‘For me, the vital issue facing … the nation is the loss of this country’s long tradition of Christian wisdom which brought to birth the English nation…. [T]he Church in England must once again be a beacon by which the people of England can orient themselves…. Having shed an empire and lost a missionary zeal, has this great nation, and mother of parliamentary democracy, also lost a noble vision for the future? We are getting richer and richer as a nation, but less and less happy. The Church in England must rediscover her self-confidence and self-esteem that united and energised the English people…. The Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History tells not only of how the English were converted, but how that corporate-discipleship, the Church, played a major socialising and civilising role by uniting the English and conferring nationhood on them…. Christians, our priority is amongst the 72% who in the last census said they were Christians. That’s where our task lies.’
This is an extract from yesterday’s inaugural sermon by the Most Rev Dr John Sentamu, the new Archbishop of York. It suggests his ministry might bring to the Anglican church a better understanding of its historic role and purpose than that which some other leading Anglicans have displayed of late.
Rather than forever seeking to concede ground to secularists and fundamentalist followers of faiths other than Christianity whose adherents would seek its replacement by theirs, the Church of England should reassert its historic function of being the most important civilising and acculturating force in the nation.
Secularists and fundamentalists of other creeds like to claim the empty pews in so many churches throughout the land today shows it has become a post-Christian nation. The self-identification of English in the census suggests otherwise.
One of the most distinctive features of this Anglican nation was its tolerance of those of other creeds and denominations, particularly, those seeking to immigrate to Britain to escape persecution or seek economic advancement, provided they were prepared to be loyal and law-abiding.
Dr Sentamu opened his sermon by alluding to the Judaic sources of Christianity before ending it with a prayer adapted, without acknowledgement, from the Jewish liturgy. That prayer, the most sacred in the Jewish liturgy, calls on Jews to acknowledge God as their one and only Lord, before exhorting them to love God with all their hearts, souls and might.
In his adaption of this prayer, Dr Sentamu extended its scope beyond Jews to the 71% of his compatriots still prepared to classify themselves as Christian. Clearly, its scope could also be extended to include British Muslims too who worship the same God as Jews and Christians.
Rather than excluding religion from the public square, or else going even further down the multicultural route that requires England’s Christian majority to relinquish ever-more of its Christian roots and heritage, perhaps the best way for the country to increase cohesion and become a more united as a nation than it has of late become would be, as Dr Sentamu suggests, for its Christian majority to regain touch with their historic faith and traditions from which so many of them have of late become estranged, often by a deliberate strategy on the part of those with an animus against it, be they humanists or zealots of some other faith.
Recognition by all those whose own creed does not preclude them from so doing of their shared belief in the same God might be a better way to foster social cohesion and unity in England than ever further multiculturally- motivated attrition of its Christian heritage and culture.
Those young British Muslims who in recent times have seemingly become ever more reluctant to integrate and correspondingly ever more drawn towards extremist forms of their creed might be less inclined towards self-segregation and less drawn asa result towards incendiary versions of their faith were England’s majority to become more appreciative and proud of its Christian heritage and character.
I have one further suggestion to make towards that end.
In the wake of the July London suicide bombings, British Muslim community leaders have increasingly voiced concern at the spectacle of growing alienation of their young British-born coreligionists. They might do well to think about introducing into their own liturgy at their places of worship a suitably adapted version of another prayer Jews recite here weekly on the Sabbath. That prayer is one on behalf of the Royal Family. It calls on God to bless the ruling sovereign and their family, and to to deliver them from all intent on harming them, before calling on God 'to put a spirit of wisdom and understanding into the hearts and minds of all [his or] her counsellors so that they might uphold the peace of the realm and advance the welfare of the nation'.
This year celebrates the 350th anniversary of the return of Jews to England after their expulsion many centuries before.
It would be a fitting gesture for those more other recently settled religious minorities who have been fortunate enough to be similarly granted the privilege of British domicile and citizenship to make a similar form of public profession of loyalty and fealty as that made by this other smaller and older religious minority who did so much to smooth the path for the later minorities who subsequently followed it.
If British imams are genuinely concerned about the increasing estrangement of their young coreligionists, perhaps a good place for them to start would be to introduce such a prayer into their own liturgy to expose their young coreligionists from as early an age as possible to the notion of it being perfectly proper and in order for British Muslims to pledge allegiance to the British state and to identify with it.
That’s the sort of multiculturalism I favour here, along with England’s majority regaining touch with its Christian heritage that Dr Sentamu celebrated so gloriously yesterday by brightening up his inaugural ceremony with a troupe of singers and dancers from his native Uganda, thereby adding to England’s tolerant and still essentially Christian tapestry another colourful weave.