LIVING IN BABYLON: THE CHRISTIAN IN MODERN BRITAIN

…But how shall we sing the Lord’s song

In our strange land?  Psalm 178

 

If you had to be subject to one of the great empires of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, then the Persian Empire gave you incomparably the best deal.  The Persians positively encouraged you to keep your own cultural and religious traditions.  At the other end of the scale were the Assyrians, who – in a policy later followed by some slaving-ship crews  to discourage rebellion by the cargo – deliberately blended their captive nations to destroy former identity:  the emergence of the Samaritans from what had once been the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel was one notable result. The Babylonians were somewhere in the middle.  You had to conform to Babylonian culture and customs  but  – rather like the grammar schools in their attitude towards the working class – the Babylonians appreciated that there was a reservoir of talent which it would be foolish not to tap.  Several of the Old-Testament/Hebrew-Bible books concern themselves with the so-called Babylonian Captivity, but Daniel by itself will furnish requisite examples for the purposes of this essay.

            After the capture of Jerusalem, the Jewish elite of the Southern Kingdom were taken off to Babylon to be groomed for the civil service.  The four examples we are told about were given new names – Daniel becoming Belteshazzar and his companions being renamed Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego – and were immersed in Chaldaean language and literature.   When they asked to follow a vegetarian diet – to avoid eating meat offered to idols – their request was duly permitted; and after the three-year training, each of them was promoted. 

            Despite the comparative benevolence of all this, there was still an underlying insecurity.  You could be subject – rather like in modern politics – to some hare-brained scheme by some lunatic in authority; or to a shift of emphasis when the ruler of the country changed.   The  Babylonian sages, wizards and whatnot were in an even trickier situation than their Egyptian equivalents had been with Pharaoh: not only did they have to interpret the King’s dream; they had to tell him what it was in the first place.  Daniel, like Joseph before him, was more than equal to the occasion: and he and his companions were, once again, promoted. 

            As an offshoot, possibly, of his dream, Nebuchadnezzar had a golden idol constructed for everyone to worship.  Daniel’s three companions, for refusing to worship it, were cast into a  fiery furnace in which they survived: the guards seeing a fourth figure walking with them.  You can regard this as a piece of Jewish propaganda, or take it at face value: God demonstrating that his power was not localized to Israel, and He was still with the Jews in their captivity.  

            Daniel, escaping on that occasion, later fell foul of the new ruler Darius the Mede.  For praying to God, rather than to Darius, Daniel was cast into the lions’ den.  The Angel of the Lord, however, closed the lions’ mouths: again to be taken at face value or dismissed as another piece of Jewish propaganda.  Daniel, however, survived for a further series of visions: so difficult that even he needed help with the interpretation.  

 

Daniel in Babylon, and the Christian in modern Britain:  both subject to an external power with an alien outlook; a power relatively benign, but subject to bursts of unpredictability.

Any such comparison, of course, is only an analogy.  Christians in Britain are not threatened with the death penalty; although they might be fired in a career sense.  We have not been taken to the controlling empire; rather, it has been brought to us: for this is not a military entity but a concept, an empire of the mind.  The Christian stands in relation to pluralism much as the Babylonian Jews stood in relation to idol worship.  Often, it will leave you alone; once in a while, man-made commandments will conflict with those of God. 

 

Although I do not profess to be able to predict the future, I would venture to outline   three possible scenarios for the future of Britain.  The actual future, of course, might be any of these, or a mixture, or none of them.

In the first of these, Islam becomes sufficiently powerful for pluralism to feel itself challenged.   In this I am reminded of a couple of stories from my childhood.

Example A is something I read  when I was at primary school: I cannot  remember the title or any of the details other than the plot outline and that the dog was called Toby: who wrote it, or which culture gave rise to it in response to which perceived threat I have no idea.  There is a farm.  At night some malign creatures approach the farm to steal from it.  Toby scares them off with his barking.  Irritated by the noise, the farmer solves the problem not by investigating the cause, but by muzzling the dog so that he cannot bark or bite.  The creatures reach the farm, steal and cause havoc.  Eventually the farmer puts two and two together.  He unmuzzles and unchains Toby, who sorts out the problem the following night.

Example B is an Aesop fable.  A farmer finds a snake half dead with cold.  He takes it home and nurses it.   When it recovers, it attacks his wife and children.  He kills it with an axe.  This, I suppose, is the origin of the maxim ‘Nursing a viper in one’s bosom’. 

I hope that we never reach the situation envisaged by the ending of those two stories; indeed, that we never reach the situation which would make such endings liable even to be contemplated.  I cannot, however, forget that modern Britons have as ancestors those who once resolved their ideological differences by execution, and twice by civil war.  How deeply those memories are buried in the modern psyche – they are unlikely, after all, to be widely taught – I do not profess to know. 

As it is, in terms of the first story we have not got beyond the muzzling stage.  And let us suppose that the farmer in each story begins independently to sense danger, before any serious damage is done.  The London tube bombings were a wake up call that is still sinking into British consciousness, and I can think of another couple of real-life examples.   The failed car bombing outside a London nightclub was something different from a critique of British policy in Iraq.  This was an attack on “slag culture”.   Islam was claiming the right to make an analysis of certain western values; and an analysis, to boot that some Westerners might feel to be uncomfortably accurate, even if they were to disagree with the means of dealing with it.   And that, too, is likely to sink in: family members who criticise each other fiercely get strangely defensive when any one of them is criticised by an outsider.

         My second example of culture-clash – one of the bravest things I ever heard on television – was from a Muslim doctor.  It was one of those morning discussion programmes on whether contraceptives should be made available to underage girls.  The reply was that Muslim doctors did not feel that they should be encouraging casual sex among unmarried teenagers who were not ready for it. Imagine a non-Muslim having the courage to say that; or, indeed, being allowed to.  The next stages of the discussion were fascinating; for the pluralist assumptions that underlay the question were baffled at how to respond.    But just consider what it might do to society if that sort of value system were in control: for one thing, it would put a stop to that sort of interview.

            Let us assume then, the scenario that the last Pope predicted for Europe when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger: that the future of the continent is fought out between Islam and Secular Humanism, once Secular Humanism becomes sufficiently aware of its enemy.

            In its attempts to defend itself  while still being fair – and, to be fair to pluralism its essence is to try to be fair to everybody – secularism would have to control not only Islam, but other religions as well.  The Church of England would be disestablished.  Bishops would disappear from the House of Lords, assuming this were still to exist.  A republic would be a possibility: while getting rid of the national church why not divest yourself of its titular head as well?   Christmas would be replaced with Winterval; Easter with some secular festival occurring at some fixed time  to permit four school terms of equal length

            Within this framework, adherents of particular faiths could apply for time off to celebrate their particular faith festivals on particular days; and, in all probability, such requests would be granted.    In reply, the faiths would be required to comply with certain – perhaps maniacal – state directives: imprisonment, say, for using the word ‘God’ or ‘Allah’ in public, or for smoking in your own home.  Compulsory contraception for fourteen-year-old girls: combined with – who knows? – compulsory sex to test out adolescent understanding of contraception.  Pregnancy as the only recognised sexual offence.    

            A second possibility would be something more akin to proportional representation.   National life would be a consensus of a range of views:  Easter one year, say, Ramadan and Eid the next;  Winterval thereafter.  To a degree, we have that sort of thing already.  The last Archbishop Canterbury asked for stamps to be religious every year.  The Post Office – knowing perfectly well that Christmas is a secular festival quite as much as a religious one, and that the Archbishop has no right to speak for modern society – gave him the answer that they liked to alternate a religious theme one year with a secular one the next.  The House of Lords would survive with a quota system for the Spiritual section: bishops, gurus, mullahs, atheist philosophers of distinction etc: rather as different viewpoints are aired in ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4.  

A third possibility is a Christian revival, along the lines of the Act of Tolerance.  Other religions, or no religion would be allowed, but they would not be part of the fabric of national life: the sort of thing that applies in Saudi Arabia, where you can have your Christianity, but not try to convert anyone, and Christmas is not officially celebrated. 

 Stranger things, after all. have happened.  Who would have foreseen from the spiritual low point that the Church of England managed in the Eighteenth Century that there could be the Evangelical Revival?  Who would have expected that The French Revolution’s ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity would have deteriorated so rapidly into one elite first imprisoning and beheading another, and then itself?   Who would have thought that under such systematic persecution and indoctrination as prevailed in the USSR that religions – Islam, as well as Christianity – would re-emerge as intact as they appear to have done?   To the Jews, it must have seemed that the Babylonian Captivity might last forever.   Which of them would have predicted that they would return to their homeland,  and that the Temple would be rebuilt?

 

My own guess is that Christianity in a not-too-future Britain will find itself confronting the sort of situation that applied with St Paul.  He hired a hall, and argued with the Stoics and Epicureans.  And Christianity was never more vibrant than when it was having to sell itself within the market place of competing ideas.  Believers were believers from conviction, rather than habit. 

           One day, the Earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea; but not, I imagine, until the Second Coming.  Until then, we have the promise that the gates of Hell will not close on the Church.  The real Church, that is to say – the community of believers within and across all denominations – that is the Body of Christ in the world. 

         And in the interim, if secularism prevails over Islam, and the Church is disestablished, then Daniel is a good pointer to believers as to how they should conduct themselves for their sojourn in an alien world.