THE title of this book, God is an Englishman, made me suspicious. I wondered whether this was yet another mocking account of the pieties of yesterday. I could not have been more wrong.
The book is divided into two parts: “What England owes Christianity”, followed by “What Christianity still can give”. Bijan Omrani is an experienced teacher, who is currently a Research Fellow at Exeter University. He writes with colour and clarity, covering a huge canvas to illustrate how profoundly English culture is saturated in Christian teaching and practice.
Perhaps the most fundamental impact was on the language itself. After William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible and Archbishop Cranmer’s Prayer Book, English became a vehicle for lofty spiritual themes, and the scriptures shaped the terms of political debate.
The influence of the Christian faith on the development of English prose and poetry is illustrated by a florilegium from some of the best 17th-century work. The soundscape was also transformed by liturgical chant and, later, hymn-singing.
There is a chapter on how charities and institutions with an explicitly Christian origin had a profound impact on English society. Even the probation service emerged from the work of police-court missionaries.
Particular attention is given to Christian attempts to abolish the slave trade. The contribution of my predecessor Beilby Porteus is highlighted. From his seat in the House of Lords, he campaigned for nearly 30 years to bring “that opprobrious traffic” to an end.
After such a broad conspectus of what England owes to Christianity, the second part is shorter and discusses, soberly and acutely, whether Christianity has any future in our country. Omrani looks at the flaws in the thesis that Christianity and religion in general were bound to disappear with the march of human progress, and examines some even more pertinent causes for the decline of church attendance in England.
Perhaps the most significant shift of all was in the field of education. The book by Percy Nunn, Education: Its data and first principles, became very influential after the Second World War. For Nunn, education should not include the “assertion of any particular ideal of life”. The teacher must not claim any superior wisdom to the pupil or expound the greater merits of an inherited canon.
It is true that the 1944 and subsequent Education Acts obliged schools to provide a daily act of collective worship, but, by the beginning of this century, fewer than 20 per cent of schools observed the law in this respect.
Government guidance directs schools to promote “fundamental British values”, which are listed as being “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs”. These “values” were promulgated in the context of heightened anxiety about “extremism” and the risk of terrorism.
This thin gruel, a handful of “disjointed theoretical notions”, as Omrani says, is shorn of any narrative that can convey some sense of “identity, character and purpose”. Civilisations die in the night when no one can be found to give their lives for them, and, in the context of our current perception of the dangers that we face as a nation, the adequacy of a handful of tentative ideas must be doubtful.
The book acknowledges the recent scandals that have thrown the frailty of the Church and its leaders into sharp relief. It also echoes the criticisms of managerialism and the stress experienced by so many people involved in the Church’s life. In the final chapter, “Spiritual Worth”, there is a moving restatement of the truth that the Christian faith has been central to “the emergence, development and flourishing of England as a nation” in the past, and has the capacity to play a creative part in the future.
This is an affectionate but deeply realistic book, and deserves a wide circulation among those concerned by the deeper reasons for our current malaise.
The Rt Revd Lord Chartres is a former Bishop of London.
God is an Englishman: Christianity and the creation of England
Bijan Omrani
Swift Press £25
(978-1-80075-306-8)
Church Times Bookshop £20
