It is not accidental that some pretty fundamentalist forms of faith (including the church of climate change) attract young people. What sort of society is it they grow up in, where are the institutions and organisations which help bind them together?
When I was young for me it was, above all, my church. That span out into where I lived, as I worked with groups helping the young, or with food-kitchens, or with charities which raised money for others. For others it was political societies, or young farmers or their Labour Club activities. Through these, and a myriad of organisations, young folk mixed with each other and older folk, and the social cohesion we found in our families was broadened into things which benefitted those to whom we were not related.
In that time and place those who took a lead were expected to behave with integrity. Of course, being human, they didn’t always, but no one would have thought a vicar who committed adultery, a bank manager who fiddled the books, or a politician caught doing something dodgy was other than the exception; the reason such opprobrium was heaped on them was it was felt they had let the side down.
Honour, now there’s a word you don’t hear much of nowadays – we’ve all become Falstaff. It is just a word. And there’s the rub, we have separated words out from the content of what they are meant to represent – we have made them into idols. Lord Sacks’ diagnosis and analysis are compelling – what’s less clear is how we get out of the Slough of Despond into which we have fallen.
All Along the Watchtower 
Well, I remember an interesting conversation with a (southern) Irish baptist – ex Catholic. Looking precisely at the situation of Christianity in Britain, he said, ‘The Lord raises people up for a purpose and then He brings them down again when they get too big for their boots.’
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Or is that just the British projecting one of their charactersitics on the Lord?
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…. he wasn’t British.
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Ah, the disease has spread then?
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Which disease?
It’s self evident (I would have thought) that God is hiding his face at the moment. The remainder depends, I suppose, on how one reads history.
I think his point was that whatever one things of the Empire (which was IMO a rather ugly piece of work), the Christians did take advantage of it and it gave opportunities for missionary work – and it’s well documented that the Irish Catholics also took the opportunity presented for missionary work.
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Tall oppy syndrome – endemic in the UK – can’t have folk getting above themselves.
Not sure on this God hiding HImself business. When would you say He was more in evidence?
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….. dunno. In fact – as I’ve said before, I don’t buy any line suggesting that the current generation is more godless than the previous.
It comes from Luther’s hymn, ‘he hides himself so wondrously’ which seems to make sense. Spurgeon, at the beginning of his ministry was convinced that God was hiding his face.
Not clear that he’s hiding his face any more than he has done for the last several thousand years.
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That would be my view – we often attribute actions to God which are projections of what we think.
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Methinks we have been soundly duped by the power brokers of our society. They want more control of the people and the only thing they fear is the family and the Church as they are the basis of values and a means of organizing communities around issues that they are at odds with their government on. So they do not argue issues anymore, they try to legislate them so that they become ‘untouchable’. Religious, moral issues are now regulated by the Government and the religions are all in a tizzy because they have convinced the ‘intellectual lazy’ class that these are social justice issues: equality, fair play, hate speech, discrimination etc.
Another interesting article about the Tom Foolery going on in the Homosexual debate should we ever return to it can be found here: http://www.aleteia.org/en/science-environment/documents/gender-theory-series-part-iii-1947001
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Servus – just glanced at the link, but it’s not really my kind of article.
I was reminded, however, of a notice in the photocopying room, entitled ‘Rules for Reproduction’.
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And a very handy set of rules they are, Jock. 🙂
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Falstaff’s indeed, and what is perhaps more worrisome than the secular ethos is a new Judaeo Christian ethic that agrees with it. Until our churches stop capitulating to the secular world and stop worrying about whether they will be despised by the new godless hordes and called all manner of names, we will not be distinguishable from the materialistic, personal freedom loving, apathy wracked populace that has sold their birth rite for a bowl of gruel as did Esau. Our churches need to back up and get an objective view of how they are being played by the state and we the people need to see past the silky smooth-talking preachers who seem more fit for politics than for battling the world, the flesh and the devil. We all need to grow a backbone and draw a line in the sand or find ourselves bobbing in an angry ocean once the tide has ebbed.
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” Our churches need to back up and get an objective view of how they are being played by the state”
This is something I very much like.
Too often in my view, bishops (of whichsoever persuasion) seem to want to hob-nob with the state. It is the seduction of power.
Too often people say “things should change” and then abdicate their responsibilities by saying “the state should do such and such”.
Churches ought to be doing things themselves, wherever things are legal and church members pushing the state for changes wherever they are precuded from doing things that are otherwise reasonable. Now that’s easy to say, and no doubt particularly in the US there is lots of this type of activity going on.
However, the No. 1 problem with the state and the church isn’t so much that the state puts rules around sex or equality or whatever or whatever. Some such things might be important, but far more important is that the state takes money from ordinary people and in so doing prevents us from building up our own communities to a considerable extent because we lack sufficient funds to do it. The state claims to deliver back community facilities with the money it spends badly on our behalf: shoddy schools, welfare dished out irrespective of issues of personal responsibility for the recipients.
Low tax, or changes to the tax laws are, in my view, the number one area where our churches, as you say, ought to get an objective view of how they are being played by the state. Often times, the state gives some money to churches for some ‘good cause’ – e.g. a soup kitchen – in full knowledge that the church will provide free labour. There’s no choice for the church to do such things of their own volition often times. And then the state shows why it wanted cheap labour for it’s social programmes, because it then spends thousands of taxpayers hard earned money to send politicians and other troughing flunkies on state-funded junkets and other money wasting schemes.
Money talks. The state takes it from us and spends it unwisely. Let our churches start there and surely the other good things we seek can follow.
S.
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There is so much truth in what you have written here Struans. I think that the Church speaking out for the poor and supporting Govt. programs is an oxymoron. The poor were better taken care of before the Govt. got involved: real help and real charity. Most people who received help were grateful (something nobody is when receiving an ‘entitlement’ from the state). The recent, most troubling part that we are seeing in the US is a push to get the churches out of the ‘soup kitchen’ business and the ‘charity’ business. They are creating regulations that preclude an expense in getting the proper permits and inspections of kitchens and the like so that no church can afford to do what they did on a very limited budget. And I might say they did it while preserving the human dignity of the recipients and providing more nutritious and healthy meals than the govt. ever will. Instead of backing politicians and bills to increase govt. help for the poor we should be fighting for our historic involvement to combat these situations. We have a tendency to sterilize ourselves from the direct contact with the poor and needy by charitable giving to agencies and govt. programs. The human to human aspect to these problems is mostly lost these days and we feel insulated from them. I don’t see the virtue in this kind of help and I don’t see the restoration of human dignity to those who have fallen on hard times. That is what the churches used to provide and there is no substitute for it.
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Very true. Old Gladstone, who was a charitable fellow himself, was against State aid for that very reason. It was, he thought, easy for folk to become disconnected and just give money to the State, who would then do the needful – but the State had no conscience and no compassion, and no interest, incidentally, in the poor bettering themselves.
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Exactly so Geoffrey: many a societal problem has intensified by taking away the face from which charity comes. You won’t see compassion in the face of a bureaucrat as you fill out your forms.
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I do wonder about how far our problems lie, in part, with allowing the State to take the place of the individual?
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Could be a big part of the problem in my mind and may be one of the factors that is helping to empty the pews.
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I sense we are in full agreement here.
S.
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Geoffrey – I think Sacks makes some excellent points.
Too often our society encourages people to be consumers of other peoples thinking.
When faced with, for example, an everyday dilemma with a moral dimension, people adopt the moral relativist mode that the BBC and all of the usual suspects ram down peoples throats. Often times, there are other options that are not considered.
I find the increase of interest in ‘mindfulness’ hopeful that this might encourage others to think more. I’m also greatly interested in meditation: there’s a World Community for Christian Meditation programme at my church.
Perhaps there are glimmers of hope.
Here’s a thought. Is there not an opportunity in English state schools to change the nominally compulsory Christian worship from the currently ignored half-arsed fudge that most schools have into something completely different. Enforce the requirement, but instead of Jesus with a tambourine or whatever guff half of our state schools serve up, why not have a Christian meditation plant.
S.
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Good idea. I think anything, including nothing, would be better than some of the things I have seen at some schools.
At my last two schools, both Public schools, we had a straight down the line Christian form of worship, complete with a couple of hymn and a sermon from the Head (or occasionally your truly).
We had no complaints, and full attendance. I always found that if we made it clear what we were doing and had confidence in it, the boys went along with it. But the little darlings are like piranas, if they smell fear or blood, they’ll go for you.
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I think we’re on the same wavelength here. What children want is certainty, albeit in a plausible way. Give them an inch and they’ll go for you.
Now, I’m a man that likes nuances, but there are ways of communicating that work, and ways that don’t work.
Delivering a list of rights and wrongs might work for some of the duff pupils, but something else has to be served up for those whose minds we hope to stretch. Offer a confident, stern and forthright sermon, and it can be as nuanced as you like.
What doesn’t work is a timid delivery. Too often Jesus is reduced to some sort of nice chappie, and if we put our hands together and wave a tambourine, and try to be nice to people then all will be well.
In my view, schoolmasters ought to be of the old school. Gowns, discipline, and encouraging the learning, care and stretching of all, from whatsoever situation they come from.
I sense that you would have had a difficult time had you worked in the state sector. If I’d been a schoolmaster twenty or thirty years ago, I might have been tempted to start a fight each time I walked into the masters common room (or staff room, or whatever they’re called these days).
S.
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Aye, I stayed in the private sector for that reason. I was fortunate to get in before there were all these professors of education. I’m not a man of violence, but would be prepared to make an exception for these sad folk, who’ve wreaked a great deal of harm on children.
The thickos (and yes, there are such) like to know where they are, and can, once they know where they are, be taught. They can’t always be made to think hard, but they can be made to acquire the veneer of an education; not a lad left my charge but could read, write and add up and be a useful member of society.
The bright ones can be made to think, but if they sense you don’t really know what you think, or that you are pandaring to them, they can be merciless. I recall, as a young master, standing in for a colleague who’d gone off with what we then did not call ‘stress’. The little dears tried playing up with me the way they has with him, so I threw a blackboard duster at the oik at the back who didn’t shut up when told, and caught him on the shoulder. He piped up and said I could have hit his head; I told him that I had been careful, and had aimed at his shoulder – but if he wanted to test that, I had another duster. He said nowt after that. And oddly enough, I had no trouble for the rest of them.
Nowadays I’d probably have been done for assault. But you know, that class came to its sense after that, and neither I, nor my colleague when he returned, had any more trouble from them.
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is not a great feat of the imagination for anyone who has taught young boys – little vandals if you let them. Get them out running, or knocking seven bells out of each other at rugger, or, for the more sensible ones, cricket, and let them burn off their excess energy – and then work their brains hard.
Does them good, and I never found anyone complaining. Mind you, as my last Head said when I made that comment to him: ‘But would they, Geoffrey, really, would they?’
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How on earth schoolmasters can teach today when there’s no control of behaviour beats me.
You get two or three lads or ladettes and they can cause havoc with the rest of the children.
I’m in favour of sending miscreants away for some hard labour. Get them building dry stone walls across the Scottish highlands for a week, sleeping in tents, for a week. Then they can return and behave. Or picking up the litter at the side of motorways. Or something.
It won’t work for all of them. Some children will genuinely have had traumatic issues in their childhood or be from dysfunctional homes and need help and care. Send them away for a couple of weeks doing something useful in the open air, with some good talk and cameraderie in the evenings in some armchairs around an open fire with a stern but kindly and wise man whose been to the University of Life.
Or something.
The worst thing is just passing the buck, or doing nothing.
I see in the newspapers that Michael Gove is talking of getting ex-soldiers into the classroom. There’s a policy I agree with.
Discipline and care, instead of some top-down nanny-state imposed system where the schoolmaster is just supposed to follow some rule book of ten thousand paragraphs.
S.
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Aye, when I started in the 70s, there were still some of those old soldiers about, and damned good they were, men who’d knocked around and who no one would ever ‘rag’. I recall a fellow in my first *Grammar) School called Arnie Shufflebottom – well, to have survived in a boy’s school with a name like that he was, as you might think, a man of iron. No one messed with him.
It was the lads from the disfunctional backgrounds who liked the discipline the most – made them feel safe. They wanted rules and boundaries which weren’t there at home.
One of the great mistakes was stopping compulsory sport – lads need to run off that surplus energy in some way – not least once puberty strikes.
I feel sorry for lads now, the feminisation of the education profession has left too many of them with no worthwhile challenges and a set of mummies who want to understand them. I undertood the little brutes well enough – which is why I made them work hard and play hard.
I don’t know about lasses, never taught them. But I don’t favour mixed secondary schools – rank bad idea, too much spooning about. School is there for two purposes: teach them the best that has been thought in the past; and try to make them civilised. The rest is all educational flim-flam.
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Stopped compulsory sport? What? Schools don’t have compulsory sport nowadays? Ye gods. No wonder the youth of today is so dysfunctional.
I think there’s a place for mixed schools and single sex.
I’m in favour of a lot more weekly boarding provision in state schools. That way you can group the children how they ought to be grouped. Weekly boarding works. County councils could easily jack it up. Get schools into the back of beyond too where there’s fresh air, and away from McDonalds and all the rest of it.
First selection of pupils has to be by geographical factors, but if there’s boarding available, then that can be county wide, instead of some miniscule catchment area.
Then the second way that pupils ought to be selected for schools ought to be by behaviour. Get the ones that behave into schools without the disruptive ones.
Next cut is by ability.
Something like that. I’ve nowt experience running schools, but I sense the money is being spend badly.
You don’t need expensive architecturally appealing schools in expensive city locations. You need functional schools, and that’s it. Get the right sort of people into the profession: the University of Life is way more important than any trendy thinking.
Talking of schoolmasters called Geoffrey: here’s a fellow I respect: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9326681/Major-Geoffrey-Langlands-94-leaves-his-post-in-Pakistans-North-West-Frontier-Province-after-60-years.html
Look how much money his school is run on, but I bet the education he delivers isn’t half bad.
S.
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Yes, I spotted him – good man by all accounts.
Oh there is still something there, but they don’t have to do proper sports – they can do something ‘creative’ instead. Total waste of time – make the little tykes sweat and keep them out of mischief.
I agree with your idea about more state boarding schools. The reason public schools do well is we don’t waste money, we know it is hard won, and we have bursars (or the like, that was me at my last posting) to keep en eye on every penny. If we want new buildings, we tap the old boys and corporate donors.
Personally, I’d close every department of education in every university in the country. Teaching should be like being an apprentice – you learn on the job from someone who is doing it. I went along, as you have to, to all the compulsory ‘training’ stuff – total waste of everyone’s time.
There’s an element of zookeeping in every teacher’s job. Badly behaved lads have generally not had a firm hand at home or at school, and if you face the little darlngs down, they, too can learn. They respect you if you make them work and show them that you’ll take no nonsense.
Even before they abolished it, I never had to cane a lad. I always regarded resorting to that as a sign you’d lost. Best techniique was shown me by my first head of department, who, when I was observing, stopped a lad who was talking and called him to the fronet and said: ‘Well, Battersby, as you are in such good voice, you can take us through the rest of the final act of Richard II’. He made the little love come up to the front and try to teach. As it happened, Battersby was a bright lad and had some good stuff to say – so we were all happy. Mind you, Battersby didn’t invite the same treatment ever again – nor did any other lad.
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Fascinating stuff.
Maybe you should open your own teacher training academy.
I’m sure there’d be a lot of people who would put money your way to try to help it succeed.
People who don’t have the gumption to make good ideas succeed (or who have bad ideas) have to go cap in hand to the state for their money because they can’t get people to cough up without compulsion.
That ‘money talks’ isn’t always a bad thing.
S.
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It was, oddly enough, something I considered. The problem is the stranglehold that the teaching unions had (and still do to some extent) on who can and cannot become a teacher. The other part of the problem is that too many public school heads feel they have to pay lip-service to the sort of nonsense which goes on in state schools.
Gove, whom the unions hate, seems to have the right idea, and these academies seems a jolly good idea. Were I a decade younger, I’d now be tempted to go for it.
But we have to do away with the tyranny of the PGCE and the B.Eds – worthless nonsense.
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