Loss of faith

The Archbishop of Canterbury recently lamented the loss of Christian culture (here) and laid the blame at the feet of 'pluralistic' education.

I have some sympathy with this. In promoting everything, we promote nothing. At a local school recently year 6 and 7 children were told to look at SE Asia and pick a dominant religion to investigate. They were specifically told not to look at Christianity. The teacher wasn't being (she thought) anti-Christian she was rather making the assumption that most kids in that school would know about Christianity. I think this assumption makes more assumptions than it asserts.

I well remember when I was a teacher in the 70s, our principal challenging the school over the Easter weekend to find out what Easter was all about.

In those days most of the kids had some idea it was about Jesus and his crucifixion. Not so sure that is true. I certainly can no longer assume 30 years aftyer I was ordained that a random group of Aussies can more or less sustain the Lord's Prayer with a little help from their friends. This is not, I think, because of an embarrassment about praying publicly. It is because by and large we have no clue.

Strangely the army did quite a lot to sustain religious culture. So, service men and women of WWII and to a lesser extent Vietnam, probably were made to recite the Lord's Prayer on parade. Now that there are less of them they don't permeate a funeral in the same way so you can't always be assured even the 'traditional' words will be picked up.

Does it matter? The loss of common heritage. I think it does. I always go back to the way the Bible stories permeate English literature.

How on earth do you (for example) understand Wilfred Owen's devastating poem. The Parable of the Young Man and the Old...if you don't understand what the sacrifice of Isaac is all about, or that it comes from the bible, or what sacrifice is about?

I think Rowan Williams is right, not just or only from the religious point of view. But from the cultural point fo view also.

On not forgetting

We are reminded each year by the indomitable spirit of those who march of many things; I think of the fact that try as they may ANZAC continues to be more of a community observance than a political one.

As the particular political concerns move out of popular consciousness these people keep marching. All of us are particularly aware of the enormous cost of war...and of the brevity of our attention to the cost paid largely by the young and those who lack influence for the decisions of the powerful. What senseless waste, what total insanity.

Wilfred Owen, the poet of The 'Great' War wrote in one of his finest poems The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, of the travesty of who makes the decisions and who pays the price

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,

And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps

and builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.

When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him, thy son.

Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,

A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not do so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.