In the 2011 census, 72% of Britons described themselves as ‘Christian’. In the light of this, Richard Dawkins commissioned a follow-up survey to see how many people understood their own description of themselves.
In my view, the great value of Dawkins is his gift for asking questions that really do need to be asked. ‘What is a Christian?’ is one of them. Before I attempt the answer I might have given had I been part of his survey, I should like to put it in the context of a wider problem. It is true that the British public is befuddled about what it means to be a Christian. But it is equally befuddled about a whole range of other words and concepts. How about these, just as a sample: disinterested, phobia, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, puritan, gentleman and bastard? I should like briefly to address issues I have encountered with each of these before moving on to Dawkins’s particular concern
Members of the older generation, such as me, tend to think of ‘disinterested’ as meaning ‘impartial’. For the younger generation – look at the reports written by teachers under thirty – it tends to mean ‘bored’ or ‘uninterested’. Both meanings circulate simultaneously, to mutual confusion. I was once at complete cross purposes in a conversation, purely as a result of this. We resolved the issue by going back to definitions, and choosing other words entirely.
Consider ‘arachnophobia’. If it means simply ‘fear of spiders’, well and good. Dictionary definitions of ‘phobia’, however, add emphases like ’morbid’ or ‘obsessive’: refocusing the definition as an irrational fear of something that is harmless. If that is the meaning, then we need another word altogether when we talk about spiders. It is not irrational to be afraid of them; for they can be dangerous. Septicaemia from a spider bite can kill you.
I have heard it said that it is ‘racist’ to be anti-Moslem. Intolerant, yes, but that is different. Would it be ‘racist’ to be anti-Christian, when Christianity is global? What did the speaker imagine Islam was: a race, or a religion? (The question is not an idle one). It may have started in Arabia, but the greatest concentration of Moslems is now in Indonesia
I once commented that women had a different skin structure from men. They had an extra layer of fat, to protect an unborn child. A female present immediately denounced me as ‘sexist’ but my comment was intended as an observation about biology, not about social organization. It is not sexist, unless Nature itself is sexist. If it’s inaccurate, then it’s inaccurate as biology, not as sociology.
How many people who use the word ‘fascist’ could tell you what the fasces were? George Orwell said ‘fascist’ had become so useless as a descriptive political term that it was synonymous with ‘something you’d don’t like’.
Can you call yourself a communist if haven’t read Capital or Theses on Feuerbach, but only The Communist Manifesto? What if you’ve read none of them, and never even heard of the middle one? Can you be a communist if you can’t read? Ask those who say they can define communism to explain the difference between Leninism and Trotskyism. Some can, in my experience; but some can’t.
A Puritan, for me, is someone like Milton Milton
At one time, you could say, without any inconsistency: “He’s a total swine, but a real gentleman.” You meant his position in the social structure. The Victorians confused things by defining a ‘gentleman’ as anyone with genteel qualities, regardless of class. Thus Leonard Bast, in Howard’s End, is a ‘gentleman’; although he is not a ‘gentleman’.
If you want to know what ‘bastard’ once meant, and what pain it could cause, look at King Lear:
Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous and my shape as true
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base?
(I, 2, 6-10)
It is perfectly acceptable nowadays to say, “He’s an absolute bastard!” if by that you are making reference to his personality. What is completely forbidden is to use it in relation to his ancestry. This distinction must be borne in mind when encountering the literature of the past.
After these preliminaries, we come at last to Dawkins’s pertinent question. As he so rightly points out, many people who say they are Christians don’t know what they’re assenting to. They don’t know what they’re supposed to believe, and don’t believe things they ought to. Entirely valid points. Although he rejects them all, Dawkins has a much clearer grasp than many Christians of what the central doctrines of Christianity actually are; just as many of those with the clearest understanding of Marxism are themselves non-Marxists.
Let us consider an analogy with socialism. Suppose I affirm that I’m a socialist. That’s to say, I admire socialism, or am a socialist in spirit, but I think we ought to privatize the Health Service, dismantle the Welfare State, extend private education, and ban union membership. If you then say to me I can’t be a socialist because the things I believe are the opposite of what socialists believe, I then counter with, “Who the hell are you to tell me what a socialist is?”
Presumably the way forward would then be a process of negotiation. Not all socialists believe exactly the same thing, but there must be a minimum core of convictions to which they all adhere. To become a real socialist, I too would need to adhere to that minimum core: which would mean adopting new beliefs, and abandoning many of my existing ones.
In regard to Christianity, Dawkins is absolutely right. On virtually any television discussion involving religion you will hear: “I’m a Christian. I follow Christ’s teachings; although I don’t believe in God.” Which teachings, exactly? Christ’s first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. How are you to do that if you don’t believe in God? How can you take up your cross if you don’t think the cross of Christ had any more significance than the cross of Spartacus?
Even saying you do believe in God need not be much better. There are lots of Gods. The Aztecs believed in God. And God – Aztec style – demanded a daily human sacrifice.
Historically, the term ‘Christian’ was first used at Antioch
The resurrection, for Paul, is absolutely key to what it means to be a Christian: no resurrection, no Christianity. “If Christ was not raised from the dead, your faith is in vain.” Eat, drink and be merry: and die tomorrow. Thus Paul’s satire on the Epicureans. In deference to the Stoics, however, whom he respected, he comes up with lists of virtues according to the Stoic format. Ethics are important for Paul, but Christianity is more than ethicism.
Assuming that he’d known about electricity, defining a religion as an ethical code would be, for Paul, like describing an electric carving knife as something that cuts: the outcome is being given more prominence than the motivating force that produces the outcome. If you just want something that cuts, use an ordinary knife. It’s much cheaper and simpler.
Thus, if religion is just an ethical code – rather than a relationship with God, from which all else flows – then you don’t need Paul or Paul’s lists. Or Christ’s beatitudes. The Stoic lists will do equally well. Better still: scrap every religion going (as Dawkins would love to do), start again from scratch, and draw up a new code of ethics on a purely rational basis to suit the modern world, after the pattern established by the Enlightenment.
The matter, of course, does not end there for those who want to keep their definition of Christianity without accepting Paul’s strictures. Who the hell is Paul, to tell us what a Christian is? Who the hell is Christ to tell us what a Christian is? Who the hell is God to tell me what I can and can’t do? Who the hell are you to tell me when your birthday is if I happen to disagree with you? And so on.
Presumably there can be no agreement about what a Christian – or anything else – is, unless there’s agreement on authority. Authority – on anything – is anathema to our culture. Hence at least some of our confusion about words. But unless we have it, then the sort of fuzziness that Dawkins rightly pinpoints will continue. He may be wrong about the weakness of Christianity itself, but he is certainly right about its weakness in Britain
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