Our Crumbling Cathedrals: An Apt Symbol of Our Disintegrating Nation

Civitas, 26 January 2010

Few artefacts better epitomise England than its cathedrals. It is precisely because they do that their current parlous condition so aptly symbolises the state of national disintegration over which the present government has so artfully presided during this past twelve years.

Long after its controversial foreign policies have been relegated to mere historical footnotes, the deliberate demoralisation and deracination of the nation in which this government has so tirelessly been engaged will serve as its most abiding legacy.

As the Dean of York Minster remarked, when commenting on the government’s reluctance to fund the country’s cathedrals:

‘There’s such an anxiety about the role of the Christian religion (in particular) in the country’s life these days, that the state shows signs of wanting to keep us at arm’s length.

‘We are lumped together as “faith groups”, which are acknowledged as being valuable to the few who take part in them, but not as an intrinsic part of our common life and responsibility. This is nonsense.

‘Christianity, whether you love it, hate it, or are indifferent, is a structural part of our nation, from the Queen to a host of institutions, and the very stuff of our musical, charitable, artistic and architectural culture.

‘Cathedrals embody that, and it’s ludicrous that anyone should think of then as the concern of a “faith group”.  They belong to us all, and we need a more serious engagement with Government about it.’

In illustration of the studiously secular bias of the present government, consider the fact that, in 2005-6, while York’s National Railway Museum received a grant of £5.5 million from central government, that city’s cathedral received not one penny from it. This is despite nearly a million people having paid to visit the cathedral that year, and, of the £5.50 entry fee, nearly £1 having gone to the Government in the form of VAT.

It is (or should be) outrageous that, while the country’s museums and art galleries are so generously subsided by central government as to be able to grant their visitors free entry, the country’s cathedrals should be obliged to charge an entry fee of which the state receives a portion of which nothing is given back.

Just what a scandalous anomaly is this lack of support has lately been acknowledged by the Public Accounts Committee which has recommended that cathedrals receive a financial subsidy from the state in recognition of their heritage value.

The Committee’s chairman Edward Leigh has proposed that cathedrals be given an annual grant of £10 million. Commenting on the recommendation, Frank Field, chairman of the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, remarked:

‘This is the first time parliament has asked the Government for some direct finding for cathedrals. At last Parliament sees the importance of cathedrals in earning money for the country, in expanding local employment and above all as part of the face we wish to show to the world.’

Well said, but I would go further. For me, the supreme importance of cathedrals is not what they tell others about this country, but what they tell us about ourselves as a nation. No one ever better explained that particular aspect of their significance than did the historian Sir Arthur Bryant when, quoting Eliot, he wrote:

‘England is a Christian land, and only by contemplation of her long Christian history can one comprehend her. Her cathedrals and parish churches mark the milestones of her passage through time. Stand at dusk in any English cathedral or parish church and remain there in the silence and gathering darkness, and our history as a people becomes plain.

‘Here, the intersection of the timeless moment

is England and nowhere… A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails

On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel

History is now and England.

‘This is why, to any lover of England and her history, the preservation of her cathedrals and parish churches matters so much… [O]ur civilisation was made by these churches, grew out of the arts, learning and creed which those which those who  raised and tended them taught, and, when they crumble or are destroyed, will perish with them. Their aisles and towers have witnessed our whole history as a nation… They knit us together as a people… “make us we”; without them ours would be a raw materialistic polity of concrete factories and offices and purposeless urban populations fast receding into barbarism…. [I]t is these… churches… in every corner of the land which link us to those who have gone before and give meaning and purpose to our lives as a continuing nation…’

As I said at the start, the neglect and state of disrepair into which the present government has deliberately allowed the country’s cathedrals to fall is a fitting symbol for the state of national disintegration over which it has knowingly presided and has done so much to engineer. It will remain its enduring legacy long after all the other minutiae of the public policy initiatives with which it has been preoccupied have long faded from memory, and when all that remains of this country’s once vibrant and glorious national culture are its cathedral ruins glinting in the sun,  just like Stonehenge.