A question of principle

I have always found the idea that the universe is ruled by an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent deity incomprehensible, and I shall never cease to marvel at the obduracy (and sometimes the ingenuity) of those who persist in this belief. But it is not the Christian idea of God that defines my attitude towards the Church (of whatever denomination); it is the Christian idea of man (though one idea might be said to follow from the other). The Christian “virtues” of humility, obediance and self-mortification (whether this is undertaken for its own sake, or for that of a suffering world) have always repelled me. I much prefer the Greek and Renaissance ideal that the affirmation of our powers and sensibilities should be the highest goal of man. And whilst it’s only fair to acknowledge that it has come a long way from its origins in an hysterical slave cult – partially rehabilitating and assimilating the classical heritage, and making significant cultural contributions of its own in the Medieval period and beyond - Christianity will never be entirely free from the taint of the nihilism and ressentiment of its early protagonists; and, unless I am very much mistaken, these tendencies are making something of a revival in the Church of England today.

Coleridge once looked upon the clergy of the Church of England as the cornerstone of what he called the “clerisy” – namely, the body of learned and upright men whose great charge it was to cultivate intellectual and moral excellence in our national life. It is difficult to see how this ideal could have been more cruelly mocked than by the state of today’s Anglican Church, as it drifts listlessly towards disestablishment, irrelevancy and oblivion.


It used to be taken for granted (and not just in M.R. James stories) that the parson would be an educated man, learned in theology and ecclesiology, and perhaps also a keen local historian and antiquarian. Nowadays a learned clergyman is very much the exception to the rule of mediocrity. But it isn’t just mediocrity I complain of here; it is a regrettable change of attitude of many in the Church towards its historic and cultural heritage. This changed attitude is hard to define succintly, but if I had to sum it up in a phrase I would call it the revenge of the spirit of self-mortification on the pursuit of excellence. Of course, this is not the self-mortification of the flesh practiced by the primitive Christians – its modern day practitioners appear sleek and well-fed enough; nor is it of the dour and mirthless Puritan variety – a certain kind of mindless and “happy clappy” jollity is looked upon very favourably, I understand (and must come as a welcome relief from the mournful strains of ‘Kumbaya’, I imagine). It is, rather, what might best be described as a self-mortification of the spirit, where this word sheds its fuzzy connotations of amorphous and effusive sentimentality and assumes a narrower, more specialised meaning denoting the highest expressions of our powers and sensibilities.

This new wisdom manifests itself in diverse ways. It can be openly iconoclastic (in what T.S. Eliot called “the vulgar, the trivial, and the pedantic” revisionism of the New English Bible, for example), but mostly it is content to assert its malign influence in more subtle and insidious ways. These include the unspoken rule that we shouldn’t be permitted to enjoy any genuinely sublime or beautiful cultural artefact without the admixture of a becoming sense of guilt or irony. “Guilt” here encompasses not only the more familiar ritual of futile (not to mention hypocritical and nauseating) handwringing about “our brothers and sisters starving while we, the privileged, enjoy this extravagant, but essentially frivolous, experience, etc.” (I’ve never been able to see the link between my enjoying a fan vault or a Tallis motet a little less and the alleviation of Third World poverty), but also the more sinister sentiment that it is somehow wrong to place the highest value on something from which many are wholly or partly excluded, not from want of opportunity, but by want of capacity to enjoy it. Irony, too, has its part to play in the war on cultural elitism. Not only does the juxtaposition of some tawdry contemporary “art” with the finest work of Medieval master masons detract from our enjoyment of the latter, but it also carries the subversive message, intended for the immature and the impressionable, that the two works are actually on a par (“this is how we expressed our faith in the thirteenth century, and this is how we express it today”).


My antiquarian interests mean that encounters with these kinds of negative attitudes are frequent and unavoidable. As a lover of Gothic architecture, I like to visit old churches. While I find that non-religious visitors are still welcomed in some parish churches, in others I have encountered reactions which range from blank incomprehension through to open hostility. Of course, this is less true in cathedrals or those churches geared up for large numbers of tourists. But even there I sometimes feel as though I’m venturing into enemy territory and, as they say in John Le Carre novels, that “Moscow rules apply”. An incident that occurred during a visit to a cathedral somewhere in England will, I hope, help illustrate what I mean.

My visit was drawing to a close, and I was starting to think about lunch, when I noticed an interesting Elizabethan burial monument, one that didn’t appear to be described in Esdaile’s English Church Monuments, in the south aisle of the nave. The only problem was it was obscured behind some hideous chrome and plastic exhibition boards, to which were affixed posters about AIDS or famine in Africa, and some very indifferent artwork from the local comprehensive which would have struggled to make it into the "under fives" category on 'Vision-On'. Anyway, I moved some stacked chairs which were blocking off the narrowish gap between the display boards and the wall, and proceeded to make my way carefully towards the tomb. I was just about to bend down to make my inspection, an operation which would have involved giving the display boards the gentlest nudge with my posterior, when I heard a noise like snort and a shrill stentorian voice erupted from somewhere behind me. “Excuse me,” bellowed the voice, which might have issued from a Wodehouse aunt, “what do you think you are doing?” Composing myself, I turned around to be confronted by a pugnacious-looking obese woman of mature years. Smiling, as I thought, in a friendly and disarming manner, I explained that I was merely trying to inspect the tomb. Looking at me incredulously, as if the proffered explanation could only have been an absurd ruse designed to conceal some baser purpose, she stated unapologetically that it wasn’t possible to move the display boards for health and safety reasons. This seemed odd to me at the time (- when “health and safety” was not yet a ready-made excuse not to do almost anything -) because the display boards were firmly anchored in a bulbous and sturdy base, and there was quite clearly no danger of their toppling over. When I asked if I might at least read the inscription, she retorted triumphantly that there was a translation on a plaque which could be read without disturbing the display boards. To this I objected that none of the “translations” on the other plaques bore much resemblance to the original inscriptions, and were evidently intended only to satisfy the casual curiosity of the average tourist. There was a brief hiatus in our exchange, and for a moment I thought I might have gained my point. But my adversary was not to be so easily cheated of her victory. Her complexion, already somewhat florid, was now distinctly purplish. She puffed herself up like a particularly obnoxious species of poisonous reptile, poised to deliver a venomous strike: “If you don’t come away immediately“, she hissed, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave”. It was a fight or flight moment, and I’m ashamed to say that, in the best traditions of Bertie Wooster, I funked it, repairing to the pub round the corner to lick my wounds. When I returned an hour or two later, resolved upon a second assault on the tomb, it was with dismay that I discovered that the bloated Harpy was still at her station in the gift shop, a vantage point from which she enjoyed a clear view of the display boards in front of the tomb. She glared at me menacingly. The element of surprise lost, I admitted defeat. The tomb remained unvisited.


It was only when I was on the train home, reflecting on my ignominious retreat from the gift shop ogress, and racking my brains for an esprit de l’escalier which might have served as an effective Parthian shot, that it dawned on me that it wasn’t my supposed breach of health and safety rules that had so enraged her, it was the implied contempt of the aesthete for her ugly display boards and the flabby humanitarian values they proclaimed. In a flash I saw that it was my blindness to the true source and virulence of her hostility which had left me vulnerable to her attack.


Sun Tzu counsels us to “know thy enemy” and reminds us that “never will those who wage war tire of deception”: wise words indeed. Now, following in the path of the great warrior, I prefer to win my victories without giving battle. Of course, it is not always possible to elude bossy and patronising busybodies, who seem to possess that peculiar instinct of the self-righteous for sniffing out the self-indulgent; but I find that guile and dissimulation, rather than frankness and rational argument, are the most effective tactics where a skirmish is unavoidable.


It has sometimes been suggested that showing greater courtesy and respect for the rules and values of my hosts might yield more favourable results than my wonted cunning and deceit. And, I readily concede, this approach is all very well when one is dealing with a friendly and sympathetic counterpart (and I still come across them from time to time). But the wily adversary – the one who divines my ulterior motive before I speak, and perceives my insincerity when I do – will always scorn payment in such false coin: my polite request will be met with an equally polite refusal. If personal charm is not to be found among my meagre store of gifts, am I really so very much to blame for preferring the example of Machiavel to that of Castiglione? And if I were to practise his false virtues of humility, obedience and self-mortification, would I not, by embracing the detested principles of my enemy, stand convicted of the basest hypocrisy?