Christianity Falling, Christianism Rising

Why should it be that a country only nominally (ie. barely actively) Christian should see a rise of zealous Christianism? David Pollock of the British Humanist Association has a suggestion:

The churches are making a huge comeback in their influence and power over our lives – and they are doing so with the complicity and encouragement of our politicians. It started with the Blair government’s instant acceptance of the Church of England’s 2001 plans to open more schools (and use them to secure the church’s future rather than see them primarily as a public service).

Of course he has a point – our politicians have, in the post-ideological era, decided that there’s advantage to be had in courting the vote of the religiously zealous. In the age where identity politics are everything and where belief has misguidedly been given legislative protection under the banner of ‘equality’, they think pandering to pre-Enlightenment attitudes will gain them easy power. They may be right, but why, when Pollock suggests this appeal shouldn’t fall on fertile ground, does it?

I think Frank Swain identified much of the answer in his excellent talk for the Westminster Skeptics a few weeks ago. We’re not just in an age of identity politics, we’re in an age where we have innumerable claims to the truth coupled to a delivery device unheard of in history. It’s no surprise that the Internet has allowed Islamists to spread their myths with alarming ease – with such an effective bully pulpit (the ‘net is hardly the Enlightening force many had hoped – in large measure the converted continuously preach only to the converted) their Christian counterparts have even decided to speak like us. We say the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and we know it from carbon dating. They say carbon dating methods are unreliable and the earth is only 6000 years old. Emboldened by stealing our clothes they’re on the rise, but surely we live in an age of reason, where education and knowledge are everything?

Watched Big Brother lately? How many people think Raoul Moat was a hero? Who thought Jade Goody was a role model? Being an idiot makes you rich and famous in the blink of an eye. Being a murderer makes you a folk hero. Is it because of the absence of ideology, have scientists failed to make their case to the current generation, or do we just take society’s embracing of Enlightenment values for granted? Are fairy stories just plain more entertaining and comforting than cold, hard emotionless facts? Well I don’t think so. Check Professor Brian Cox and his science/documentary series ‘Wonders of the Solar System’, standing up relentlessly for science and evidence-based policy-making, whilst bringing rockstar-like energy to the subject of cosmology. Prof Cox is fast gaining Dawkins-style reverence, and for all the right reasons; Christianism won’t gain a foothold everywhere.

But we do live in a society now fully marketised, where everything is given a financial value, leading to very clear winners and losers. Should it be any surprise that the economic losers – be they the Joe Cienkowskis of this world or Nigerian migrants – find solace in what makes them feel safe and valued, even if that means denouncing science and reason? We ignore this issue more than any other at our peril if we really care about the direction in which our society’s values are going. It would be easy merely to denounce African churches which label children ‘witches’, or the Vatican for its relentless interference in the lives of the most vulnerable, but those values which allow these backward steps to take place represent a retreat more than anything – people are afraid. The West now lives under a neo-liberal economic consensus, barely questions it and then wonders why segments of the population do everything they can not to take part in that order. The rise of Christianism could easily be undermined if we came up with more believable solutions about how to be a more inclusive society.

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