NOT THE DEATH OF GOD

Samuel Palmer, "Coming from Evening Church" (ca. 1827)

A few nights ago I heard an interview with a highly intelligent and perceptive woman, Monique Hébrard, who has written on “Twelve Urgencies for the Church”. One of the urgencies, she said, was for the Church to recognise that “Christendom is dead”. Not God, not Christianity: Christendom. Referring to the recent massive demonstrations in France against gay marriage, she said that many of the demonstrators were simply “nostalgic for Christendom”: a time when the Church dictated its morality to society at large. When the interviewer asked, “So, it’s gone? Isn’t that sort of sad? Haven’t a lot of good things gone with it?” Hébrard replied, “Yes, sure. Lots of good things have gone. But what are we going to do? Cry? No: we’re going to live.” A sturdy answer. And I thought she was probably right.

Then today I was preparing for Christmas, around family, after discussing what we were going to do on Christmas Eve, and listening to one of my favourite ancient Christmas vinyls: the glorious Austrian soprano Maria Stader singing German Christmas songs. And I thought of the death of Christendom. The faithful go on being faithful, and find ways to live with the perfectly valid pagan aspects of Yuletide. Angry atheists carry on being Grinches, growling at the season in their lairs. But what is vanishing is the wave that carried some beauty, some thoughtfulness and even some prayer into the ordinary deserts of the year’s dark. Singing “Silent Night” and “O little town of Bethlehem” was never proselytism: it was a way for thousands to touch the hem of a garment.

And it made me think of an urgency different from Hébrard’s: with what are we going to replace “Christendom”? What is the Church going to do for the thousands who are not ready to become active members of the Party, so to speak? In French politics, the parties distinguish between “les militants”, the full card-carrying members, and “les sympathisants” who will probably vote for you at the next election but still maintain some distance. What I see in the mainstream Churches at the moment is a sense that nowadays you need to be “un militant”, and the more militant the better: to be a “sympathisant” is simply not good enough.

But what happened to the five thousand who were fed in Galilee? How many became apostles, enthusiasts, constantly at Temple or synagogue, founding and running charitable organisations to help widows and orphans? Ten per cent., probably. But the other 4500? Did they continue worshipping irregularly, keeping what commandments they could but not scrupulously, and yet – and yet with a new question always behind their eyes, a new presence filling their prayers when they least expected it?

This is what “Christendom” did. I remember it, as I was part of the generation that saw it turn. Many people went to church because, yes, they believed, but also because it was what they were used to and because it was a good thing to do on Sunday mornings. “I don’t know why it is,” said Squire Letterby in Charles Morgan’s Breeze of Morning, “but church and sherry always seem to go together.”

Not good enough, perhaps. But the Church is in danger here of an insidious hypocrisy. The standard justification for “a smaller, poorer Church”, as Pope Francis says he wants, is that people are leaving in droves anyway, and that the Church should respond to that by being both smaller and far more activist, involved in social action and evangelizing at every level. What this justification occludes is the fact that a tight, coherent, highly activist Church may in fact participate in the process it claims to observe: the death of Christendom. Such a Church may in fact be helping to kill what was left of Christendom.

In the Hébrard spirit, facing up to things is a Good Thing. In that case, the Church should perhaps face up to that uncomfortable possibility. Is it what is wanted? Is the ecclesiastical reaction to Christendom’s wasting illness to be simply “Good riddance”? Do we prefer 500 militants on their own to 500 militants plus 4500 people who come for mixed and sometimes unworthy reasons? Would such a reaction be consistent with the claimed evangelical spirit, or even with charity? Or would it be whisking away the garment’s hem from their touch?

What could be done to save that remnant of “Christendom”? The Church can’t get its authority over the secular world back. But part of its claimed evangelism could be a gentler conversation with the “Yes, I used to go, but it’s been so long” people; a listening to their reasons for not going, both the ones they give and the ones they don’t give; a less strident tone in the Church’s pronouncements on itself and the world; a little more attention to prayer and spirituality; a less continual emphasis on change; a great deal more beauty in the liturgy; a recognition that nostalgia is an aspect of human nature that God can love also, and not necessarily a form of sin; and that, contrary to a certain Gospel pronouncement, some old bottles hold new wine quite well.

The villagers in my part of France, even the elderly, have taken to the Vatican II Mass quite well. They like the cheerfulness, and shaking hands at the Peace. But out of 48 villages, each main Sunday Mass (there are 3 in all, a Saturday night and two Sunday) has about 40 people, who drive considerable distances. And I personally know a number of people who stay away yet who might have been retained; those for whom the new régime has neither loaves nor fishes. It seems a pity.