Populist and resonant on Remembrance Sunday

I think very rapidly Remembrance Sunday is going to take over Easter, if it hasn’t already, in terms of church occupancy.

I would imagine that this comment, by the director general of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission - reported in The Times - might have some Anglicans worried.  It might add to a certain Hauerwas-like critique of Anglicanism's historic relationship with the state, a critique also associated with traditional Roman Catholic apologetic.  After all, what more reveals Anglicanism as mere cultural nostolgia than Anglican churches having greater attendances on Remembrance Sunday than on Easter Day?

Except that this assumption regarding concern for national story interpreted from within the Christian faith is hardly nostalgia.  Indeed, a national story interpreted without the Christian faith would now be secularism.  Therein lies the weakness of both the Hauerwas-like and traditional Roman Catholic critiques of Anglicanism: they are unable to offer a convincing, meaningful account of how a significant aspect of our life as "deeply social animals" is to be caught up in and transfigured in the Church's life.  Or, in the words of John Hughes, they are "ultimately dependent upon an overly angelic anthropology that renders key traditional practices incoherent".  Amongst those traditional practices are prayer for the magistrate and commonwealth, liturgical acts to sanctify the life of the commonwealth, and "at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars".

Which brings us back to Remembrance Sunday.  Rather than being a cause from grim commentary on how popular religiosity gets things so badly wrong, it should be a matter of joy that significant numbers of people in the 'secular' UK consider Remembrance Sunday as not being a secular event, but a day caught up with the Church's life of prayer. As Philip North, Bishop of Burnley, has said regarding the Church of England, it is part of the vocation of an Established Church (and, I would, Anglicanism more widely) to provide a Christian context to the experience and understanding of place, and "place includes not just local com­munity but the nation":

All too often, middle-class clergy squirm nervously during Remem­brance Sunday, and excise any hymns that hint of nationalism. But surely an Established Church has a part to play in finding a new and unifying national narrative that is patriotic, besides tolerant and in­­clusive. We have a lot to learn from our extraordinary armed-forces chap­­­­­­lains, whose work is too often forgotten by the wider Church.

The fact that church attendance markedly increases on Remembrance Sunday is surely evidence of the culture's desire for a national narrative grounded in something more than the vapid 'values' discourse that has shaped much of the politics of the past decades. 

It also illustrates the lack of appeal of for 'humanist' Remembrance ceremonies.  It is quite ironic that as the director general of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission speaks of the significance of church attendance on Remembrance Sunday, the National Secular Society continues with its campaign for Remembrance ceremonies to "be secular in nature".  The renewed popularity of Remembrance ceremonies - helpfully described by the National Secular Society as "dominated by Christianity and the established church" - suggests that the agonisingly banal prospect of secular ceremonies is not exactly resonating with the culture.

In other words, this is what Anglicanism should be doing - providing an experience of national life, and an understanding of the national story, shaped by Christian prayer, symbolism, and place (whether Westminster Abbey, the parish church, or a local war memorial consecrated by prayer and often marked with the sign of the Cross).

And if Remembrance Sunday does - or has - overtaken Easter Day in terms of church attendance, this is no reason for outrage.  Rather, it should lead the Church to ask questions of why its preaching and worship on Easter Day has failed to similarly attract the cultural imagination.  Thought also needs to be given to how Remembrance Sunday is associated with populist practices and ceremonies - poppies and simple but solemn liturgies - that has sometimes been overlooked by the contemporary Church in the celebration of Easter.

Rather than Remembrance Sunday church attendance, then, being a cause for regret or embarrassment, it points to how the Anglican experience can continue to resonate with a culture casually described as 'secular' - and it should urge us to consider how our celebrations of Easter can be equally populist and similarly resonant.