Religion
Middle-class Christianity
Edward Norman
The recent conference of church leaders at Birmingham, attended by representatives from the Church of England and the various denominations, was conducted with notable decorum and minimal publicity. The gathering has dispersed, and it will not be until January that a report of the proceedings will be available for general comment. But among the problems facing Christianity in this country today it is reasonably certain that one particularly crucial one will not have worried the delegates at Birmingham unduly, for it is a problem they probably assume they have gone far in removing. This is the middleclass orientation of the ministry of the church. It is now widely believed that however great a deposit of older clergymen may still reflect middle-class prejudices, the younger men, and those reformers who attract all the publicity, are emancipated from class reference and class interests, and are anxious to project a peoples' church, a folk church, a church on the frontiers of industrial society, concerned with the social issues of the hour. Those who believe this are mistaken. The church today, and especially the Church of England, remains a middle-class institution, reflecting the preoccupations and obsessions of middle-class publicists and intellectuals. All the churchmen have done, of course, is to follow a section of middle-class opinion in its twentiethcentury translation from acquiescence in the existing social values to liberal and radical criticism of them. Their belief that standing of, the priorities of the workingclasses than it has ever had. It is clear, for example, that most working-class people are not particularly anxious to adopt the humanist values of the bourgeois intellectuals — they are not interested in opposing censorship, in supporting liberation movements, permissive legislation, penal reform, racial equality, or in assisting the development of the 'Third World.' Large sections of working-class opinion are probably not even wedded to concepts of political egalitarianism. Once the middle classes shoved their redundant sons into the ministry of the church: today they become social workers, earnestly dedicated to instructing the working classes into a reverence for the new social morality discovered by the bourgeoisie. So it was in the Victorian England of which we hear so poor an account from the reformers of today. Solemn and good men then also sought the general improvement of society without particular reference to the real wishes of those who were to be improved. Now it is perfectly arguable that this is all inevitable. It is sound constitutional practice for Parliament to lead opinion and not to follow it. There can be little doubt that if working-class values really did prevail, capital punishment, for example, would still survive, the laws against homosexuality would remain on the statute book, and, black men would have a thin time of it when trying to get a job. Some of this undoubtedly would be disagreeable: the real complaint is against the dangerous innocence of those clergymen who, because they are genuine in their concern for the welfare of the wrking classes, really do believe that they have cut themselves free of class cultural Interests and class reference. The workingclasses, however, see through them. They are not particularly attracted to the folksy new liturgies or to the wid,espread repentance of the public schoolboys. They still feel patronised. For they see that the shining new radicalism of the reformist clergy is usually the spin-off from a series of cultural attitudes which are quite alien to their own way of thinking.
It is also arguable that present attempts to ' re-interpret ' Christianity for 'modern man' are equally alien to modern working-class men. The 'modern man' of the theologians and church reformers is a bourgeois model — full of concern for liberation movements and obsessed with doctrines about personal rights. 'Self-authenticating morality' — that darling of the modern churchmen — is a bourgeois concept if ever there was one. Those theologians who encourage deep analysis of one's own psychology in order to determine the true springs of
ethical conduct are speaking only to those who know, dr who care, about psychology.
The church of this generation is also characterised by 'dialogue.' Everything is up for intellectual auction; the most sacred sensibilities of traditional faith are dissolved in a hard rationalism which seeks to redefine Christian truth in the light of contemporary cultural obsessions. The endless debating, in commissions, synods, discussion and study groups, may remind some of the procedures of trade unionism, but the working classes do not, on the whole, look for the explanation of faith in the same style as might be applicable in negotiating wages. Most people who look to the church for anything today look for a clear statement of the unchanging simplicity of the truths proclaimed by Jesus. They do not want to have all this muddied by chattering clergymen stuffed full of bourgeois values.
The point is well illustrated by the continuing campaign led by some churchmen against ITV's religious series Stars on Sunday. By middle-class standards of taste the programme is unquestionably vulgar. But it has a viewing public of seventeen millions, most of whom are probably working-class. There are hymns and Bible readings. Its message is direct and Christian: it is, in a sense, a much more authentic expression of popular spirituality than are the contrived and faintly patronising bourgeois attempts at a peoples' religion suggested in some of the new liturgical devices. Yet the programme has been attacked by the religious advisers to the company which produces it — for the incredible reason that, because it is not about contemporary social and world problems, it is not religious enough. The most recent attack came from Mr Trevor Beeson, an Anglican parson noted for his radical opinions. In a book published last month he referred to Stars on Sunday as having "a quite deliberate emphasis on sentiment, nostalgia and escapism." If Mr Beeson's references to "sentiment, nostalgia and escapism" are replaced by "sensibility, memory of faith once believed innocently, and pursuit of heavenly values" a picture less insulting to working-class modes of thought is apparent. We hear a great deal about how the church ought to make Christianity evident to 'ordinary people ': Stars on Sunday actually performs this service very capably.
Now, of course, in all this there is no suggestion that the clergy are not anxious to speak directly to the spiritual needs of the working classes. They have made impressive attempts to do sq..,Butmit: is precisely because they have triedif sd enthusiastically that they usually remain unaware of their continuing divorce from working-class society. "We have adopted social radicalism and sometimes left-wing politics," they say, " how can we not be seen to be sympathetic to working-class interests?"
The equation, however, is far too simple. And the clergy's sense of guilt at what they imagine to have been the class insensitivities of their ecclesiastical predecessors is too self-conscious. The clergy should throw away their paperback sociology books and actually look at the values of working-class society without the screen of intellectual analysis laid on by the world of bourgeois culture. That is what the next church leaders' conference should be all about.
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