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The Re-Hallowing Fr. Chrysostom MacDonnell When the British Deanery of the Antiochian Orthodox Church was set up in this country, there was one, very firm aim in the minds of its architects: nothing less than the re-hallowing of the whole of Britain through the recovery of her original Orthodox faith. There was an erroneous but understandable notion at the time, that we, as concerned Anglicans, (soon to abandon Anglicanism) who wished to remain within the clear bounds of Apostolic Tradition, should seek a home in the Roman Catholic Church. For most of us (over ten years ago, now) who, in our latter Anglican days, were watching the disintegration of what we had once imagined to have been the catholic church of this land, by Law Established, safe under the Elizabethan Settlement, the break could not come soon enough. It was not just the single issue of the proposed ordination of women to the presbyterate that bothered us. Yet, somehow, that controversy did serve as a warning light. It was clear that an ecclesial body that could countenance such a departure from apostolic order could not be, in essence, a true church in the apostolic succession. Though the form was there, the substance was not. At that time, I clearly remember thinking that the Church of England was like the emperor in the story of The Emperor's New Clothes, only this time things were reversed: the clothes were there but it was the emperor who was missing! Yet neither was the Roman Church any more attractive, for it was out of those very scholastic controversies of the Reformation that the Anglican communion had grown and her problems had their own roots deep in Roman Catholic theology. To become Roman Catholic would merely be a return to the root of the same problem. It was, rather, the discovery that the Church Our Lord founded, the Church discovered in the pages of the New Testament, was not to be sought beside the Tiber; was not a church yet to come through some super-ecumenical conglomeration, but was there all along in the Eastern Orthodox Church. For those who thought such a choice was alien, even far too oriental for Englishmen to enter, we realised that it was the same Church of our forefathers; essentially the same as that present in our land during her Celtic and Anglo-Saxon periods of history. Meanwhile, the dismantling of Apostolic Christianity in Britain has been a long and slow process. It had begun with the brutal Norman Conquest, destroying in its wake the Anglo-Saxon Church. However, the pace of the dismantling of Britain's Christian culture has quickened in the last forty years. It is for this very reason that the aim of our Deanery, (approaching the tenth anniversary of its establishment,) has not changed. In fact, the need for the re-hallowing of Britain grows ever more urgent and for a variety of reasons. In this article I wish to enumerate a few of the reasons why this is a matter of the utmost urgency at this time. The social changes since the Second World War have broken up traditional networks in our nation. For the most part, these changes have come from the greater mobility of people and the possibility of 'moving away' to find work. For many, the War opened up the world and drew them away from their root communities. Although, for the adventurous, this has meant a wider world, it has entailed a concomitant breaking of ties to place and a real sense of belonging and identity. The gradually liberalising trends in social and sexual morality since the 1960's have undermined previously accepted codes of behaviour. Like all such movements, demands for the greater acceptability of and tolerance towards what, previously, had been seen as immoral have produced their generally destructive fruits. It was cogently argued that 'old fashioned' attitudes produced stigma and social isolation for those at odds with accepted moral norms. To have sexual relations before marriage, to give birth to an illegitimate child; to be born outside wedlock; to live in cohabitation without marriage; to expect the availability of easy divorce; to be openly homosexual, it was argued, should not entail social censure. Yet the direct result of the social acceptance of these new 'norms' appears to have produced no greater sum of human happiness, a disintegrated family structure, a lack of security for the young and a downright climate of fear in regard to sexual health. The steady decline of family structures, brought on by changes in attitudes towards divorce and cohabitation, has been an interesting yet painful phenomenon to observe over the last twenty of so years. So complete has been the reversal in mores that it is now, certainly, politically incorrect and, deemed virtually immoral, to disapprove of cohabitation; that somehow sexual experimentation and 'trial relationships' before the full commitment of marriage is somehow the only logical solution. Yet, for all this trial and error, the divorce rate continues to increase! The commercial pressures have fostered more materialistic attitudes towards life in general. In one sense this has always been true and there have always been those who have set their heart on this world's goods. Yet, for the vast majority now, the loss of spiritual goals - even if only expressed in some vague notion that if you are good you will go to heaven - has meant that the only good is the utilitarian and material good. Expectations of goods through ubiquitous advertising, freely available credit and the continuous commercial opportunities of twenty-four hour shopping have posited a values system based solely on ownership desirability. The changes in work patterns have had a detrimental effect on communal, family and religious life. The current economic demands on family budgets, together with ever-increasing borrowing and the free access to easy credit have fuelled a consumer economy of unprecedented proportions. Workloads have therefore increased, pressurised by the ceaseless demands for more and more money to finance ever-expanding and usually, unrealistic life styles. People work longer and longer hours, often never observing any day of real rest. Yet, the net result has not seen any increase of job satisfaction nor any greater feeling of creative contentment. Even increased technology, once vaunted as the liberator of mankind, has paradoxically, only served to increase available work time to the detriment of social and family life. With Sunday, now a working day for many, times and seasons begin to loose their potency and thus, thrust into the ordinary work-day world on every conceivable occasion, the demands of formalised religion must fall by the wayside. The increased isolation of individuals, through the breakdown of both traditional social networks (such as belonging to a trade union) and a sense of local and regional belonging, have largely privatised and fragmented much of our society. This gives little natural soil for any national religious sense to grow. In fact, the more people live individualised lives - through greater freedom to divorce or some perverted, narcissistic sense of the autonomy of the individual, the less religion can bind people together. We live in an age when spirituality - of the supermarket, pick-and-mix variety, has never been a more readily available option. Yet religion, from its Latin root meaning to re-tie or bind again, daily loses its power to link a largely fragmented society. The rapid collapse of the influence of the national (established) Church, through its accommodation to the current mores and post-modern social attitudes, is perhaps, one of the most tragic of all our pieces of evidence. The Church of England's collective loss of nerve since the nineteen-sixties, together with its own innate secularist tendencies have, virtually, guaranteed its eventual demise. Riven by party strife from its inception, it was, perhaps, inevitable that factionalism and modern controversies over women's ordination, homosexuality and the contemporary heresy of Ecumenism (in the sense that the real Church has yet to be realised on earth,) would leave it a floundering rump of its former self. The Roman Church has long overtaken it in communicant numbers, so in what sense is it still the church of the nation? At times, now, it seems, that only the Monarch's loyalty to the institution is maintaining any credibility to which it can still cling. In short, the Church of England's history over the past forty years have largely contributed to the secularisation of Britain where once, the sleeves of its all enveloping surplice had hallowed every square foot of the land. The lack of national cohesion, in part advanced by multi-culturalism has evidently been disastrous for the English sense of identity. The post-modern disparaging of anything historical, traditional and above all, English, has the makings of something very dangerous in the political field. The present government has a deep mistrust of anything English which, in part, explains their enthusiasm for the European project. Despite protests to the contrary, does anyone really believe that beneath the promotion of the European Constitution and the ultimate aim of accepting the Euro currency, there is not the idea of an eventual United State of Europe? To an extent, this explains also the Deputy Prime Minister's desire to create regional parliaments for the so-called English regions: what better way to disempower the notion of English identity than to 'Balkanise' the whole land. The net result has be been the appearance of an ugly and corrupt expression of nationhood through football hooliganism and the emergence of the British National Party as the fruit of housing estate alienation. Similarly, the multi-cultural experiment has been an utter disaster. The farcical disparaging of Christian culture by politically correct local authorities (with the bogus plea that they do not wish to cause offence to non-Christian residents!) has only increased a general feeling of injustice when we know, full well, that such bending over backwards to accommodate the foreign into English life, is not reciprocated (nor should it be!) abroad. In particular, the influence of Islam in Britain has been pernicious. There is no point in trying to reach an accommodation or modus vivendi between Christians and Muslims in this country, for, Islam, in its religious beliefs and values, is anti-Christian and its claims to be the final revelation from God must be dismissed clearly by Christians. The naive assertions by certain politicians that Islam is a 'religion of peace' can only spring from a deep ignorance of the religion and one presumes that they have never read the Qur'an. Let us state it bluntly: yes, Islam is a religion of peace within the Ummah itself; like any religious system it has evolved a social pattern that makes for its inner cohesion, else it would not survive at all. The point is, Islam is a polity as much as a religion and as such, cannot rest until it has taken root over all the earth. Unlike, Christianity, its kingdom is very much of this world, by violence where necessary and, as such, its presence here can only be detrimental to our freedoms. This is in no way implying that law-abiding Muslims subjects of this country pose an immediate threat to our democracy, but thinking in historical terms (which our present Government cannot understand,) a generally pervasive Islamic influence will eventually change the ethos of parts of this country. For the same reasons, Christians should oppose the entry of Turkey into the E.U. Bearing this in mind, we have to admit that there are shameful episodes of forced conversion in Christian history as well, though Orthodox Christians have a particular perspective here. After all, it was the schismatic Papacy in the Middle Ages that fostered the appalling episodes of Crusading in the Holy Land. This, in turn led, eventually, to the downfall of Constantinople, the very heart of Orthodoxy itself. Faced therefore with this challenge there can be only one aim and duty for Orthodox Christians in England and the rest of the U.K. Lets be blunt again: we have to evangelise among British Muslims and bring them to know Christ as God to save their souls. To be honest at this stage, I do not think vast hordes of English people will be converting to Islam, apart from a few isolated marriage arrangements and the odd few misguided souls on a spiritual search. But think in terms of the future - Islam will spread here, not least, through a higher birth rate. Muslim people in Britain do not practice abortion and contraception on the scale current among the present Anglo-Saxon generation - an aging population - who have come to see sex merely as a form of entertainment or recreation and have largely abandoned family values. I will though, state it again, lest anyone through lack of understanding or from nefarious motives, misunderstand me: our issue with Islam is theological and not with Muslims themselves per se. The failure of education to promote a positive national identity and, above all, its abandonment of narrative history, has also served the fragmentation of our culture. The replacement in schools of teaching, in the main, historical skills of investigation (only really appropriate at degree level) instead of the story of the nation has, on the whole, left children profoundly ignorant with little sense of what they inherit of a once proud country. Both Thatcherite and Blairite governments have contributed to this state of affairs with their constant political meddling in the education system. There has been added to this, as well, the growing culture of mistrust of the professional expertise and competence of teachers together with a horror of any intellectual elites. If we are honest, we must say that this used to be a Christian nation but it is so no longer. We live in post-modern, post Christian Britain, a land where neo-paganism finds a ready constituency and is as much at home here as Islam or even the new 'Scientism' (where atheistic science and material things can be the only criteria for viewing the mystery of life). The tragedy is, of course, that there are many people around us who rebel against all this and know, in their heart of hearts, that the changes outlined above have usually been foisted on them by a small number of activists in positions of power and influence. We knew, long ago, that the national Church had largely failed, through a lack of theological and pastoral nerve, to stand up against any of these changes. It was, after all, for many of us, the very thing that brought us to the realization that the true Church of the Living God, the Church of the New Testament, was to be found elsewhere. As Orthodox Christians and knowing, as we do, that we have 'found the true faith and have received the heavenly Spirit', there can be no other work for us than the restoration of a once Christian nation. The great commission at the end of St. Matthew's gospel commands us to set about the evangelization of all nations. It was that command that brought Welsh and Irish saints to Cornwall; that brought St. Augustine to Canterbury; that sent St. Boniface to Frisia. Lack of space constrains us from going further but the nation that once sent missionaries all over the globe, now stands in need of Christ itself. For us there is no argument; it is only the Orthodox faith that will do and it is only through the Church to which our Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ancestors once belonged, that we can advance by God's grace, the re-hallowing of our land. Whether our neighbours or friends; whether the vast majority of our countrymen who are, for the most part, indifferent to or ignorant of Christ; whether those of other faiths who have made their home here: they all stand in need of Christ. The alternative, I fear in the end, especially in the case of Islam - a political system as much as a religion (and which, by its very nature, must seek to dominate,) has to be the dreaded clash of cultures. Next year sees the tenth anniversary of the Deanery yet, in one sense, we have but made a beginning of the great work. On the other hand, it was clear to me this summer at the Swanwick Conference where the future of Orthodox Christianity lay in this land and it did not seem to be with the immigrant Orthodox communities. At times, some of them can appear inward looking. This was evident by many of the questions raised at the conference that were peculiarly irrelevant to us members of the Antiochian Deanery. There are over a quarter of a million Greeks in this country. No one wishes to disparage their language or culture but they are already losing their young people from the Church. Those young people, brought up in modern Britain cannot connect their daily lives with a Liturgy in, what is to them, a foreign language. Many Christian peoples 'living abroad' like to seek out the services of their national chaplancies; one growth area for the Church of England is with the ex-pat community in France! But the time for that amongst the Orthodox here must, surely, be at an end. Of course, the ethnic Greek Archdiocese is welcome to stick with the old mindset, caring for the souls of its own constituency but that cannot be the vision for the Antiochian Deanery; the aim of our foundation is far broader. What the picture will be for religion in Britain a hundred years from now is anybody's guess but, whatever happens, this is not something we just ignore with comforting thoughts of leaving it to God's providence because He has left the work to us! And we do start with ourselves: 'Save yourself,' said St. Seraphim, 'And a thousand others will be saved around you.' This, though, is no mere call to revival; they had one of those exactly one hundred years ago in Welsh Protestantism - where is it now? We are talking of reclaiming for Christ a whole culture, one that is slowly going through the crisis of losing its own identity whilst drowning in a sea of Americanism commercialism, European Unionism and multi-culturalism. 'None so cold as a Christian who doesn't care for the salvation of others,' said St. John Chrysostom. That mystery of faith which we shall again celebrate Sunday by Sunday, is not just a personal struggle to enter the kingdom of heaven. We belong to The Church, the body of Orthodox believers; a corporate and spiritual network. Salvation is social as well as individual and we do this with and for others. Fr. Chrysostom MacDonnell |
