Latest / Thinking Class / #075 - Bijan Omrani - Why God Is An Englishman: England Is A Christian Nation Or No Nation At All

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#075 - Bijan Omrani - Why God Is An Englishman: England Is A Christian Nation Or No Nation At All · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking with Bijan Omrani.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Bijan is a classicist and historian, and his research looks at questions of religious history and cultural identity from ancient Rome and Greece to Afghanistan and the Silk Road.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: An Oxford-educated barrister, Bijan has taught classics at Eton College and Westminster School, is a former editor of the Asian Affairs Journal, and is currently a research fellow at the University of Exeter.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: He is also a church warden.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Bijan and I think out loud about his book God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England, the deep connections between Christianity and the formation of England, how the faith has been a foundational element in shaping English identity, culture, and ethics, why there are huge pitfalls in moving away from this heritage, how the faith fosters cultural cohesion, what we are suffering due to the consequences of its decline in modern England, Christianity's declining influence in public life, the importance of understanding and preserving English heritage, the five most influential figures in English Christianity and the nation, why the literary canon is always relevant, and Bijan's personal reflections on faith and tradition, emphasizing the need for a revival of cultural and spiritual creativity and much, much more.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Bijan is a deeply thoughtful man with a love for England, its people, and its Christian heritage that shines through.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: He brings the history of the country to life and makes its literary fruits enticing with some wonderful, off-the-cuff recitals as he makes his points.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Any Englishman ought to be grateful for his contribution to the understanding of ourselves and our country, because in a world where history is increasingly unknown by the common person, this at least will be an important record.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to like, subscribe, and follow Thinking Class on YouTube, your podcast platform of choice and Substack where paid subscribers get the opportunity to contribute questions to a special QA to my guests that only you will get access to.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grow Thinking Class together.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's my pleasure, and I wish I'd pressed record when you did log into this online studio because we just had a fascinating discussion, which was around the context of your book, which is uh assumed to be released and may well be released by the time this show comes out this Friday, which is God is an Englishman, Christianity and the Creation of England.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure we'll be able to rehash that discussion a little bit later.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you've taken on a mammoth task here, which was to talk about England, how it was, how it came into being, how it is inextricably linked to the Christian faith, and what it is that we risk by no longer living that faith as Englishmen.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't end up butchering your wonderful book.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: What was it that motivated you to take on this rather mammoth task?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I first conceived of the book in miniature.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think probably in about 2018 or 2019.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really in response to um a book that came out about the inheritance of wisdom from the classical world to the modern world.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the book argued um quite wrongly that Christianity was responsible for the destruction of a vast swath of atrial wisdom.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it rehashed a lot of those old tropes about uh these thuggish monks who thought that the only wisdom and the only learning possible was from Christian scripture, and therefore everything from the classical world had to be tossed into the fire.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it made a great play of uh these um rather like the Taliban, I suppose, these Christian monks in Alexandria um beating up the spasia of the great female mathematician and philosopher for the ancient world.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it suggests really that it was Christianity that was the dividing line from the enlightened um moral wise um freedom of the ancient world with the darkness uh that fell with the collapse of the Roman Empire.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's rehashing that um Gibbonian idea that Christianity was really responsible for a whole swathe of the world's ills for centuries, after the glory uh that was uh Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at this thesis, and um I have a background.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of my past careers was as a as a classicist and a classics teacher.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I'm very interested in the way that the knowledge from the ancient world got to the modern world.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it struck me that the entire thesis was representing only a tiny sliver of the truth.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really the case that Christianity was far from being responsible for the destruction of ancient wisdom, towards the collapse of the ancient world, which was really driven by issues of um economic collapse, uh, demographic change.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um really Christianity was responsible for saving um and using uh a vast amount of the ancient wisdom.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it struck me that hang on a moment, this one book is focusing on education and the transmission of classical wisdom, and it's going for this rather tiresome oh, Christianity, what a terrible thing it is, it's it's it's uh caused all sorts of chaos.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, wouldn't it be good to turn it around and actually say, hang on a moment, this is all wrong.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Christianity actually, we owe it a lot in the educational field, and in terms of the tradition uh and handing down wisdom from the classical world.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: But then it struck me, well, if you can do that for education, you could actually do it for a huge number of other things.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because again, another escapade uh from my early life.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I trained as a barrister, I never ended up practicing.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: But I did go to law school.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in the law, um, Christianity is over a lot, and I'm sure we can talk about this further.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the way that Christianity has influenced the development of English law is something that you won't hear about in your day-to-day practice in the law school.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then in so many other fields, um music, art, literature, um, people have been trying not to talk about Christianity or its contributions to ethics or charity.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought, why not a book that actually tries to fix the way that Christianity has been a boon to us and has made so many of the things around us we just aren't giving it credit for?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought it has to be just England, because of course, Tom Holland very bravely took on Western civilization as a whole.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I didn't feel quite equal to that task, and I didn't even feel quite equal to doing the whole of Britain, which I mean is very harsh in Scotland and probably tricky for selling books in Scotland or Wales, but each nation of the Union has distinctive traditions, so much is shared between England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, um, the island of Ireland generally.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there are many things that are distinct.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I can only really do justice to one nation in the Union, and that is England.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, from that, um, I mean, you have the roots of many things uh beyond an empire, uh, the spread of the common law, the spread of the language.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: So even though it's focused just on England, there are many ramifications which touch on the English-speaking world and the Commonwealth more widely.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um it was that thing that really started me off on this this quest was this this work.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's think about the context of faith in England, and well, we can say Britain for shorthand, because it's probably much the same in in Scotland and Wales, at least perhaps not as much in in Northern Ireland, where I think probably observance of the Christian faith is is still pretty high in comparison to the other nations.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, however, I think it's fair to say that we have been under the spell of a kind of secular liberal humanism uh for I don't know how long you could you could ask how long a piece of string is, I suppose.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: You you could look back to the 19th century and the great scientific advances.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a great book by A.N.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wilson called The God's Funeral that talks about the impact of all of this on those who were living with faith and how it led to spates of suicides and depression, because this once um uh solid worldview and outlook on life and and the way that they've been living was suddenly called into question by these rather strident scientists that were making strides across various different fields.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or you could say it was the 1960s cultural revolution, um, or anywhere in between.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's fair to say that people aren't really living out the Christian faith.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: We can see that in the um perhaps how laws have begun to change in our approach to certain things, whether it be marriage, whether it be abortion, um, these are things that are not exactly in keeping with the Christian inheritance.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So let's let's look for the more positive picture.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what would you say the English and the English nation could gain if it was to rediscover its Christian heritage?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is a question, it's a very big question, and it has to be answered on several levels.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And some of those levels really are within the heart of every individual.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, in my book, and it's it's just the conclusion of the book, I talk about the idea that Christianity, regardless of everything that has happened, still has um a spiritual power and a spiritual meaning and the offer of um salvation and wholeness.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something which ultimately is going to be um within the heart of every person.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I cannot answer uh for the heart of every person, but I do make the claim that it still has a spiritual offering for everyone, individually.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: But retreating from that, there is a notion, I suppose, of the collective um spiritual offering and the collective moral offering, at I suppose the higher level of of the pyramid.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think one can go below that and look at things collectively in terms of collective culture and the way that we live our lives as a nation.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if if we go on to the middle, the middle rank, um, which I suppose is the spiritual um the spiritual collective level, um Christianity still has uh a huge uh set of lessons to teach us morally, and it still has uh this collective spiritual offering.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, um those ideas which I think got taken seriously in the 18th and 19th century with the evangelical revival, um the idea of the dignity of every person, because every person is made in the image of God, and the God became man and dwelt among us.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um those ideas are fundamental to the way that our society has developed um in recent times.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, in terms of our ethics of the way that we treat each other, uh, in terms of charity and relationships, um the evangelical movement felt that we had to work towards uh treating each other with the inherent dignity that is within every person.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they they developed ideas of charity which we still live off nowadays, and I think are weakening uh because with the 1960s there's now much more of a focus on the individual, the satisfaction of the individual self, ahead of the idea of service of others.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, what what do we have to gain from that morally?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, morally, with the return to Christian ethics, the idea of the dignity of every person, there is an imperative towards an idea of service.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: What can we do for everyone else?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: How can we help society more widely?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how can we help our neighbour?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Umlectively, and I think that that is an incredibly important um thing.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: How can we work towards the dignity of every person?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think in terms of practical things, I mean it might just be a very local thing, every neighborhood thing, every parish thing.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Can I volunteer?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Can I help out?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Can I make the tea?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, of course, it has a profound impact on ideas of the way the laws and public life develop.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think in terms of the way that the ethics of politics work.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in the 19th century, people following from that evangelical um impetus were bound deeply by notions of conscience.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they behaved well and energetically in public life and within ethic of service because they felt God was driving them to do so, and they were answerable to God, and that they mustn't waste their time, and that they mustn't indulge the self, and that they must behave morally because they were accountable.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that ethic has, again, with the decline of Christianity, has gone away from politics, so that you can put down as many um rules, codes of ethics externally, but if people aren't going to adhere to them internally, then you can put down as many rules as you like.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: They won't be adhered to.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then in terms of law.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I think for me, the assisted dying, you might call a debate.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what they call it, but it really is, of course, assisted suicide debate, is one of the most disturbing ideas uh that comes from this decline in the notion of the dignity of the individual.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that that might be passed through.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that notion would horrify a lot of the 19th century evangelicals who worked so hard to develop um dignity for the aged, the infirm, the blind, the deaf, um, the disabled, people who are disadvantaged.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because it, even though it might help some people in extreme suffering who are privileged and can control the way that they are treated in this situation where doctors can suggest people take their own lives to prevent physical suffering, of course, many people who are not privileged will inevitably feel compelled, as we see in Canada, I think the Netherlands, to take that path.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're a burden.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: My life isn't worth anything, I shouldn't be a burden on anyone else.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any inherent dignity.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: You might as well do away with me.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's not profitable for me to carry on living because I'm going to start seeing my worth in terms of money rather than the notion that there is an infinite dignity in me that comes from my being made in the image of God.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you have that moral set of ideas which come from um the Christian presence.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And also I think a very important thing that uh Christianity gives us in public life, and that the more it's there, it protects us in another way, in that it's a sort of opposition in residence to the wide uh secular paradigm that belongs to government and and modern life.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we see it in the very arrangement of the world, the landscape.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can still go into a parish church, and in that parish church there is no imperative to sell you something or to value you in monetary terms.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: You are there in a space which is generated by reference to three thousand years worth of spiritual heritage, and you are there in the perspective of that inheritance, and you are valued there in terms of that perspective, in terms of the divine timeless perspective, and that is a protection against a modern world which is relentlessly trying to value people on their earning potential or their beauty, uh, or what um, you know, what they're worth in very definable um and what I McGilchrist, that great um contemporary philosopher, might say is the left-brain thinking of just seeing things narrowly rather than in terms of the matrix of the whole.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the more I think Christianity is present with us in public light, it's a protection for the totality of our humanity.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's a cultural level, I said, which is lower down the pyramid.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's that I mean, since the seventh century, um, the Bible has been a fundamental text, liturgical ideas have been fundamental to us.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was a given from before the Reformation or after that everyone would know the Lord's Prayer, uh, everyone would know the creed.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, after the Reformation, people would start to know the prayer book, the responses, and then afterwards Christian music, Christian liturgy.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And these become cultural commonplaces.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone knows them.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not only do they fix in us a sets of shared ethics, so we know how to behave, but also there's been cultural reference points that make it easier for us to talk to each other.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: So originally we would be able to quote our hymns at each other, scripture, everyone would know it.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it would be easy to talk to each other and then to base cultural creativity on that shared set of um biblical and Christian literature, and then music, and then art.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, you have the rise of television, and at least then we only had three well and then four channels, and at least everyone was watching Wilkham and Wise, and we could all tell, we could all tell Milcom and Wise gags, you know, 20 million people watch it.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone, everyone could at least share that, or um soap operas, EastEnders when everyone watched that sort of thing, Coronation Street.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: But now that's gone, and you've had this shattering of culture into a million fragments and shards of internet channels, and suddenly we are not singing off the same hymn sheet.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this cultural fragmenting which makes it incredibly hard for society ethically and culturally to hang together.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: So sorry, it's a very, very long answer.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is the place for long answers.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's very kind.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I've tried to do the entire pyramid.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: A pyramid isn't very Christian.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, actually, it's a sort of the Trinity, it is, but um every every level, from top to bottom, from the the spiritual to the very pragmatic.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let let's think about let's think about the the traditional aspect of it and what it means to cohere a society around something, whether it be a common set of songs or, as you say, scripture or cultural references, which the Bible is the underpinning of all the canonical texts in Western civilization.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: When people want to reload the canon of Western civilization, they're typically putting forward ideas and books that aren't making the same reference points they are.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, they go Encountered the reference points of the the biblical ideas that Chaucer or Shakespeare or whoever else has has written about Milton.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you you've written a few really touching passages, actually, or things that really touched me as I was reading your book.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think one of them was centered around you being at a public event where the national anthem uh was sung, and you started belting out God save Anna King, and you're one of the only ones who who's doing it.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or indeed it might have been another hymn.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: You look like you get into interjet there.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was on the national anthem, because I think people still vaguely know the national anthem.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it was oh god, our help in ages past.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, yes.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're right, you're right.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what you were writing about.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you were with your daughter, and your daughter looked at you like you were some kind of alien, and there was hardly anyone else who was able to sing along.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it took me back to my upbringing, and I was born in 1987, I went to a nominally Church of England school.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it wasn't particularly religious, but we'd have our Friday assemblies sometimes more frequently than that.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: There would always be hymns.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I must admit, because I came from a non-religious household, I did not know the Lord's Prayer and I just mumbled my way through it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyway, I remember the hymns, absolutely loving them, and they were something that all the little girls and all the little boys would be throwing themselves at.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and anyway, I started to reflect on my own nephew who's now 11 years old.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when I see the difference in how their nativity play is played in pure reference to things like reality TV shows, and there's almost no biblical references at all, with the exception of the names, and that's about it, compared to the way that we we we um played that particular scene, or the hymns, they effectively aren't sung anymore.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes me wonder what exactly it is that we've replaced this with.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's there's certainly no overarching system, but I think just so people don't think I'm trying to make an aesthetic point that it, oh well, we should just all sing the same songs as we've always sung, is since I've come to throw myself at the tradition and and under the faith, there's a sense of depth to human life which I've picked up that I didn't get before.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And like and and I suppose I started to recognize I was being inducted in, at least at a service level, surface level at primary school, but now no one's getting that.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as you say, in the modern world, we're all we're all swirling around algorithms, uh, being fed what it is that we might like, we're being assailed by information from everywhere, our our um hormonal systems and our um various um kind of um uh pleasure-seeking systems are all constantly looking for distractions, and we're being inducted into nothing.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're missing out on the depth that of human life that Christianity actually allows you to understand in its warts and all, uh, at an individual and a collective level.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose that's a very long way of preambling toward a question which is uh centered around a live debate that goes on.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are some who say, Do you know what?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: We should reheat Christian civilization and we should have a top-down uh messaging from our cultural elite back to the way it was.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: We we start with the pedagogical process, we get people inducted into uh the Athens and Jerusalem traditions.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are others saying, No, any time that we've ever tried to get Christian civilization off the ground, it's ended badly, it's ended in persecution, it's ended in whatever else that you want to talk about, repression.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: This Christianity should be more about individual conscience.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where do you stand on the matter?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right, very, very big question.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think, I mean, I don't know if one can point to a particular time as an apogee of Christian civilization or not.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I think at its best there is a reconciliation between the idea of individual conscience and the connection with tradition.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe if you see Erasmian Christianity um in the early um in the early 16th century as reconciling um the classical tradition, uh the notion of conscience, the notion of individual piety, the capacity to use learning and scholarship to interrogate um scripture, um, then I mean that is something which seems to have it all.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: You you have the tradition, you you have the access to learning, uh, but at the same time you are empowered individually to hear the voice of conscience, which may be the um the prompting of the Holy Spirit to move you in one way or another.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's uh I mean the the I mean the problems that derive from that ultimately are um the incapacity of people to find a way of reconciling different approaches uh to Christianity, which their conscience might prompt them.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not a failure of the tradition.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's a failure of people using Christian moderation to find a way of living together.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, I mean, maybe that's a reading of the um the religious chaos following the English Civil War, which I think we did much better within the 18th and 19th century, where many traditions of Christianity in England were capable of being reconciled um with each other.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I actually want to just draw on and elaborate what you were saying earlier about this whole question of deracination.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, the whole notion of hymn singing and the value of engaging with the tradition.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the area of singing hymns in an assembly.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, say you were at primary school earlier on in the 80s, all the schools would have had a piano.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: They would all have sung hymns.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Some would have been more modern, it would have been when I needed a neighbour or kumbaya.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them would have been more traditional, like, oh God, I help in ages past.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: But when you put that music and that tradition of hymn singing in its wider context, um Christ himself is said to have sung hymns in the Gospels.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was something that was uh even indeed deeper in um Judaic tradition, uh the traditions of singing, the sounds are songs.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um the tradition of plainsong from which Western hymnody takes its origins certainly attested by the fifth century AD.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are still hymns uh which in translation are sung, which were written by St.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ambrose, Nanzius Fortunatus, so towards the end of the Roman Empire, there are very ancient tunes which uh I won't uh sing them now because I don't want to frighten your listeners away.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um but they they certainly um go back that far.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then the elaboration of the plainsong tradition into the great traditions of um Renaissance polyphony um with um Bird, Talis.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, this is something that develops over hundreds and hundreds of years, which we managed to save uh after the Reformation.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then the revival of hymn singing, which happens in the 18th and 19th century, that itself, with great translators like J.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: M.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Neal, they based a lot of it on the precedents of hymn singing um from the pre-Reformation age.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think of those children in the primary school bouncing out, can buy our when I needed a neighbor with a piano, and remember, organs were developing in, say, the 14th, 15th century.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Many churches had them um before the Reformation, many taken out, but the reinstruction musical instruments and organs, firstly the West Gallery tradition of bands in churches, and then back to organs in the 19th century.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: There is a huge cultural tide behind that singing in the school, in the primary school assembly hall, which connects us very deeply to tradition.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then that goes into the style of the song goes, the hymns go.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of singing hymns or anything hymn-like, it starts to be popular music post the 1960s.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a musician playing a keyboard, we have computers playing MP MP3s, MP4s.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um very difficult to sing melismatic, uh syncopated shoes.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're very hard for children to sing.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the theme has changed.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um when I needed a neighbor where he's there.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, well, um I I um I'm not gonna sing any Celine Dion or anything, but um very much things about the the actualization of the self, you might say.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you want to be my lover No, and I'm not gonna go any further.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a change of theme, a change of perspective.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, oh God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's extraordinary for children to be singing something that gives that deep sense of perspective, both in terms of where am I vis-a-vis eternity, and also plugged into a tradition which almost feels eternal.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a deep loss.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and if you don't have that sense of that grounding and that capacity to think about profound ideas which is given to you by culture, then of course you're going to feel deracinated.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, when you start to ask big questions, as is inevitable, you're not going to have the deep well to draw from culturally and then spiritually.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well that probably leads me on to a question which I got from page one, I think, of your your book, where you argue that England's loss of faith is more consequential than Brexit.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Brexit in reality is in practical terms about sort of trading relationships, freedom of movement, um, the question of whether we allow a particular foreign court's jurisdiction.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um not unimportant things.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, of course, if people cannot exercise their right of free movement, their right to work abroad, of course, it's going to change people's lives.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And some people have chosen to use Brexit as a question of modern identity.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think the idea that being pro-EU allies yourself to um an elite is something that really drove the debate.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was a really a the class question internally, as much as anything.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that is the closest it got to being a cultural question.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a cultural sophistication that I think is inherent with the motion of being pro-EU.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea of being local and attached to this place was seeing, as I think, of rather as rather low status.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: But Christianity has given us the very existence of England as a nation state.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was a foundational principle behind laws, it's a sort of driving principle behind our ethics, it's been a driving principle behind a vast amount of our culture.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: I won't say everything behind our culture, but a vast amount of our culture.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the break from that, so I mean, him singing is just one aspect of it.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, so many um ideas in terms of spirituality, literature, how we arrange the public sphere, what we think is are important in terms of our ethics, charities, laws, the way that we treat each other.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um that is far more profound and ancient than Brexit.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Our relationship with the EU is the 1970s.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Our relationship with um Christianity is 597 or before, depending on where you start the clock.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's easiest to start the clock in 597 for practical purposes.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: But this you know, Christianity made the nation-state.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Christianity made kingship, Christianity made uh the basis of the development of law, um, art, landscape, all of this.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly we start to move away from it.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we move into a completely untested world.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you might argue vis-a-vis the European Union, we've gone through periods of relationship with supernatural bodies, particularly with the papacy, from say the 1100s to the 1530s.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed, I suppose relationship with um the continents vis-a-vis the um Norman and Antagenet kings.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's not unusual for us.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the absence of Christianity, it's completely unprecedented.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: So so when when you find figures uh saying talking of the cultural changes since let's let's just put a line in the sand, post post-war Britain as being the instantiation of a year zero.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're we're we're bulldozing the old order, as it were.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: It for whatever reason it's not served us and it's not progressive enough, and it doesn't allow us, as you've talked about, to self-actualise, it's quite repressive, and actually, libertanism is what we ought to strive for in some way.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's me to make the sovereign choice no matter what.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I suppose there are many different variations of that.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um when people say that there are we are we are being governed by those with a year o year zero mentality, uh, does that stacks up then?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an unfair accusation to be making.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I mean I I don't like to um comment on this is all rather unfortunate public relations strategy of of the Prime Minister at the moment.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it was very telling over Easter that he um he thanked Christians at Easter time for their contribution to national life.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: And now the word contribution is um is very telling, of course, isn't it?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because it suggests it's one thing amongst many rather than the foundation and cornerstone of um what we happen to be.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that I found that very striking.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um that uh it may just be a lack of knowledge, or but maybe it is a policy of trying to relegate it and to move away from it, indeed to generate a year zero notion so that England is governed not from a tradition which is based on Christianity, but really from an imperial oversight tradition of many different um many different uh um religious confessions and um well a bulkanized sort of state, which is an alarming idea.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also unnecessary, really, because I think, and I argue this in my book, that actually if we did hang closely to Christianity and more confidently, it actually does offer us a much more secure basis for the happier relationship uh between different faiths in the country.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think again, and it's part of the consequence of the lack of confidence.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: If um I think the the official reasoning goes we've got to treat Christianity as one thing amongst many, then actually I would argue that if Christianity is secure in the public sphere, it's actually easier for other religions to feel happy and secure in the public sphere because they have a sense that instead of a secular world, there is a place for religion in the public sphere.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Christianity will look after other faiths, and also it's rather just compopulating.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think um I mean I think particularly for Muslims to have this notion that there is a governance government that is not based in on religion in any sort of way, and that makes the profession of religion in public life per se, by any religion, actually rather difficult and and worrisome.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can compare our model with France, where you have this very um strident laïcité and religion appearing in public life as being something that seems wrong, per se.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, there's a sense of resentment um I think from immigrant communities that has this notion that well the your notion of laycite is just um a secularized Christianity, and you're using that as a um a shield to protect against um any sign of Muslim presence in public life.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: And of course that makes a great attention.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you actually said, okay, this place is Christian, of course you're welcome to practice your religion here, but Christianity will be the thing which sets the tenor for public life, then there's no sort of ingrained resentment that you're saying one thing and actually using it as a shield for um Christianity which won't show its face.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: I also think there are some who arrive on European shores from uh lands where other faiths are more routinely practiced, who uh they actually see the country more clearly as a Christian land and are quite flabbergasted as to what they see when they arrive, which is a disavowing of that in inheritance and heritage.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose that can cut many ways.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: There could be what a sense that the country they've arrived in has no real self-respect.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking more about the Western European nations.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't as true in Poland, for example, but they would not not have the same experience with immigrant groups.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's a there's a self-respect question, but I think there's also the there's a decadence question, isn't there?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: They see that the the decisions being made within public life, uh, whether it's around bodily autonomy, um and the the impact that that has on whether it's the number of children being born or what we do with our elderly, or um, or how it is that we um want to educate on matters of sexuality and sex education, um, and how we have, I suppose, gotten rid of many different temperance movements that have popped over the years.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've been a boozy nation for as long as can be remembered, but there's always been a temperance movement of some sort, whether it's the Methodists talking about the demon drink, and even minors in the north of England where I'm from, they weren't as heavy drinkers as you think they were because they actually were so cleaved to their faith.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And yet now, and I grew up in this era and I partook in it uh many times, is you we've got the bins drinking culture, and there's that there's there's this sense of um it's a free-for-all, and there's a a disrespect, I suppose, of of what's gone before.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose one person in public life who I I think gets this and he talks about it quite frequently is Ricky Bessan, um, of Bengali extraction, um, proud proud.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Brit that he is, and he talks about look, I might be Muslim, but I'd much rather live in a country that was much sure of its Christian faith, and spoke about it.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, what we get are pronouncements from the home office of a little patchy abstract Easter egg saying, Happy Easter on it, uh, another crucifix or a stone rolling away from the tomb in sight, uh, nothing even referencing the Christian faith.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you wonder what on earth's what on earth happened here that we've gotten to the point that we're we're disavowing it.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I another question I suppose, Bijan, is why why do you think Christianity's malaise, and and I suppose, frankly, it's disappearance from public life at this point, unless the Prime Minister is told that he probably better put a message out to Christians.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think it is accepted without debate?
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: What are the reasons behind that?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the reasons, and I this is going to, I think, come back to the discussion we were having before.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you press the record button, is to do with um inertia and laziness, and also um a certain sense of fear and contempt at what at ourselves for losing what we had.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh because the transmission of culture and certainly Christianity is something that requires effort.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if we are going to pass Christianity on, or indeed culture generally, you have to read the Bible, you have to go to church, and you have to learn the liturgy, and you learn songs, and you learn ideas, uh, everything that's associated with it, and you have to practice ultimately a Christian way of life.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's very hard work.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now it was easier before, in my view, the 1960s, because there was nothing else to do.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um there were um there were no televisions, there were no radios.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, no, it's not training, of course, radios are earlier, but uh the technology spread very quickly in the 60s.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: LPs um become much more available, um, cars become much more available, houses become much more um uh comfortable, central heating.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um leisure time offers many more choices, partly because of transport, but also proliferation of other things.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it used to be the case that you had to be within local groups, clubs, societies, many of which were based around churches and chapels, in order to um participate uh in cultural life.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you start with religion itself, you start with the faith, and then you associate within the faith in other activities.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with this perfect storm of technology in the 60s, the LP, the car um technology, and also this change in the notion of what's is psychologically valid, these ideas that come from the west coast of the states that say actually, don't worry about pressing down um desires within you if they don't accord with what works for society.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let it all hang out, um, satisfy yourself and give yourself what you want right now.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I always think of the um slogan for the access credit card in the 1970s, taking the waiting out of wanting, which I do remember being um in in adverse even into the 1980s when I was uh when I was a child.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: When all of that piles onto these societies which pass on culture, they just shatter because it's very difficult for them to compete with these very exciting, flashy new um technologies of possibilities.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: So people stop associating, they stop going to church, and they stop passing down they stop passing down culture.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes it very hard for the cultural transmission.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: So why is it why are we in the state we are now?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: Just coming back to your question.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think from the 1960s, and again, partly with a collapse of self-confidence in the church, people stop using traditional liturgies, generally speaking, they stop singing the traditional hymns, they stop using uh the Book of Common Prayer, they stop using a lot of the traditional culture which is associated with those old societies and life around the church.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then lots of the poetry.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um you might be reading metaphysical poetry, you might be reading John Milton, more widely, you might be reading Shakespeare, you might be reading books of sermons.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: They become harder to understand if you don't know the Bible, you don't know the liturgy, you don't know, say, the music and traditions of hymns around Christianity.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you stop, you stop reading all this stuff, and then people stop teaching it, and then the next generation doesn't know any of it at all.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a consciousness that is there, and there might be a few people who know about it, but you look at the you look at the past and they say, oh, well, it used to be the case we knew our hymns by heart, we knew the literature by heart, we knew all this stuff about the Bible, now we don't know any of it.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's really rather frightening.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're we're rather poor in terms of our cultural capacity compared to the earlier generation, and our our culture has been outsourced to the radio or LPs or CDs or the internet.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, and it knows much more than we do.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the presence of the earlier generation is a constant reminder that we have declined in what we can do in our capacity to uh engage in culture and to be culturally creative.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, those ancestors, they're frightening.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: They were much better than us.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: And when we think about them, it reminds us of how bad we are, how impoverished we are.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: We must have faced their memory, we must have faced the culture that went with them.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: So pulling that back to your question, it it passes away more quickly because we're frightened of what we've become in the face of what we've lost.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't want to be reminded of that.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: It scares us and it shames us.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we pretend it wasn't there.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: We uh are called, I think, to look, I think Christianity calls us profoundly to be creative beings, culturally creative, spiritually creative.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, O Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouth shall show forth thy praise.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the response that opens um Matins and even some in the Book of Cormon Prayer, and of course, in the wider Catholics, um, it's also used in various services.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: And at the moment we've lost that uh capacity because of that that profound cultural interruption, we we don't have all of these cultural capacities that Christianity helped us to have.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we we can't be creative in the spiritual context, and we also can't be creative in terms of the pure context of the society, the way that we once were, and we don't know as much, and we're ashamed of that.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we try to hide our shame, like Adam and Eve suddenly being conscious of oh, we must put on a fig leaf.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um we try to pretend that there weren't people who, in generations before, had these amazing cultural capacities who knew their scripture, who knew poetry, and could talk about it and use it as a basis for social interaction and their own creativity.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a adjacent conversation with Ed West and Paul Paul Morland on the show.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: They have a uh a podcast called The Canon Club, and they are uh themselves doing it because they feel responsible for trying to help people access both heralded and unheralded uh contributions to the canon and the people behind them, and indeed because they want to learn about it themselves, because that they they uh at least Ed, I think, would say he's he's ashamed that some of the things he he doesn't know and he's being introduced to it the first time.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I do recognize, I think, when you're talking about the um sense of um what's the the right words to to use here?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: The sense of um inferiority to those who came before us, potentially driving us to look the other way, or indeed offer things that just don't even hold a candle to what came before in their place.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I was talking about with Adam Paul was could you even add to the canon now?
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Could anyone in the modern era really add to it unless, of course, they were steeped in Athens and Jerusalem, uh, unless they really understood it and lived it and wrote uh or composed through every fibre of their being because it's connected to Athens and Jerusalem, whether it's Bach or Mozart or Shakespeare or Milton and all the people we've talked about, Dante.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they could, and yet you will find in schools today, and I know you've been uh at some of our most prestigious schools, and and I wouldn't want to talk about those, but I I know of some pretty prestigious schools that have um teachers that want to reload the canon in some way, they want to add to it, and they want to do so with modern works, but those modern works aren't, as we were saying before we started the show, Bijan, they aren't making the same reference points, they don't speak to one another, that doesn't all hang together.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: All of that was an emergent property from a common root.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and to give an anecdotal example, my um my fiance, she is a uh an a head of English and loves literature and had always given both the classics and uh modern novels uh and and works the same time of day, really.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: But now she finds it increasingly hard to pick up anything written in the modern era because it feels clunky, it lacks depth, it doesn't speak to um the uh the center of what it means to be a person.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I suppose unless there's some kind of a revival, and there are some who suggest there is, and perhaps you could say anecdotally there there seems to be.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, France has had record baptisms and uh and um uh initiates into the Catholic Church this year, there is uh there is a a large increase in young men.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, one in five, I think, young men in um in Britain have been into church um in the last year, which is a huge increase on um on recent years.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um but unless there is some kind of a Christian revival within or just a generally classical revival within the culture, I can't really see how we would add to the canon.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like the the time of the canon is going to be time bound between whatever you think the last edition, however informal it might have been, has been made to it, and whatever the first one was, presumably the Bible.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh you look, you've you've you've taught this stuff, you've been you've been living this stuff.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: What do you what do you make of that?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a crackpot theory, or do you think there's legs in that?
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I mean the thing about the canon, I mean, it's it is detractors suggest it's parochial, it's irrelevant, uh, it's all white, male, pale, stale, the these sort of dreadful tea shades.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that's all wrong.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: The canon is a conversation which goes back across many lands, I would say deep into ancient Mesopotamia in the second, third millennium BC.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: It predates even the Bible.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think of the Epic of Gilgamesh as one of the earliest canonical texts, of course, only recovered in the late 19th century, perhaps even earlier than scripture, but picking up certain scenes from scripture.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you have people um over many times and many places, Mesopotamia, even Egypt, North Africa, Spain, um, the Balkans, um, in conversation um with each other, and even across cultures ultimately.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, whether you take, say, Avicenna and Averroes, who were from you know, in conversation with Christian scholars, um, who themselves, Averroes and Avicenna, who were drawing from Greek um sources, these are long, long conversations with people in many different circumstances, and they are asking the big and the hard questions.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing about canonical literature, and the reason that it survives, is that it contains within it many perspectives, and it is not diff it is not afraid of asking hard questions even about that which is received.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think especially of I mean, George Herbert, who is my my favourite poet, um, is not afraid to sort of call out to God.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I struck the board and cried no more, I will abroad.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_01: Should I have assigned pine?
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: My lines and life are free, free as the wind, as large as store.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: So he he thinks there's this idea of himself that the priest with the collar um being under the yoke.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then he goes on, and as I raved and grew more fierce and wild, you thought I heard one saying child, and I replied, My lord.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes into the depths, it asks the hard questions, it's not afraid to challenge, and actually be completely honest about the difficulties that we have.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now I think classical literature and the great classical literature, like the Aeneid, of course, the great poem by Virgil about um the foundation of Rome, and of course, looking forward to Augustus, um the epic poem did not hesitate to actually challenge the ideas of Romanus as much as to advocate them, and to talk about the deep, deep price that had to be paid in order to found the Roman Empire in terms of the struggle, the sacrifices.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: Tanta molis errapp romanum conderegentem is the last so great a uh burden it was to found the Roman race.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it it this it doesn't hold back on the shortcomings and the frailties of Aeneas as the hero, who is of course the um type of Augustus.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: So even then, there is a there is a an honesty in the canon.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an amazing thing that you have this reconciliation of this idea of the establishment nature of the canon, uh the inherited nature that it's a bulwark of the state on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has the capacity for opposition and challenge and holding it to account.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's as much as the case in literature that comes in the Christian time, like um George Herbert, like John Dunn, that are my heart, three persons, God.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't shy away from paradox, um looking at the idea of uh the strangeness of the idea of the virgin birth and God incarnate addressing Mary now has immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's um the the end of that uh sacred sonnet by John Duff.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um it will ask the hard questions, and that's why it lives, because it helps people to explore those most profound difficulties and questions.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the contrast between that which is graced in the canon, of course, stuff written in the canonical times, some of it was terrible and is forgotten.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a time, there's a process of time we're knowing out what is good, and people will keep reading.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a problem with a lot of contemporary literature is that it simply tries to virtue signal, it doesn't ask hard questions about um what contemporary morality is.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: It tries to, I think, propound, I mean, often in the contemporary world notions of um uh critical theory and intersectionality, and it doesn't try to turn the mirror on them and see what the problems are.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: It simply tries, in a very regime propaganda sort of way, to say the tradition is bad, the past is bad, this is all good, look at those terrible people in the past, and aren't we nice and well banners were regulated and um generally nice?
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's but people don't want to read that because the ultimate problem about it is it's boring.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: The canon is interesting.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: The canon, you know, you've got Satan, and Satan actually quite as an attractive figure in Milton.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: High on a throne of royal state, which far outshone the wealth of a Muslim of Ind, or where the gorgeous east was rich as tan showers on a king's barbaric earl and gold.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Satan, exalted sat by merit raised to that bad eminence, thus high uplifted beyond hope.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's exciting, isn't it?
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean you you well, I'm going I want to see what he what he does next.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um you don't have, I think, that sense of the attraction of the opposition in contemporary literature.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_01: They just even want it to be there.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a characteristic of a lot of contemporary culture.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, culture is often led by uh outstanding people, sometimes are heralded at the time, sometimes they're not, sometimes they're in positions of authority, sometimes they're not.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you've mentioned quite a few influential Englishmen uh uh during the course of this interview.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: Who would you say are the key figures in English Christianity who've had an outsized impact on the culture, remembered through the ages and now because of the reasons we've been talking about in this show, uh, have now been forgotten, perhaps?
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, good question.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_01: Top three.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is the venerable bead.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: Who probably I mean, I might might I mean we're on the Eve of St.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: George's Day.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: I might put forward the controversial saying the Venerable Bede should really be our national saint.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um he is, I think, one of the leading people who envisages the idea of the creation of an English nation.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, long before it could actually practically and politically um take place, uh, the idea of one nation under God, um, under a king who answers to God for the morality of the people, and a king who is also under the law.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also ideas of, I mean, he has a sort of huge impact on us in terms of literature, the ideas of time.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: And here he has an international impact.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: So um the year of 2025.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why do we use 2025?
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's because of Bede um choosing to use the anno-domini dating system, which was in his time very new and actually very obscure.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and for Bede, the year of our Lord, birth of Christ, the incarnation of Christ was the most important moment in human history.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: So he thought, okay, I've got millions of dating systems that exist, uh, from the foundation of Rome, from the foundation of the world, whenever that was, uh, the Olympiad uh system from ancient Greece, the Roman taxindiction system, uh, the year of the martyrs from the reign of Diocletian, um, the year of uh the death of Mark Antony, um, the year of sort of various kings' regnal days.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: He said, No, let's let's let's let's work out English history so far in terms of anno domini.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he he uses that, and suddenly it's a complete sort of eye opener because what looks like this sort of morass.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Of sort of interweaving things happening there and there suddenly has a pattern.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens in these islands is connected to the incarnation of Christ, and it makes it appear suddenly that we have um providential presence.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: The Romans come in in um AD 43, with Claudius, they go in 409410, Augustine writes 597.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly it's all clear, it's all related to the time of the incarnation of Christ.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_01: And time has a direction suddenly.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: So and also a great man of learning.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: He was proud of having the greatest library in Europe in the Monk Wearmouth Jarro.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and proud as a teacher.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, he's one of the people.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: And his ideas of English nationhood go on to inspire Alfred's Ethel Starne when the the unificity with Ethel Starne, the unification becomes a practical reality.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they draw from Bede's ideas and Bede's literature.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think after Bede, um, well, just jumping forward quite a long time, William Tyndale, um, who was I mean the greatest uh most pioneering translator of the Bible into English, I mean before it was practically allowed, uh in the in the um first throes of the sort of Eutheran uh period um on the consonants.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um so his idea that uh the plough that the boy at his plough would know as much as the bishop of the scripture is is indeed it's a revolutionary thing.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it it shatters in a way the the Christian order, but it generates a new one in its place.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in a sense, it's rather like uh the fall of man itself, it's like that the happy sin whereby suddenly you have to think for yourself and make moral decisions and judgments on scripture.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, it can lead to terrible dissent uh amongst people, but of course it leads to unity and it can lead to great spiritual progress.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: So William Tyndale for me is number two, and of course, he revolutionized the language because um he had this brilliant capacity for understanding the real power of English.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_01: But that was really developed to a certain extent, a combination of his sort of Gloucestershire background, uh and his very practical, down-to-earth um uh industrial Gloucester uh Gloucestershire industry, um agricultural horses, cloth making, and all this souls and the the sayings to do with that, you know, earlier uh um earlier master sooner knaves, sort of little sayings like that.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and combining that with the rhythms of Hebrew, um, which he he found adapted themselves incredibly well to English.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of saying a beautiful woman, for example, say a woman of beauty.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um apple of one's eye.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many phrases which take Hebrew, uh grammatical and syntactical ideas, and they just work brilliantly in English in a sort of rugged, strong, concise way.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that moulds good English, a sort of rugged, concise, energetic, um, strong, direct, uh poetic but uh rocky.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: So Tyndale um I think is number two.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: And number three, well, I think it's gonna be third equal because they're they're very much uh on the same uh hymn sheet.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um John Wesley and uh William Wilberforce.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um both begin with a W, so that's good.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um Wesley with the evangelical revival.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and again taking Christianity as seriously as possible and working out its implications in national life and society and the obligations to each other, and really laying the foundations for modern ethical life, charities, the way that we work together, and we're still living off that the fumes of the tank.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Wilberfalls is one of the great politicians of the 19th century who really put so much of that into uh practice.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, of course, um sorry, very sorry, I said Wilberfalls, I also meant uh um the Earl of Shaftesbury.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I've I'm having too many heroes here.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: With the abolition of slavery, and then moving on to um the seventh third of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um so many um developments like um rights for for children, um stopping sending kids up chimneys, um I mean just making life better in so many ways and working incredibly hard.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_01: You talk about drunkenness, I mean he he puts um um Dr.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Bernardo up to the investigation of drunkenness and the reasons for poverty amongst the working classes.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, everyone's drunk.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone is drunk.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: There are sort of tens of thousands of pubs.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um beer is cheap.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, children at the age of five are going around taking sort of quarts of beer back home to their parents, but the children are drinking on the way and they're falling down on the street.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's no wonder the children are orphans and just sleeping rough.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, Bernardo, apart from setting up children's homes, he had this crusade against public drunkenness.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he lets drink coffee instead of beer all the time.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_01: How about that?
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_01: That might make life a bit better.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I think sorry, how many how many heroes have I had?
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um Bead, Till, Wesley, Wilberforth, and Shaftesbury.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's five.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite a lot.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's good.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if if we want Englishmen to rediscover their heritage, then you've given them plenty of uh avenues to go and explore, go and pick up some books on those people.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was very glad when you said Bede, and I knew Bede was going to come out.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a I'm a Northumbrian, so um I'm very happy for him to be to be brought in there.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've been extraordinarily generous with your time so far, Bijan.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've got one question that I ask all of my guests who come on Thinking Class, and that question is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life that you once thought was perhaps set in stone, an absolute you certainly wouldn't change your mind on that, and then you did.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what was it that that made you change your mind?
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm actually going to tie it to the previous question.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm going to tie it to um my admiration for Wesley, Wilberforce, and The L Shawsbury.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, in my personal religious life, I really tend towards the very high church Anglo-Catholic um contemplative um background of Christianity.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean I must have thrown in another hero as Dane Julian of Norwich, who's a great elevated 14th-century spiritual writer.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um when I was at school, um the only really vigorous part of Christianity that was there, apart from reading George Herbert um privately to oneself, it was the evangelical side of the school.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um you had the Christian Forum and you know, I'm what do I do to be saved?
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I am saved, Torah, I'm saved, all of that background.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now, because I fancy myself as a deep intellectual and I see the depths of Christianity and all the mystical and spiritual writers, and all of this evangelical stuff is just imposture and uh incredible, and it's got to be much more complicated than that.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: I had no respect for the idea of the evangelical tradition.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I got into terrible arguments with some of the teachers who uh were doing the Christian forum side of things.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all linked up ultimately to Holy Trinity Brompton and so on, and the Alpha movement, the Alpha Course.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think actually over the course of this book, even though my churchmanship hasn't changed, um I think one of the differences I have is I have a a a far greater respect for that different tradition uh within uh Christianity, and uh I think um a far greater openness for uh those different spiritual responses, uh that sort of personal immediate ecstatic sense of uh personal salvation, which is to say it's not uh the way I've approached is or I I belong to it, but I now completely respect uh that tradition within uh English uh Christian life, then I respect uh the inheritance of that tradition.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I repent of my earlier terrible contempt.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think that's it might not sound particularly significant, but I think I think for me there was actually quite a a difference and a leap.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it might set me apart from some of my school friends who I'm still in touch with, who probably adhere to that sense of um disdain for for the other tradition.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I now have that operator reverence for the tradition, even if it's not my own.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they were they were remarkable people.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I similar to you, Bijan, I I was drawn in by the contemplative angle, uh, whether it was the early church fathers, Saint Augustine, you know, all these um these people who wrote which when you read their own accounts of their faith and their grappling with God and judgment and all of those things, that they that you could you could feel that too.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_00: You could you could relate to it and you could spend time meditating on it and trying to turn things over in your mind about how that might lead to new action and metanoia, you know, going beyond the mind that you already have all those kind of things.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And yet what the evangelicals got right or get right is the action bit, they just get to action.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned Wesley, and as you brought him up, it took me back to um a book that I'd read not too long ago.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was by an Indian chap, and I can't remember his first name, but his surname was Malal Gandhi, and he wrote a book called The Book That Changed the World, and it was the impact of the Bible and specifically the King James Bible, and all of the things that that led to.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the passage on John Wesley and the Wesley brothers in general in general was remarkable.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they they would ride around the country on horses, setting up churches and civil society groups and charitable organizations to make sure that people were treated with the dignity that Chris that that Christ gives them, I suppose.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_00: That um uh and and indeed, as you say, Will Wilbur Force was an abolitionist, and the reason one of the driving forces why we abolished slavery, and that was born of the evangelical movement as well.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I had a very similar response, the the crude, dismissive response in some way, and thought, oh, this isn't anywhere near complex enough, but actually, um, you can you can you can um you can stew incomplexity and theology and contemplation a lot of the time, but then it can actually stop you from living the Christian life in some way.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I liked what you said earlier on in the conversation where you said some people in public life, I mean, uh many people in public life were so driven by their duty to uh to God and thereby others that there was no time for debate and conversation.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was just get to it.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: We know we know that it is wrong for these people to suffer this way, or for us to be even considering doing that thing.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I think we can probably agree that uh public life is somewhat diminished now when you look at where people derive their authority from.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's from distant courts, it's from um similarly bureaucratic organizations that speak in a consulty kind of language, and uh there doesn't seem to be a deep moral and spiritual life there anymore.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for that reason, it's something that we've absolutely lost.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think your your book, your book captures the things that we've lost, and I'm glad you wrote it because it's it's testament to what the country has been and uh it probably still is under the surface, and and actually because it's now there in print, and you've you've brought it down from the Tom Holland Western civilization to to England.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I hope enough people pick it up, Bijan, that um it drives people to want to not just save the tradition but to try and live it.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so as a as a personal uh message, I I'd like to thank you for writing the book because I think it's a very important contribution to the national life and the understanding of the nation.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's extremely kind of you, and I'm very glad that you uh you enjoyed it.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: You said you'd read it sort of uh you wolfed it down.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_01: I hope it didn't give you an ingestion.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, it certainly didn't, and and and it didn't didn't aggravate my throat like your pistachios did either.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um Bijan, it's been an absolute pleasure, and I always ask guests uh what could we expect from them next?
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I think why don't we we know your book's about to come out, and so perhaps we can we can tell the listeners and the viewers where they can find it and order it.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, maybe what else you might be considering working on, or where we can find your other writings.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Amazon local bookshops, Hive, uh Waterstones, all the normal places, um, maybe even libraries, who knows?
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm writing, I mean, I write for various um magazines and journals, I mean the critics, now the spectator.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_01: After a break of 23 years, I like to mention um Engelsberg ideas.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I fairly regularly write pieces um for them.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And after this, I mean I am I'm chatting with um I am chatting with people and kicking around ideas, but I think there will be something connected with Christianity in the canon, but I'm probably not going to see much more than that at the moment.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 1:21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for the discussion we just had and the book that I've just read, Bijan, I'm very glad you're going to take on that task.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I would uh I would love to be able to have you back to talk about things that you're writing in the meantime, and of course, when that book surfaces, whenever it does.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in the meantime, Bijan, keep fighting the good fight, and thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_01: An absolute pleasure.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're very welcome.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_00: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.