Folly Plays No Favorites

Taking Issue With C.S. Lewis

Dear Friends,

Step into my study. Shall fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!

On Friday I published a really lengthy Square Inch Newsletter explaining how our own times are mirroring that of the late 19th century and its turn into the 20th. Materialism was at its dominant cultural summit, and yet the masses were seeking spirituality—some in Christianity, more in paganism. The very next morning the Times of London published this article by journalist Giles Coren, “This Lent I will turn atheism to ashes.” It’s a masterpiece of the genre: people dissatisfied with the stale default assumption of materialistic atheism looking to find some transcendence.

It is wonderfully written, and I’ll admit the subhead made me chuckle: “After growing up a godless Jew, and then appreciating that I don’t not believe, I now feel at home with Anglicanism.” Ah, yes. Anglicanism: “the place for people who don’t not believe.” Ringing endorsement! The essay prompted several thoughts.

First, Coren does a wonderful job describing and explaining Christianity’s cultural significance and influence. Fading, crumbling, withering away, perhaps, but still living on its last gasps of Christendom’s thin air. The sheer beauty of the parish church on every corner, wide open doors, there to serve anyone and everybody. Weddings, funerals, times of need and rejoicing. It is hard not to be somewhat romantic about it, and we should—without being Romanticist about it. The parish model is probably gone forever in the modern world, and the church will adapt. But it spoke to something that should be fostered: the day-to-day “atmospheric” relevance of God in the hustle and bustle of life. Sure, there was plenty of nominalism even the heyday of the Church of England, but nominalism is not—contrary to a Russell Moore hobby-horse—culturally the worst thing in the world.

Second, there is something so humorous and ironic that in the Church of England, even in the most wretched of apostate parishes (e.g., rainbow flag-waving lesbian priests) the Word of God is read and spoken and recited at every single worship service. Why? Because 500 years ago King Henry and Archbishop Cramer told them they had to. And the rebels … submit. It’s amazing. Inexplicable, really. I like to think of it as God did of old among the pagans: he didn’t “leave himself without a witness.” I once sat at a midweek Evensong Service at Westminster Abbey. If you are a worshipper (not tourist), they lead you in through a different door. On this particular evening, they sat me in the choir loft, right next to the choir—shoulder to shoulder, practically. Even recently, I could see where I sat when I saw the coronation of King Charles. To say the service was beautiful does not do it justice. Anyway, at this service a young priest led and did the readings. I thought to myself, this fellow probably doesn’t even believe that Jesus rose from the dead. But he is reading the Apostle Paul out loud to me in public. God can make even stones cry out.

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On a related note, and speaking of Anglicans, no sooner had I hit the “publish” button on that essay than I ran across this passage from C.S. Lewis’s The Weight of Glory. As much as I hate to do it, I have a bone to pick with it.