These words by David Brooks are very appropriate reading for today, Accession Day. Brooks is, of course, referring to the United States: the article is entitled 'How America Got Mean'. For those of us in the realms of King Charles III, however, his words will also resonate. "The words that define our age reek of menace".
While a report by the think-tank British Future and the pressure group Labour Together has stated that "we do not have culture wars in Britain", it accepted that "we do have culture clashes ... To those who live here, Britain feels more divided than it should be". Some of us might think that this is rather too optimistic. 'Culture clashes' in the UK have been growing in intensity. A heightened partisanship is evident in much commentary. The civic norms which secured mutual respect and underpinned our common institutions have, at the very least, significantly frayed.
This is recognised by the report when it proposes a renewal of our "common ground":
To live together in a democracy with citizens who have different values and identities requires that we listen with empathy and humility. Our goal should be to understand and learn from others, not to overcome them. We must keep alive the possibility that our own instincts are wrong and that others, no matter their background or beliefs, may have insights we are unable to access. Democracy is a practice as well as a political system. Free and open conversation is its lifeblood: not just debating one’s fellow citizen, but listening and feeling what they feel.
What the report does not address, however, is how this common ground can be nourished. What are the spiritual and philosophical sources which can enrich such common ground? It is noticeable that the words 'spiritual', 'philosophy'', and 'virtue/s' do not appear at all in the report. In other words, the "spiritual crisis" discerned by Brook is entirely overlooked.
This has significant consequences. A flourishing, healthy civic life, its institutions, and its norms require narratives which embody a moral vision and accounts of the virtues which sustain civic life. This highlights the public significance of the decline of Christianity in the contemporary United Kingdom, as commentator columnist Rod Liddle (an agnostic) recently suggested:
the retreat of Christianity in our country - or more properly our collective retreat from it - has enormously diminished us, both as individuals and as a society ... The decline of Christianity isn't the sole cause of our various, festering ills, but it has been a huge contributory factor.
Liddle's article followed a widely-reported survey by The Times of the opinions of Church of England clergy. Predictably, of course, a focus on human sexuality has led to an unseemly debate regarding the poll. Less attention was given to the poll reporting on answers to Christianity and national life:
Asked whether they think “Britain can or cannot be described as a Christian country”, only a quarter (24.2 per cent) answered: “Yes, Britain can be described as a Christian country today”. Almost two thirds (64.2 per cent) said Britain can be called Christian “but only historically, not currently” while 9.2 per cent answered “no”.
By far the most interesting Church of England response to this aspect of the poll - and, by extension, to Liddle's remarks - was by Andrew Rumsey, Bishop of Ramsbury:
national identity is not just a description of the present but it is an inheritance from the past ... it also concerns not only current patterns and practices of belief ... but also the formative traditions that have shaped our culture.
In other words, the phrasing of the poll - "only historically" (emphasis added) - is seriously misleading. To be an historically Christian country is to have a formative tradition that is Christian, a significant source of our common life, rooting it in a moral vision and account of the virtues. And it is this which Accession Day celebrates. In words from the prayers appointed for Accession Day:
that under him this nation may be wisely governed, and thy Church may serve thee in all godly quietness ... let truth and justice, holiness and righteousness, peace and charity, abound in his days.
Losing this moral vision and account of the virtues, the culture forgetting its historically Christian identity, and the Church too often abandoning any recognition of the significance of this aspect of national identity, leaves our public life rootless and lost, too often relying on shallow, vapid alternatives. Not included in this description are the other faith traditions - Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism - each with their own rich vision of the moral life, but lacking the public recognition or historic presence of Christianity.
We might note at this point another of the Accession Day prayers:
Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that, as there is but one Body, and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.
Rather than being an exclusivist, triumphalist Christian call, inappropriate for a diverse society, it petitions that our civic and national life may know the unity to which the Church is called; the unity in which we are members of one another, our differences complementary, bound together in charity. It concludes with a Christian affirmation that all prayers are gathered up in Christ into the Triune God: "and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee". Here again we see how a Christian moral vision can enrich and guide civic life in a pluralist, procedurally secular (rather than programmatically secular, to use terms from Rowan Williams) society. It also highlights how a historic Christian public culture creates space for the other faith traditions to share their moral visions and accounts of the virtues in the public realm.
This is why Accession Day matters. It is an opportunity for the churches in this realm, and for the Anglican churches in particular, to set forth a Christian moral vision and account of the virtues in the context of national life, in an age which 'reeks of menace', amidst a culture seemingly bereft of meaningful sources to guide and shape its common life, offering the hope of a realm healed, reconciled, renewed.
(The picture is of the Anointing Screen used in the coronation of His Majesty King Charles III. The screen's designer was Orthodox iconographer Aidan Hart. His reflection on the symbolism of the screen is superb.)
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