My theology – condensed manifesto

I’m proposing a new liberal theology.

It is liberal in that it affirms the liberal state, which means freedom of religion, the rejection of unitary theopolitics. It rejects theocracy and the postliberal idealisation of theocracy.

It is not sympathetic to ‘liberal theology’ in another sense – the idea that religion must be modernised on rational-humanist grounds.

It does not affirm ‘liberalism’ in general, which is too wide and contradictory to be affirmed. But nor should ‘liberalism’ be denigrated, for at its heart is the liberal state.

The new liberal theology affirms the liberal state not just with the normal shrug, but in strangely strong terms. It says that something new happens in modernity – a fuller revelation of God’s will, in the political sphere. God decrees a new politics of liberty, in place of the old ideal of theopolitical unity, and this entails the seeming weakening of his church, echoing the kenosis of Christ – it will now reject the old desire for cultural supremacy, and affirm its co-existence with secularism, in a creative tension or dialectic. The liberal state is God’s gift to modernity.

The sacred worth of the liberal state

The Tablet, 8 April

We have taken the liberal state for granted. The tragedy in Ukraine has awakened many commentators to a renewed appreciation and admiration for the miracle of liberal democracy – flawed, tottering but still standing. They salute the courage and resilience of the people of Ukraine, and marvel at the extraordinary price they are willing to pay to belong to the “free world”. They note that liberal democracy has a new icon in the form of Volodomyr Zelenskiy. Then their gaze turns to their own flabby, cosseted culture. Let this be our wake-up call. The oration might cite Auden: we have colluded in “a low, dishonest decade”.

On one level, these writers, journalists and broadcasters have no trouble articulating the features of liberal democracy. It is a form of politics based on individual rights, tolerance of opinions we don’t much like, free elections, free speech, free press, equality under the law, and so on. But something is missing. Such defences feel rather little, rather dry, rather dated, even rather beleagured. Francis Fukuyama’s famous “end of history” thesis, first set out (with more nuance and qualification than Fukuyama is usually given credit for) in 1992, that the evolution of forms of government has reached its highest form with the creation of liberal democracy, has been scoffed at from Left and Right almost from the day it appeared. (Fukuyama himself has recently published a sequel recommending his own strategy for keeping the flame alive.)

This exposes the gaping thirty-years’ gap where new and richer defences of classic liberalism should have been. There’s a sense of stagnation, and a sense that liberal thinking lacks vitality and depth. Yes, when a crisis comes and when we see what the alternatives to it entail, we can agree that liberal democracy is the best – or least worst – type of politics in a fallen world – but why do we say so in a tone of weariness rather than excitement?

Theology has been complicit in the malaise in liberal thought. Instead of prodding the liberal tradition to new life, some influential strands in contemporary theology have demoralised and undermined it. You might think that most secular commentators are utterly indifferent to religious thought, but in fact theology has remained surprisingly intellectually influential. Of course religious conservatives – Catholic and Protestant – have always looked on liberalism with hostility, seeing it as a rival creed, a deadly enemy. But in Britain mainstream religious thought – especially in the established church – was broadly supportive of the forward march of liberal values of toleration, of live and live, of individual freedom. But in the past thirty years, that mainstream liberal tradition has faltered, especially in academic circles. Since the 1990s, most of the most influential theologians have been sharply sceptical about liberalism. We can trace this to a book published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue and, to a lesser extent, George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, published three years later.

Both were decidedly unenthusiastic about the enlightenment and the conceits of modernity. Liberal individualism was a bogus ideology, a new barbarism. They influenced theologians as widely different as the American theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas and the English Anglican theologian John Milbank, founder of the “radical orthodoxy” movement, which declared that theology must denounce the idolatry of secular modernity and declare itself the true foundation of politics. With dazzling erudition, Milbank presented this startlingly neoconservative position as cutting-edge, postmodern. Two of Milbank’s followers have had some political influence: Phillip Blond’s book Red Tory influenced the Cameron government, and led some policy-wonks like David Goodhart to herald postliberalism as the big new political idea. Adrian Pabst’s co-authored book Blue Labour and his more recent Postliberal Politics have impressed some politicians.

These thinkers call for a deeper democracy, based in religion rather than in the falsity of secular individualism and the excesses and idolatries of the free market. Their dislike of liberalism has a strong Marxist tinge (many of these theologians were deeply sympathetic to Marxism in their youth). They protest that they are not dangerous reactionaries, just harmless academics. But it is not entirely harmless to idealise a unity of religion and politics, to attack political liberalism for disrupting that unity – and, when geopolitics tuns ugly, and real-life theocracy rears its head, to claim to be loyal defenders of liberal democracy against its enemies. Some postliberals are less ardent (one might include Rowan Williams and Giles Fraser here, as well as Goodhart and Pabst), but they too see liberalism negatively, as a mix of rampant capitalism and community-eroding individualism. They fail to see that liberalism is baby as well as two varieties of bathwater.

Might the grief and suffering caused by Putin’s war jolt theology from this dead-end? His aggression is clearly rooted in a theocratic vision, and a hatred of the liberal state. Should this not give our brainy postliberals pause? Should it not lead Christians to reflect on the sacred worth of the liberal state? Yes, the sacred worth. For it is no secondary matter, that people should be free from tyranny, that people should live in states that respect human rights and freedoms. Liberal democracy is not the realisation of the kingdom, any more than it is the “end of history”, but it is a major expression, or outworking, of the Christian gospel, of the Spirit in human history. And it involves the rejection of the old theocratic model of religion and politics, the old ideal of their unity.

Some argue for a sort of neutrality: liberal democracy is the least worst form of government, but to affirm it too strongly is idolatrous. But this just allows the reactionary view that liberalism is a threat to religion to gain ground. The liberal state is largely secular – so how can it be seen as holy? Well, liberal Christians believe that we must accept a tension, or dialectic, between the secular shared public ideology of liberalism, and Christianity. The dream of theopolitical harmony must be renounced, until God brings his kingdom. This is not a sell-out to a secular ideology, for the liberal state has Christian roots. It echoes the kenosis of Christ.

The Church of England, as you might expect, is wonderfully on the fence. It is the established church of a liberal state – which commits it both to the old order of established churches, and the new order of affirming liberal democracy. Until recently it seemed to downplay the former, and accentuate the latter. Now, who knows? Has its attachment to liberal democracy weakened? No, but it has become harder to voice, with so much of the most influential theology of the past thirty years pointing in the other direction. It is time to articulate the Church’s positive link with the liberal state, with unprecedented clarity.

That useful idiot again

A few weeks ago I drew attention to the Catholic Herald’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/dostovesky-and-putin-s-useful-idiots In an edition of the magazine that went to press just before the invasion, there was an article by Mark Jenkins that discussed Putin’s religious motivation in a sympathetic tone, suggesting that the decadent liberalism of the West deserved some sort of comeuppance. In the 1920s and 30s people – largely religious conservatives – used to justify fascists in the same way, I observed.

In my naivety I wondered whether the Catholic Herald would apologise for this misjudgement in its next edition. Instead, it has printed another contribution by Mr Jenkins. Again he writes a slightly veiled defence of Putin’s religious vision, this time focusing on his holy henchman Patriarch Kirill. The Russian Orthodox leader sees the war ‘as regrettable but necessary in order to restore the divinely ordained unity of the Russian people – a unity undermined by the emergence of a western-oriented, independent Ukraine’. Though the rest of the Orthodox world condemns this, we should be more nuanced, says Jenkins. ‘Before scoffing too loudly at this idea, it is worth noting that it is Kirill’s vision of a Christian empire, rather than the Enlightenment’s vision of a secular nation state, that reflects the historic Christian position. In the 19th century, the Catholic Church was as vociferous in its condemnation of Italian nationalism as the Orthodox Church was of Greek nationalism.’

Kirill’s detractors have been influenced by secular thought, Jenkins suggess; by contrast, ‘Putin and Kirill believe the West is in the depths of a profound moral and spiritual crisis.’ He then observes that Putin has urged his underlings to read a work by the theologian Vladimir Soloviev called The Justification of the Good. It is a ‘vision of a union of European Christian realms, a kind of “conservative utopia” through which the ancient European kingdoms might rediscover their Christian identity and, under the strategic control of Russia, fight against the Antichrist – the modern, godless, liberal world order. Soloviev had a vision of a theocratic Russia led by a partnership between the pope and the tsar, saving the West from itself.’ Instead of criticising this vision, Jenkins concludes by suggesting that Pope Francis is fundamentally sympathetic to it: he has in the past joined Kirill in warning against ‘the negative impact of western liberalism on religious values’, and he knows that the ‘non-western world is…reluctant to march to the drum beat of 21st century neo-liberalism and modernity.’

I have seldom felt so grateful to an author as I am to Mark Jenkins. When I bang on about the dangerous ghost of theocracy that haunts religious conservatism I fear that I sound dated and a bit hysterical, like a no-popery Whig. But here it is, the traditional view of how Christianity should relate to politics, minus the normal obfuscation. For Jenkins is basically right that ‘the historic Christian position’ is opposed to the modern liberal state. At root, the Catholic and Orthodox churches both believe in the unity of religion and politics, though they pragmatically soften this in order to sound modern and friendly. And this model is even idealised by ‘postliberal’ Anglicans.

If anything good comes out of this ugly crisis, it might be that it prompts Christians to rethink their denigration of liberal values. Let’s be blunt. Christians must choose between the old model of religion and politics, which is theocratic, and the modern model, in which the liberal state is seen as an outworking of the gospel. The average Western Christian has been conditioned to recoil from such a choice, and to enjoy an armchair seat on the fence, denigrating the liberal state even as he reaps its benefits. It’s time to unlearn that lazy stance. The most fundamental religious debate of modernity, buried for generations by complacent evasion, is resurfacing. Bring it on.

Dostoevsky’s danger

On the Spectator website this piece was titled (not by me) ‘Dostoevsky and Putin’s useful idiots’.

When I was seventeen I heard the name Dostovesky, and was enthralled. Just the name felt so glamorously intellectual, so deep. I began to read some of his novels, and my admiration increased. A bit later I delved into his ideas, and my admiration became more nuanced. I partly admired his defiance of the rational humanist arrogance of the West, but I was also wary of his reactionary mystical nationalism, his faith in the anti-liberal Russian soul.

It seems that a lot of religiously minded intellectuals struggle to get past stage one. They are so taken with the flinty glamour of this writer that their critical faculties atrophy. They allow their aesthetic admiration to influence their religious politics.

Rowan Williams is a theologian I admire for the most part, but he has been overly romantic about Russian Orthodoxy, as if its vision of religion and politics in perfect harmony is more authentic than modern Western Christianity. And his love of Dostoevsky has been a major factor in this.

Last year he wrote an article for the New Statesman in which he argued for the novelist’s abiding relevance. He acknowledged that ‘his opinions jar against every liberal orthodoxy you can think of. He was an authoritarian monarchist who loathed Western democratic ideals and thought socialism a diabolical perversion.’ But we should not dismiss his thinking too quickly, he argues. ‘He may have defended tsarist absolutism, but he provides the most eloquent argument of the 19th century against religious tyranny. He wrote toxic nonsense about Jews, but objected to any attempt to limit their political and religious freedom. He believed that Christian (more specifically, Russian Orthodox) faith was the only hope for cultural renewal and global reconciliation, but wrote a scarifying catalogue of the unavenged horrors of human suffering (including child abuse) for which the Creator had to be held to account. He imagined Jesus Christ being tried and condemned by the Spanish Inquisition. He claimed, with a typical mordant irony, to have made a better case for atheism than most atheists would dare.’

Williams implies that it is simplistic to criticise Dostoevsky for his anti-liberalism: there is actually nuanced vision here. I don’t buy it. His anti-liberal vision must be squarely addressed, in normal sober terms, without reference to the poetic passages in his novels. If a reactionary, theocratic version of Christianity is a bad thing, then his version of it is also a bad thing. If only Rowan Williams spent more time explaining that a more enlightened, pro-liberal version of Christianity is possible, rather than semi-glorifying reactionary versions.

A.N. Wilson also displayed his deep love for the Russian sage last year. In the TLS he reviewed various books about Dostoevsky, and concluded by suggesting that he foresaw some of the ruptures of our time. These include ‘the pathetic unravelling of liberal Western Christianity, and its attempt to marry Reason and the Gospel.’ This is a deeply clumsy little bit of theologising, and again it gives succour to an illiberal vision. Wilson is wrong to suggest that liberal Western Christianity is defined by ‘its attempt to marry Reason and the Gospel’. This was one aspect of it, but another aspect is its belief in political liberalism. By shoving these two aspects together, Wilson implies that the liberal Christianity of the West was a huge mistake, a failure of authenticity. Does he believe this – that we should have stayed with a medieval theocratic version? His desire to sound as deep as Dostoevsky has clouded his judgement.

So what, you might say – these erudite Dostoevsky-fans are not likely to approve of religious nationalism in real life. Surely I do not accuse them of being Putin’s useful idiots? Well, there is an article in this month’s Catholic Herald by Mark Jenkins that gives one pause. It too begins by explaining that Dostoevsky was a prophet of Russia’s religious renewal, and an antagonist of western individualism and rationalism. Then it explains that this vision was revived after the fall of the Soviet Union: an intellectual called Aleksandr Dugin heralded the rise of a new Russian empire, rooted in Orthodoxy. In writings that directly influenced Putin, Dugin announced that Russia’s holy calling is to destabilise the decadent liberal West and make the world safe for traditional Christian civilisation.

Jenkins maintains a neutral tone as he describes such ideas, but presumably he disapproves of a grand plan to divide and weaken the West. But the conclusion suggests otherwise. Jenkins makes a surprising prediction: ‘In ten years’ time, Russian tanks in Ukraine might well be greeted with flowers, rather than bullets.’ Eh? Has the Catholic Herald really invited a Putin sympathiser to tell us about this crisis? It seems so, for he concludes: ‘Fundamentally, the current crisis in world affairs is rooted in the materialism and dualism of the European Enlightenment. It is a defective paradigm, remarkably similar to the one that brought ancient Rome to its knees.’ He then quotes Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s belief that the liberal order is a new barbarism. And he finishes with another quote: ‘As Friedrich Holderlin once said: “Where there is danger, deliverance lies also.”’ The implication is that Putin’s chaos is providential, a righteous blow against the false ideology of the West.

This is the sort of thing that was written a century ago, about another bold foreign leader who dared to stand up to the decadence of liberal democracy: Mussolini. Soon Hitler was also praised on the same grounds. Yes, he might be crude and simplistic in his rhetoric, but who else is defying the Communists, and the secular liberals? Yes, there might be tragic conflict in the short term, but maybe this is necessary, to shake the world from its captivity to liberalism. Yes, there might be unfortunate consequences for the Jews, but that will blow over when order is restored. Plenty of right-wingers said this sort of thing, right up to the outbreak of war, and religious conservatism was a major factor in their worldview.

I think it is time to question the theological disparagement of liberalism, the not-quite-harmless theocratic posturing of our leading religious thinkers.

Response to Milbank

My recent thoughts on the Church of England – see 2 posts down – provoked a response from the leading Anglican theologian John Milbank. He said they were ‘typically peculiar and unrooted’.

In fact, to call Milbank a leading theologian is understating things. I doubt that any British academic has had such an influence on his or her discipline in recent decades. In the mid 1990s he was the key founder of a movement called ‘radical orthodoxy’. With huge erudition, and enviable fluency in French postmodern theory, Milbank and others attacked liberalism in both politics and religion, drawing on Marxist as well as Catholic thought. They dominated Anglican theology, mainly through intimidating sceptics into silence. They have also influenced politics a bit: Milbank’s pupils include Philip Blond, founder of Respublica think-tank, and Adrian Pabst, theorist of post-liberalism, who is admired by Danny Kruger MP.

According to Milbank, ‘liberal Catholicism in the C of E never meant acceptance of political liberalism…Anglicanism has historically been far more Tory than Whig, but Hobson wants to claim Whig Anglicanism as normative.’

This summarises the difference between me and him very usefully. He sees ‘political liberalism’ as a bad thing. He idealises the ‘integralism’ of the pre-liberal era, meaning the integration rather than separation of religion and politics. This surely makes him a marginal reactionary figure, you might think. But the whole trick of post liberalism is to present such thought as edgy and brave not reactionary but ‘postmodern’, post-secular’.

I have half-admired Milbank’s work for years – he was one of my teachers when I was a postgraduate in fact. His polemical pugilistic style is a welcome contrast to the dullness of most academic discourse. But he and his movement have enjoyed far too much respect. It’s partly the fault of more liberal theologians: cowed by the post-liberals’ erudition and self-belief, liberals have shrugged and withdrawn from the fray. No one wants to be dismissed as a dated liberal who doesn’t get it.

Well I’m proud to be a Whiggish Anglican, meaning one who affirms the liberal state as a good thing. The alternative is to idealise a theocratic model of religion. Milbank and co laugh when accused of this – we’re just harmless academics, they say, not blood-stained inquisitors! But it is not entirely harmless to pose as a defender of this old model, and disparage what is good in our politics.

In a sense he’s right, though. The Church of England has never got off the fence and drawn a line under its early phase which was indeed integralist, because the unity of religion and politics was still taken for granted in Tudor times. It has never clearly articulated its affinity with the liberal state. That’s the task for our day.

In good faith

This was in the Spectator a few months ago

It would be weird if my 13-year-old daughter didn’t say she was an atheist. It’s what you say in our culture when you’re that

age. To be honest it would creep me out a bit if she was all pious. But she is getting confirmed into the Anglican faith. This is a piece of hoop-jumping that her parents have decided to require of their children.

I went for coffee with the vicar, to ask if she could join the classes. I admitted that she was a bit reluctant. In fact, it was a mixed picture. Whenever I mentioned confirma- tion she professed her atheism, but when I didn’t mention it for a couple of weeks she asked when the classes were starting. She is not entirely averse to attention, even if it is directed at her eternal soul. Her church- going to date has been patchy. She quite liked Sunday school for a while, when there were some good craft activities and some younger children she could dominate. And she likes occasional guest appearances at her grandmother’s church in the country, where she’s as famous as Pollyanna.

The vicar, no fool, smiled at my sheepish admission that I had not raised St Thérèse of Lisieux. He said that one of his rich arty parishioners had recently paid his teenager to attend church.

That’s what gave me the idea. At first I was a little shocked that a vicar was half- recommending bribery. But then I took the long view and recalled what I had once learned of the conversion of the Anglo- Saxon kings, in which worldly motives played no small part. Why not? Bribing her would settle the matter, and seal her commitment. Otherwise she would perhaps be tempted to stage a little drama of teenage power-play, threatening each week to walk out. And that would be arguably worse for her soul than the acceptance of this bribe.

I won’t say what sum she is promised, but it is far less than was spent on her secular development over the summer, as an ama- teur rock-climber, tennis player and cho- rus girl.

The idea, of course, is to expose her to something that her parents consider beneficial. Attending church for five weeks or so will slightly deepen her acquaintance with

Christian culture. Yes, she will encounter some boredom. But she will also be prod- ded to think about the world in a new way.

Religion is incomprehensible unless you have been exposed to it. To the outsider, it must all seem absurd. To the teenager studying RE, it must seem odd that atheism did not completely triumph circa 1900. But if you witness people worshipping, and join in, it’s all subtly different. You see that these words and gestures matter to people — people who seem decent and sane. You see that these stories are revered, but they are also puzzled over, and sometimes joked about too. You see that an assortment of awkward English people can come together, in an understated way, through singing hymns and speaking some set phrases together.

At first it seems a bit creepy, people uttering responses in the liturgy, as if we’re all pretending to be brainwashed. But then, perhaps, you get to quite like the calm poet- ry of ‘And also with you’ and so on.

And the business end of the liturgy at first seems like a lot of faff over some silver cups and napkins, and everyone pretending to find it all sombre and momentous. But then, gradually, you get a little taste for the group theatre of it.

Sure, it’s a bit too understated to rock a teenager’s world. I don’t expect her to be excitedly Instagramming the experience. But let her see something that doesn’t fit with all that. She might quite like the quiet otherness of it, even if she doesn’t admit it.

Some might say: fine, pay her to go to church for a few weeks if you want, but not to be confirmed. That should be entirely her decision, unclouded by bribery. It is bad for someone to profess faith without really meaning it.

Well, I’m not sure. In Anglicanism, teenage confirmation isn’t really a decisive testimony that one is saved; it is, in effect, a cultural gesture. The teenager is acknowledging that he or she is somewhat shaped by this tradition, and showing some respect for that shaping, without claiming that it is any sort of fixed identity. ‘I’ll go on thinking about it, from this base,’ they are saying.

Even this sort of gesture should be the teenager’s free decision, you might say. But the idea of total autonomy is an illusion. You can’t make up your own mind about religion unless religion has been a factor in the mak- ing of your mind.

If she gains a little bit more respect for this tradition, it will be the best money we have spent on her. Religion might be some- thing she ignores for a decade or two, then finds she is glad to have access to. It does not hurt to have such options in our lonely culture. It does not hurt to know that vicars are almost invariably good sorts: trustworthy, thoughtful, open-minded. They might not like me publicising the fact they offer free therapy, as long as you can present your angst in terms of spiritual seeking. I hope that she does encounter such angst. It’s a strange thing to say, but it’s an odd part of raising, or trying to raise, Christians. One hopes that they will not find things too easy, fit in too nicely, if it means they don’t learn faith’s necessity.

I don’t expect her to come out of the classes a fervent believer. Real belief matures slowly, and co-exists with scepticism. She’ll go back to her crappy TV shows and her gossiping and her thrift-store rummaging. But with a little seed sown in her.

Recent Spectator Article: full text

Divided we stand: Anglicans need to agree to disagree

From magazine issue: 8 January 2022

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Two years ago the Church of England decided to delay any public discussion of its deepest division, over homosexuality, until 2022. So this might be the year in which an already troubled institution has a dramatic public meltdown. Or it might be the year in which the Church of England sorts itself out a bit. Yes, really. Stranger miracles have happened.

There are grounds for hope, and not just on the gay issue. The Church has a core strength that it could draw on, and a core identity that could stand it in good stead, though one it is weirdly shy to assert.

First let’s admit that things haven’t been going so well, even while the gay issue has been kicked into the long grass. The pandemic has obviously been a nightmare for church attendance and finances, but it also deepened a dangerous ideological rift. It emboldened those who want to experiment with more flexible structures, which alarmed those who don’t, and who fear the demise of the parish. This rift is dangerous because it strongly overlaps with the old rift between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics. At the same time the Church got drawn into the culture wars, with knee-taking progressive bishops irritating a large section of the faithful. The former bishop Michael Nazir-Ali was irritated all the way to Rome.

It might sound like crazy optimism, but challenging times can clarify minds, and prod an awkward, uncertain tradition into life. I refer not to the Church in general, which has pockets of passionate conviction, but to the core Anglican tradition of liberal Anglo-Catholicism. It is liberal in the sense that it affirms the liberal state and rejects a reactionary response to modern culture. It is Anglo-Catholic in the sense that it has confidence in ritual tradition, and is wary of simplistic emotional piety and bossy legalism. It prefers mystery, difficulty, open-mindedness. This is, in my humble opinion, the best Christian tradition, and in fact the best tradition in all of human culture. So why does it have all the self-confidence of a pimply teenager?Liberal parishes must be free to conduct gay weddings, evangelical parishes must be allowed to refuse to

Some readers will be surprised some feel the Church lacks liberal confidence. Isn’t it full of trendy bishops trying to jump on woke bandwagons and modernise everything? Well, yes, there is a BBC-ish culture of political correctness, especially in the central leadership, but that’s not true liberalism, that’s just another form of tyranny. The Church could and should champion its own truly liberal identity. It only nervily apes secular trends because it has lost touch with its own tradition.

Consider the above-mentioned former bishop, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali. In an interview that he gave to this magazine he spoke of his early life in Pakistan, and named one of the key differences between Islam and Christianity. The former religion is ‘legalistic’, he said; it puts rules in the way of the believer’s relationship with God. His use of this contentious term struck me as a bit rich, quite frankly, in the context of his move from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.

Legalism is the belief that religion entails a ‘law’, or firm rules, about morality and ritual culture. Compared with other monotheisms, Christianity is relatively critical of this aspect of religion. You could even say that it separates religion and moral rules, arguing that God chooses not to be built into a particular moral system; he prefers to associate himself with an ideal of perfection. It is within Protestantism, and particularly liberal Protestantism, that this ‘post-legalism’ has been most fully attempted. This was a major ingredient of the modern liberal state: politics became secularised, as religious rules loosened. The Church of England partially and awkwardly signed up to this. It is joined at the hip to liberal culture. Yes, this makes it easy to criticise, but this is its special calling.

So the Church of England should regain some pride in its positive affinity with cultural freedom. Admittedly this will not in itself get agnostics back in the pews: secular liberals obviously don’t think they need any lessons on cultural freedom. But it is a crucial part of Anglican identity, and only a church that has confidence in its core identity can attract people.

When the Church’s liberal Anglo–Catholic core finally rouses itself into life, its task is threefold. First it must simply assert its centrality in the Church. This means speaking up for the Anglican version of liberalism, and defying the fashionable post-liberalism that has over-impressed a generation or two of Anglican intellectuals, from Rowan Williams to Giles Fraser. It’s time for a nuanced approach, in which aspects of liberalism are criticised, but in which the basic Anglican affirmation of the liberal state is renewed.

Asserting its centrality in the Church also means treating evangelicalism with a bit less respect. For decades it has unbalanced the Church by drawing relatively big (and affluent) crowds with a style that grates on most Anglican sensibilities. Its simplistic idea of mission has dominated all recent attempts at innovation, which have been heavily backed by the archbishops, leading to discontent in the parishes. A case in point is the newish Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell: though he comes from the Anglo-Catholic side of the Church, his promotion led him to an uncritical embrace of the evangelical model of mission, with its grim middle-management diagrams and cheery facile slogans. Evangelicalism remains ebullient as ever, but thankfully its reputation for trend-bucking success is now fading: a recent report showed that its latest church-planting efforts were largely fruitless. This makes it easier to put it back in its box.

I have sometimes felt that the Church was wrong to tolerate dissent on the ordination of women and let the traditionalists have their separate structures, but it turns out that it was providential because it set a precedent that can now belatedly be followed on an even more divisive issue. Only by embarking on this admittedly messy course can the Church reaffirm its affinity with the moral culture around it.

The third task is to renew Anglican worshipping culture, both within the parish system and beyond it. Bold innovation is needed, but it must be in tune with the Church’s core traditions. We need a paradigm shift in which every parish has a dual function. As well as staging weekly worship it should contribute to wider cultural projects, such as local festivals, collaborating with other churches and other cultural bodies. Every parish should have an extrovert creative wing, an in-house arts centre. The aim is a new Anglican culture of creativity, rooted in parishes.

It is not an easy fate for a Church to be joined at the hip to liberalism. It is open to charges that it dilutes Christian orthodoxy and is full of moral muddle. The former charge must be refuted, but the latter charge cannot be. Our Church is full of moral muddle. But that is because you and I are. It reflects us. It is the muddle of honesty. The alternative is a Church that issues clear moral rules that most of its adherents do not quite believe in. You might say that a Church with a positive view of liberalism is simply too weak to stand. This sounds like a hard-headed analysis, but it’s not true. Plenty of us still feel called to keep the experiment going, of Christianity plus moral honesty. We trust that God will not allow this form of witness to run into the sand. He might even have grand plans for it.

My theology – a summary

My theological work has four stands, though they overlap a bit, especially the first two, which relate to theopolitics and liberalism.

1 Defending Christianity’s affinity with political liberalism

I see the liberal state as a good thing, despite everything. Unafraid of seeming Whiggish, we should salute the vision of those radical-liberal Protestants who rejected theocracy, or unitary theopolitics (Calvinist as well as Catholic), in favour of a new idea: God wills a new sort of state in which liberty is central. I see the Church of England as committed to this, by virtue of having chosen to remain the established church of a liberal state. I think we need to oppose the current dominance of ‘postliberal’ theology, which is at heart reactionary. I have addressed these ideas in Milton’s Vision, and God Created Humanism.

2 Distinguishing between good and bad liberal theology

What complicates the above is that ‘liberal theology’ is wider than this. It also refers to the modern tradition that seeks to ‘reform’ Christianity in the direction of rational humanism. This tradition started life as ‘deism’, which rejected revelation, ritual, the need for faith. It gradually infected a huge section of Protestantism. Kierkegaard and Barth were right to warn against this. But they failed to save the baby from the bathwater, i.e. the positive affinity with political liberalism outlined above. Authentic liberal Christianity is rooted in faith and ritual, and guards against rational-humanist dilution. I addressed this in Reinventing Liberal Christianity.

3 Articulating faith

I have tried to show that faith has a dialectical structure. It is a conversation between two voices in the believer, one that doubts and one that assents. The latter voice should be seen as miraculous, the presence of the Holy Spirit. This dynamic was largely invented by Luther, and it returns in Barth’s ‘dialectical theology’. I see it as the authentic Protestant account of ‘faith and reason’, and reject the (mainly Catholic) tradition that claims that faith and reason are harmonious. An angular fideism makes more sense to me. I have addressed this in various places including Faith, and the final chapter of God Created Humanism.

4 Renewing Christian cult-ure

By ‘cult-ure’ I mean worship. Where to start? Christian culture as I have known it is weak, cut off from most of the dynamism of culture in general. Unless one is drawn to an evangelical or high-church subculture, one has a major problem. Church is unlikely to feel like an engaging cultural event. For some years I evaded the issue, vaguely hoping that some successor to ‘organised religion’ and ‘institutional church’ might emerge. At the same time I became fascinated by ritual, in an anthropological way, and an artistic way. I yearned for a new culture of primitivist-inspired creativity, and of neo-medieval festivity. Then I admitted that I needed church, and the core rite of the eucharist, and that this had to be the essential building block of Christian culture. But I could not drop my awareness that it was problematically weak. So I have wondered how a new energy can be imported to church, with new theatricality and participation. I also feel that parishes should link up to create large-scale events, fusing worship and public art. I have so far written about this in scattered journalism (including a BBC Lent talk about a performance-art ritual I attempted).

Divided We Stand

This is my recent Spectator article (published 8 January with a couple of little changes)

Two years ago the Church of England decided to delay any public discussion of its deepest division, over homosexuality, for two years – until 2022. So this might be the year in which an already troubled institution has a dramatic public meltdown. Or it might be the year in which the Church of England sorts itself out a bit. Yes, really. Stranger miracles have happened.

I think that there are grounds for hope, and not just on the gay issue. I think that the Church has a core strength that it is weirdly reluctant to draw on, a core identity that it is weirdly shy to assert.

First let’s admit that things haven’t been going so well, even while the gay issue has been kicked into the long grass. The pandemic has obviously been a nightmare for church attendance, and finances, but it also deepened a dangerous ideological rift. It emboldened those who want to experiment with more flexible structures, which alarmed those who don’t, and who fear the demise of the parish. This rift is dangerous because it strongly overlaps with the old rift between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics. At the same time the Church got drawn in to the culture war, with knee-taking bishops irritating a large section of the faithful. The former bishop Michael Nazir-Ali was irritated all the way to Rome.

It might sound like crazy optimism, but challenging times can clarify minds, and prod an awkward, uncertain tradition into life. I refer not to the Church in general, which has pockets of passionate conviction, but to the core Anglican tradition. The core Anglican tradition is liberal Anglo-Catholicism. It is liberal in the sense that it affirms the liberal state, and rejects a reactionary response to modern culture. It is Anglo-Catholic in the sense that it has confidence in ritual tradition, and is wary of simplistic emotional individualism and bossy legalism. This is, in my humble opinion, the best Christian tradition, which means, to be Christian-centric, and unanglicanly boastful, that it is the best tradition in all of human culture. So why does it have all the self-confidence of a pimply teenaged mouse?

Some readers will be surprised that I feel the Church lacks liberal confidence. Isn’t it full of trendy bishops trying to jump on woke bandwagons and modernise everything? Not really. Yes, there is a BBC-ish culture of political correctness, especially in the central leadership, but the bigger picture is that the Church lacks confidence in its own liberal identity. It nervily apes secular liberal trends because it has lost touch with its own liberal tradition.

Consider the above-mentioned former bishop. When Dr Michael Nazir-Ali became a Roman Catholic in October, he fired some parting salvoes at his old Church, uttered in a spirit of deep sadness of course. It kowtows to liberal orthodoxy and fails to stand up for core Christian values like the sanctity of marriage, he said. And in its excessive liberalism it fails to nurture a truly free society in which religious belief is protected from secularist tyranny. His core complaint was clear: the Church needs firm moral rules, and Anglicanism has decided that anything goes.

Did any voices question his logic? Did anyone in the press think to defend the C of E from these charges? Did anyone question whether the Catholic Church is really the superior defender of religious freedom, for example? No. Because in a sense he is right. The liberalism of Anglicans tends to make them cautious about voicing their liberalism, if it might cause offence to other traditions. Well, let me follow Dr Nazir-Ali’s advice and try to shake off some of that cowardice, and speak straight.

In an interview that he gave to this paper he spoke of his early life in Pakistan, and named one of the key differences between Islam and Christianity. The former religion is ‘legalistic’, he said; it puts rules in the way of the believer’s relationship with God. His use of this contentious term struck me as a bit rich, quite frankly, in the context of his move from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.

Legalism is the belief that religion entails a ‘law’, or firm rules, about morality and ritual culture. Compared to other monotheisms, Christianity is relatively critical of this aspect of religion. You could even say that it separates religion and moral rules, arguing that God chooses not to be built in to a particular moral system; he prefers to associate himself with an ideal of perfection. It is within Protestantism, and particularly liberal Protestantism, that this ‘post-legalism’ has been most fully attempted. This was a major ingredient of the modern liberal state: politics became secularised, as religious rules loosened. The Church of England partially and awkwardly signed up to this. It is joined at the hip to liberal culture. Yes, this makes it easy to criticise, but this is its special calling.

All I am saying is this: if Roman Catholics accuse the Church of England of weakness and muddle and liberal trendiness, they should not be surprised at the old-fashioned rejoinder. Their Church is…what shall we say, less intimately acquainted with the spirit of cultural freedom. It lays down laws, especially relating to sex, that give it the appearance of standing up to liberalism with hard-core crusading courage. Anglicans are somewhat impressed, for there is much in liberal culture that should be opposed, but ultimately we feel that true courage does not lie in anti-liberal reaction.

When the Church’s liberal Anglo-Catholic core finally rouses itself into life, its task is threefold. First it must simply assert its centrality in the Church. This means speaking up for the Anglican version of liberalism, and defying the fashionable post-liberalism that has over-impressed a generation or two of Anglican intellectuals, from Rowan Williams to Giles Fraser. It’s time for a nuanced approach, in which aspects of liberalism are criticised, but in which the basic Anglican affirmation of the liberal state is renewed. It also means treating Evangelicalism with a bit less respect. For decades it has unbalanced the Church by drawing relatively big (and affluent) crowds with a style that grates on most Anglican sensibilities. Its simplistic idea of mission has dominated all recent attempts at innovation, which have been heavily backed by the archbishops, leading to discontent in the parishes. Thankfully its reputation for trend-bucking success is now fading: a recent report showed that its latest church-planting efforts were largely fruitless. This makes it easier to put it back in its box.

The second task is to begin to end the dispute over homosexuality. It won’t be solved overnight, or over-year, but the solution is clear enough. Diversity must be allowed: liberal parishes must be free to conduct gay weddings, evangelical parishes must be allowed to refuse to. The Church allowed such diversity over the ordination of women; there is no reason that this compromise should not be repeated. I have sometimes felt that the Church was wrong to tolerate dissent on the ordination of women, and let the traditionalists have their separate structures, but it turns out that it was providential. For it set a precedent can now belatedly be followed, on an even more divisive issue. Only by embarking on this admittedly messy course can the Church reaffirm its affinity with the moral culture around it.

It is not an easy fate for a Church, to be joined at the hip to liberalism. It is open to charges that it dilutes Christian orthodoxy and is full of moral muddle. The former charge must be refuted, but the latter charge cannot be. This Church is full of moral muddle. But that is because you and I are. It reflects us. It is the muddle of honesty. The alternative is a Church that issues clear moral rules that most of its adherents do not quite believe in. You might say that a Church with a positive view of liberalism is simply too weak to stand. This sounds like a hard-headed analysis, but it’s not quite true. Plenty of us still feel called to keep the experiment going, of Christianity plus moral honesty. We trust that God will not allow this form of witness to run into the sand. He might even have grand plans for it.

Theo Hobson