Well now, that was rather stimulating. Not often I disagree with you so much (amidst much agreement too). I think my major disagreement is simply: present trends will not continue, things will change, and change radically, sometimes in expected ways, sometimes other than that. So the collapse of faith, of any sort, that is bound up with Mammon worship will cease to be attractive when Mammon is no longer in a position to offer the goods. The tolerance for multi-culturalism has already peaked - the future is more Birbalsingh's school than Babel - but the English soul, very real, has woken up, thanks to the detachment and abuse given to it by the governing classes, including the church. My concern is less that Islam will take over than that in a context of chaos the Muslims will be scapegoated in an English-flavoured reconquista. Most of all, though, I expect God to act. It may be that Britain is coming to an end (not sure) and it is certainly true that England is changing, in a multi-ethnic fashion, but England dying (now, not just inevitably one day) - that is a prediction I'm happy to reject until shown otherwise :) And I've ordered the Ackroyd, sounds right up my street.
Maybe you should read it again. Especially the last bit. Or maybe, even if you do, my argument, such as it is, is not clear. But I think we might be saying much the same thing. Hence all the talk about resurrections.
I actually don't believe that England will ever become Islamic either. I think there's a good chance that Islam in the country may even take on an English flavour. If that happens, I would expect more converts. Islam has a good counter-nihilism offer, after all. Does English Christianity? Not at the moment. Has it in the past, and could it in the future? Definitely.
Like you perhaps, and as I said in the essay, I feel a turning. This is probably the darkness before some kind of new light. Our challenge as Christians is likely to be steering things towards Christ, rather than towards the kind of nationalism disguised as Christianity which is already making itself known on the right. I might write something about that one of these days.
Like you, I am banking on Arthur waking up, inside each one of us ;-) To me, Orthodoxy has something to tell us about who we used to be. It has been preserved in the east. I want to explore what that has to say to us here and now.
"Where Christianity does flourish, it is not to be found in the twitching corpse of the Church of England, but in the Orthodox churches full of Romanians, Ukrainians and Russians, or the thrumming African churches south of the river."
Bit of a grinding of an axe there - but maybe my ears are too sensitive ;)
I agree with your edited comment btw, though not about Islam. Islam is fundamentally foreign and antithetical to the English spirit! Last Saturday I attended the Save the Parish event in Bristol (are you aware of it?) and heard Andrew Rumsey give a talk - if you're not aware of him, I think you'll like his emphases. In particular he talked about how the church is a living organism - the Body - and as such, it goes through rhythms. We are in/ have just been in/ a winter season, when all has seemed to die. Yet it seems to him, and it seems to me, that even though things still seem wintry, we are actually past the Spring Equinox, at least a generation ago, and the wind is lifting up the life of faith again. I don't know any clergy who aren't fundamentally orthodox - who would have been seen as raging conservatives by the Cupitts of this world - and even Dawkins is trimming to this wind (he's ripe for a deathbed conversion). In particular the intellectual argument against secularism and in favour of Christianity has been won - and as times become increasingly hard people are coming back. There is something about identity here that might be worth a fuller conversation (English identity and English church identity and how we think about it/ identify with it. Did you ever read my chapter from the Brexit Britain book?) I think it will take a crisis - not long off - to catalyse all of that. I think it will also need someone other than Welby to occupy the chair of St Augustine!! Arthur is indeed waking up
Well, fair enough. I was poking the CofE with a stick there, and I hold my hands up to it. I do of course appreciate that this does not apply to many of its actual attendees and clergy, such as your good self. In my defence, I will say that poking my national church this way is a bit like criticising my own parents. Makes me feel slightly guilty, but I think I've earned the right! I want the CofE to wake up and reclaim its legacy, which is also my legacy. There is so much good work it could do. Instead, we're getting raves in the nave.
I agree about Islam, of course. But I also think that it will inevitably have to take on a more Western flavour if it's to survive. What is attractive to some about it at present is also what attracts some, especially young men, to Orthodoxy: it has a strength and is uncompromising. I think the challenge for Christians is to be firm and uncompromising and also loving. A hard task! But then we are supposed to be trained for it.
It will take a crisis, but yes - it's coming. I would like to talk more about this.
We are all looking forward to Dawkins' deathbed conversion;-)
Full agreement to all of that. I also bash the CofE on a regular basis, but ultimately I'm deeply loyal. My eldest son attends Latin Mass, for the reasons you suggest - and that gives me all sorts of mixed feelings! I'd love to be able to provide something within the CofE that would meet his needs.
Orthodoxy is ultimately still Christian, so shares a big heritage with England and Britain.
Until 1054 what is England was still orthodox as well, including all early English and British saints. And until 1534 Catholic. Nor I find Chesterton any less English for being the latter?
I was the one who said Islam was too foreign! All forms of Christianity are less foreign than that (and actually, so would be something like Buddhism, beneath the language/culture)
What if the essence of the Fall was a holocaust of consciousness whereby we ceased to be narrated into being and we took over narrating ourselves into being, with disastrous results. Something of what your monk Coemgen was telling the merchant Paul, “the Master sings in you always and you cannot hear a thing! You’re barely even alive.”
And what would it mean if, as a nation or as a family or as an individual, we learned to let ourselves be taught to remember what we used to be, how it is to be narrated into being?
Paul, is there any interest for you in critiquing The Benedict Option from your orthodox perspective? I’m of the perspective that Dreher is too much about ‘saving democracy’ than saving an authentic witness to Christ. But this essay makes me want to hear your voice on that. Or perhaps you have already addressed it somewhere that I’m not aware of … 🙏
"So the collapse of faith, of any sort, that is bound up with Mammon worship will cease to be attractive when Mammon is no longer in a position to offer the goods."
This assumes that Mammon will not be able to do so. Moreover, if Mammon is good at nothing else, he is famously good at bait and switch.
Well, people will still worship Mammon to an extent - when not getting what they desire - as the religious rituals will maintain it for a while (think Romero's zombies in the shopping centre). But no, Mammon will cease to provide material wealth generally (and progress will also cease to provide what it promises) I'm pretty certain of that, on general ecological grounds
I believe in the Christian soul and understand it as a mode, a way of inhabiting the world wherever we might actually be living, but I don't believe in an 'English soul' . This carries an echo of machine-like thinking to me. The English soul, as a nation and place based imaginative framework once religiously rooted, then secularised, and now largely lost has been a powerful historical construct- a mode of cognition of both faith and place powerful in the West and with its counterparts in Eastern church history, but not I think present at the genesis of the church in the East in which Christian faith was a eucharistic way of living in places rather than identifying the faith with them. I'm all for waking the soul but think this will be at an altogether more modest and marginal scale.
For me, I sense that the soul of the land is reflected best in Earth based religions. I think the sky gods imported into the land always have, and always will bring consternation and conflict. They don't sit naturally and have always has to be enforced - both as mechanisms of power and as templates for mind control.
Intrinsic to an Earth based path are land rights. I'd like to see a return to an Anglo Saxon model of ownership and a redistribution of land. Perhaps, initially as a dividend to the young administered along the lines of the 5 kingdoms. I realise this might seem anachronistic but is it any more so than one family hoarding vast tracts of land for over a thousand years whilst many sleep in doorways? It all depends on your conditioning. Sometimes you have to go back to move forwards.
We might be picking up the same vibe: I recently wrote 'To and Island People':
There are no 'sky gods' in Christianity. That would be paganism you're thinking of.
I think the conflict between naturally-occurring 'Earth-based religions' and imposed 'sky gods' is a modern fiction, and one that has only arisen in ground laid by Christian morals and ethics. I've certainly never met a neo-pagan whose morality was remotely similar to that of the Vikings, Anglo-Saxons or Aztecs!
I do agree about politically returning to the Heptarchy, though. A man can dream ...
'Abrahamic religions' think very differently from each other about God. Christianity is not Judaism. The Christian Father is simply not a 'sky god.' There's no such concept. In Orthodoxy we say that God is 'everywhere present and filling all things.' This was the understanding in the West too until fairly recently.
Hmm, I think it's easy to get sucked into another wrong track, deifying the land and ignoring human beings. And in Ireland, over the nineteenth century the Land Acts restored the land to the general population, away from the elite, something that only struck me when I realised how many tenant farmers still existed in the UK, something that does not exist in Ireland anymore.
But if Paul looks around rural Galway, (an area I know well), he'll see that the locals aren't exactly eco friendly, with massive John Deere tractors, nitrogen fertiliser drenching the fields, torn black plastic on every barbed wire fence, massive methane emissions from the National Herd (copious amounts of airtime on RTE on this for some reason). The fact that it's Irish people doing this to Irish wildlife, water and soil is heart breaking, but no different to any other post colonial landscape imo.
So no, giving the land back to The People doesn't work, if the People have lost the values that kept the commonage safe in the first place. I would argue that we need to start with a hearts and minds reclaimation in both countries. And, like Englishness, Irishness has been diluted to a pastiche of Riverdance/Paddy whackery overlaid on a Michael O Leary zero morality consumer lifestyle.
In my opinion what is needed is an artistic revival, take back music, art, literature and film away from the Machine and give it to those with spiritual vision instead. We need a modern day Romantic movement. The late, great Sinead O Connor was one of the very few who successfully challenged the music industry and its relentless commodification of women. Her eviscerating honesty and quest for the divine through various religions could be uncomfortable for some, but the outpouring of affection for her on her death showed to me that the Irish knew that some people are not for sale and the Machine can't take their soul.
"Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator." - Chief Seattle
I wonder how many people are feeling what I'm feeling: that the Earth is becoming noticeably, alarmingly, devoid of life at the same moment the cacophonous, drunken party of modern culture rages on more noisily than ever. One can of course find plenty of articles and research papers on biodiversity loss, accelerating extinctions, "inexplicable" disappearances of invertebrates, collapses in phytoplankton abundance, trophic cascades, and much more. Still, what I've noticed more and more is how sickly and empty the landscape *feels*; how lifeless and skeletal. Often now, I will hear a bird, and then silence. *One bird*. In Ireland. In the spring. And I'm out in the sticks, not Dublin.
This otherwise great essay by Paul has a certain tone deafness from my perspective, because it's about people, and their distant future. I do not think they/we have one. We are not going to be able to live on this Earth for long with the web of life in ashes around us. That's a fantasy worthy of Elon Musk and his Mars colonies. And I suspect the way this plays out is what we see already: exploding rates of cancer, increasingly scarce and expensive and low quality, non-nutritious food, skyrocketing euthanasia, increasing repression and tech-assisted, AI-facilitated murder across a gray, toxic, post-industrial wasteland.
We as a species have long since rejected the idea that we are a strand in the web of life, and that kind of delusion is not sustainable, certainly not at this late hour, with Machine culture at its apex, grinding the last of the living planet into desert in endless pursuit of power and profit.
"Forests precede us, and deserts dog our heels." Religion? The societies that produced these Abrahamic religions had already made deserts of their land.
I used to think this way. Dark Mountain was this for me. I don't any more. The problem with this worldview is that misanthropy and depression are its inevitable endpoint.
And is it true? Really? That Chief Seattle quote might be a bit suspect, but even if it is, that alone belies your point that 'We as a species have long since rejected the idea that we are a strand in the web of life.' You obviously haven't rejected it. Neither have I. Millions of people haven't. Whole cultures and faiths haven't.
The reason I write about the 'Machine' is that I think that, in fact, there is only one culture that thinks like this, and that's technological modernity. And even within this culture - where you and I live - millions don't see the world this way. We're just stuck in it. But if, as you say, this way of seeing is an unsustainable delusion (which it is) then ... well, then it can't be sustained. So it will fall.
I believe this fall is already happening. But I don't believe we will kill the Earth. We will damage it, and already have done, but life recovers astonishingly fast. Modernity won't beat it. Believeing that it could is all part of our progressive self-love fest. Our skyscrapers and internet server farms will be as Ozymandias's legs soon enough.
So in the meantime, I concluded, there must be some useful work to do telling better stories, and preparing the ground for when sanity is forced upon us again.
"I believe this fall is already happening. But I don't believe we will kill the Earth. We will damage it, and already have done, but life recovers astonishingly fast. Modernity won't beat it. Believing that it could is all part of our progressive self-love fest. Our skyscrapers and internet server farms will be as Ozymandias's legs soon enough."
This seems awfully sanguine at the pace the biosphere is unravelling (note this article is already using 8+ year old data: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048). I can easily see this culture outlasting the natural world by years, farming crickets, roaches, and ragweed and supplementing that with whatever Soylent Green-esque "solutions to the global hunger problem" boffins come up with) before it finally all goes belly-up. Even now, as the planet is utterly toxified and shockingly denuded, techno-industrial modernity hasn't missed a beat. There is clearly a sort of lag in the system where the fact there are, for example, no wild animals or insects left appears to affect nothing much for years. We can burn the Amazon rainforest to the ground tomorrow but oxygen persists long enough in the atmosphere where we won't notice we are suffocating for nearly 10,000 years.
The result is still a functionally dead Earth, which will in fact take millions of years to recover, rather than happen "astonishingly fast". "The food webs are made up of plants, mollusks, and insects living in ponds and rivers, as well as the fishes, amphibians, and reptiles that eat them. The reptiles range in size from that of modern lizards to half-ton herbivores with tiny heads, massive barrel-like bodies, and a protective covering of thick bony scales. Sabre-toothed gorgonopsians also roamed, some as large and powerful as lions and with long canine teeth for piercing thick skins. When these animals died out during the end-Permian mass extinction, nothing took their place, leaving unbalanced ecosystems for ten million years." (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048)
Finally, I would agree with you that Deep Green Resistance is, er, futile. And the reason for that ironically gets to your contention about the "one culture" that thinks like this. Fact is, the millions you note who would indeed abandon modernity are VASTLY outnumbered by those who would fiercely reject a Jensenesque return to pre-industrial life. People by and large have made their Spenglerian, Faustian bargain and are riding that (comfortable, air-conditioned) train to extinction. Think of how easily something like Extinction Rebellion was swept off the streets of London while most cud-chewing working stiffs were at most relieved to no longer be delayed on their commutes. And it's not just the West. It's also India and China, for starters. And those two combined are basically 5x the European and US populations combined. The virality of modernity only ever seems to accelerate.
So on simple democratic grounds, even were it possible, it would be immoral to impose post-industrialism on a world where the vast majority don't want it. And this finally gets to the root of it: most people have lost touch with the reality of life as a set of relationships within various communities (biological and otherwise), and have an internalized arrogance about our species' ability to do anything it wishes, up to and including living well indefinitely as the only species left apart from tasty chickens (or crickets) on an otherwise lifeless rock.
So yeah, I believe in coming to terms with the fact the sinking ship of fools will sink, taking the biosphere with it into the void, though I do realize that's an even less popular take than converting to Christianity.
That could happen. And certainly no-one (including Derrick Jensen) is going to voluntarily return to the pre-industrial world. At least not on anything other than a very small scale. It is great when people do of course.
So here we are. We can't predict where it will go though. It might also be sanguine to assume that our 'culture' can survive for years without a biosphere. Aren't we already going noticeably insane even at this level of 'civilisation'? Do we not have debt up to our ears, rocketing prices, declining resources, oceans dying, soil not offering up enough growth? I'd say it's equally likely that a chain collapse could come very quickly indeed.
But in the end we don't know. So we just have to do what we can. Nothing we know is likely to survive. But then neither are we. Not here, anyway.
A return to a pre-industrial lifeway would only matter on something approaching a planetary scale, so when I see people trot out the "hypocrisy" argument against anyone from Jensen on down for not heading by their lonesome out to some medieval, off-grid cottage (or cave, that old chestnut) I'd ask, "what is that supposed to do?" You make the sacrifice for none of the result when you could have stayed and (in Jensen's case) tried to stoke at the very least a sense of disenchantment with modernity that just might have actually meaningfully changed *something*. So yeah, no wonder essentially no one takes that deal other than as a showy demonstration of superior purity.
The real question would be this: would you be willing to surrender every modern convenience to rid the world of the environmental and cultural ills created by industrial modernity? There I believe you would see those millions you were speaking about raise their hands and affirm.
And at times I've wondered: if this were an actual political question, and a fair hearing of arguments pro and con were presented, how many people might actually vote to turn away from industrial life?
Whatever happens, on whatever timeframe, it seems certain more and more people will find themselves disenchanted with the Faustian bargain as the downsides become harder to hide.
I didn't mention hypocrisy. I'm not 'returning' either. My point was simply that it's neither possible nor desirable for 99.99% of people, including its critics, which includes me.
I think we have to bank on modernity becoming so horrific that it becomes unbearable for many. This might be closer than we think.
Perhaps, though (even cricket-flour) bread and circuses can keep an empire in power an awfully long time, though Rome never had to contend with a collapsed biosphere and summer temps exceeding 50°C. Morris Berman (a historian, after all) contends it's only force that ever changes anything. So expect nothing to change until people have no choice but to do so.
Your argument about supply chain collapse/unsustainable debt levels is interesting as a potential catalyst, but this is all unfolding under capitalism. As has been said, when all else fails (presumably even bread and circuses) they take you to war. They have three big ones teed up to choose from (Russia, Iran, China), or best of all: all three at once.
Not to mention that we are ruled by barely disguised sociopaths. This is always been the case, but these sociopaths have powers that make a Hitler or Stalin look like pikers by comparison, and they will without hesitation annihilate all of us rather than lose their perches.
Misanthropic? Depressing? To me, those are irrelevant. The only question to ask is "does it accurately describe and exp0lain observable reality?"
Looks quite real to me. But it always was. I'm reading about the Persian empire at the moment. Some of their Shahhanshahs make Stalin look like a tea boy.
It's very telling how sociopaths have somehow managed to avoid being problematized in this culture. On the contrary, they are often glamourized in the media (think shows like Dexter, The Sopranos, films like Scarface so many more). Note you cannot be hired for many jobs or get certain security clearances if you are an alcoholic or drug addict but there is no job you can't qualify for as a sociopath. In fact, any dispassionate look at our entire economic system might well conclude it's a system designed explicitly by and for the benefit of sociopaths.
Sociopaths, in my opinion, are not human. They are intra-species predators. There is the canonical sociopathic experience where at some point in childhood or adolescence they realize they are different than other people because other people have this incomprehensible "empathy" handicap which means there are many things they simply can't (in good conscience) do. Not having that handicap, the world for a sociopath becomes a sort of playground where you can use and abuse the living daylights out of others for your own advantage or sport.
Maybe sociopaths should be what we think of when someone uses that phrase "Homo-economicus". Why sociopathy hasn't been taken on as a disqualifying characteristic is quite curious. Sociopaths are allowed, for example, to carry the nuclear football and annihilate millions of people with a button-press, an act for which they could not experience any remorse. That is perhaps a prerequisite for high office in the Western imperium, as Keir Starmer recently demonstrated as he spoke of how unhesitatingly he would vaporize 13 million people (many orthodox Christians) in Moscow. Or anywhere else. This was all couched as his "unshakeable and absolute commitment to nuclear deterrence" in bloodless neoliberal-speak but wink wink nudge nudge say no more.
I once read a claim that the reason sociopaths get a pass in this culture is that if you take even one of them on, they will relentlessly seek to ruin your life, never mind all of them coming after you at once. You wonder if they were all gathered together in one place, if Starmer might agree to nuke them, or would he not do so because he'd be among the crowd? 🤔
Power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. And of course, sociopaths have an inherent advantage over other humans, because there is literally nothing they would not do to get power.
I often have wondered whether sociopaths have souls.
Researchers have found there has been a marked decline in empathy over the past 40+ years, at least in the United States (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/). And this tracks with how casually barbarous the place is getting, where fast food workers get blown away for failing to put enough hot sauce on the chicken and such.
I'd say it also tracks with how countless college students were smeared by Biden as antisemitic for protesting against their universities having military contracts with Israel on the same day news of mass graves being discovered in Gaza (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/22/middleeast/khan-younis-nasser-hospital-mass-grave-intl/index.html) was being under-covered by the corporate media. As numerous as these students are, they remain far outnumbered by those who are unmoved by mass graves or any other atrocity.
I often wonder if there are souls at all, or if it's all a howling void and Goethe was right when he wrote, "life is a disease of matter". All I'm sure about is this culture has completely lost the plan and is racing towards some bleak endpoint.
Yup. I see much the same things, David Wallace-Wells-ischly, too. However: What Paul said; and, in a Serenity Prayer fashion: I can't change the present trajectory and ballistics of The Machine, but I can change how I relate (or do not) to its demands. I don't accept the sophisticated excuses for The Machine anymore. I suggest getting around more on foot and bicycle (days the old bicycle repairman ); put up a clothesline and tend some yard or garden. Maybe a composting toilet out back. Pull off the weedy tendrils, the ones that sneak in from the magic black mirror / communicator like I used to carry in my pocket. Thanks so much for sharing here.
PS: I don't get invited to the dinners of The Entitled anymore. I s'pose there's a downside to that, but I'm not seeing it.
Good article, covering a lot of ground. Disagree that Orwell was greatest essayist, preferring GKC.
Curiously, although Orwell is regarded as a Socialist and GKC as a conservative, the latter could have written the opening lines of your article. Having read "Real England" I suspect that you know this.
Cobbett described the political economic system he hated as "The Great Wen".
Chesterton, and Belloc, set up a campaigning group called Distributism to fight against it. Let me finish with some more GKC:
‘The Secret People
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,
For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.
Thank you Paul, this has cheered me up (though I appreciate that you weren't aiming at simple cheery uplift!)
My local Catholic parish (in Hertfordshire) is predominantly black and Asian at the moment, and it is quite cheering to see the Nigerian priest talking about e.g. St Margaret Clitherow and other English saints to his decidedly non-indigenous flock. The church is rammed on Sunday mornings, and intriguingly is rammed again on Sunday afternoons when the local travelers (if that's not a contradiction in terms) have their own Mass. I hide out in the Anglican Ordinariate and the Latin Mass myself (I have a low cringe threshold).
The link between Labour and non-conformist Christianity seems to be of a piece with the general shape of English radicalism, in which reformers appeal to an earlier, happier state in which Englishmen had a fairer share of the land and the commonwealth. A genuinely English Lefty has to play at Saxons and rail against the latest iteration of the Norman yoke if he is to work with the grain of our traditions. This suggests to me that our Left need to be very wary of deracinating themselves too much, because without those roots they won't be able to sustain themselves.
“We have succoured and nurtured the imposter that squats on our throne, and now we complain that it is eating us, and thrash around looking for someone else to blame for its triumph.” Wow. What an essay to wake up to this morning! Moving, mournful and yet still hopeful, it has given me much to think about.
Paul, do you think that as England falls or triumphs so shall America? Living in a small town in the US, I sometimes feel more hope than others that my country can somehow figure a way out of this massive mess. I’m curious as to your thoughts on if England is the canary in the coal mine for the rest of Western nations?
Thank you as always for your beautiful and thoughtful writing.
England is America's ageing aunt or uncle, it seems to me. We made you - by accident and slightly by design. Then you supplanted us. Then we slavishly copied you. Now we are both together being eaten by the Machine we made. America has shallower roots but more energy. England has a venerable past but can't remember it properly.
I do tend to think that England invented the Machine and America brought it to perfection. So it must be up to both of us to work out how to bring it down ...
But England and America and all the nations are temporary constructs and will be eternally subjected to (or supplanted by) the New Jerusalem when the true King returns to planet Earth.
"Nations aren't really Christian things." But Jesus, or John quoting him, says that in the New Jerusalem there will be trees for the healing of the nations. I wonder what that means.
I wonder if nations are imaginal structures, particular aspect of a collective unconscious? So they exist in proportion to the number of people who believe in them. No people who think they are English means no England...and they are definitely Biblical, nation shall speak unto nation...
It would be easy to enjoy your splendid write up and the quick exchange with Sam, but , always a 'but' ... I don't believe in the machine, at least as I think you mean it. The machine as in AI-tech assist means in my view that Elon Musk's rocket comes to earth somewhat more quickly.
Nations? I turned the other night to Alasdair MacIntyre after he had argued with Thomism, lost, and converted Catholic. AM quotes Aquinas: "Since the soul is part of the body of a human being, the soul is not the whole human being and my soul is not I".
Lots of thoughts on Winstanley and his later life, and Cobbett who tried to look back beyond the 'Reformation' for his moral economy, Blake in London who saw what appears a non-Judaic precept, and of course the Etonian who did his turn as a policeman in a place we called Burma where the teak came from for the decking on the Cunard Line.
Biosphere we cannot know as you say, but there have been major geological turnovers like the PETM that provide uncomfortably close analogies for the current carelessness.
Oliver O’Donovan was particularly helpful for me on this front, especially his “The Desire of the Nations.” Still struggling with this too (currently writing an MA thesis about it), but your writing is always a welcome addition.
For some mind-blowing food for thought about this, I recommend the “Lord of Spirits” podcast (Fr Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr Stephen DeYoung) from September 25,2020: “Angels and Demons II: The Divine Council.”
Yes, I thought about that earlier someone denied that England has soul. I take Paul Kingsnorth to be writing somewhat figuratively, yet spiritually, with God giving England something that could be called a soul. Spiritual entities flowing from and "assigned" to nations seems to be a valid topic.
There are principalities and powers for nations appearing in scripture. Daniel chapter ten, for example has Daniel waiting long for help, which finally arrives. The arriving angel says << " But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.">>
(Also an interesting passage about the limits - chosen limits i guess we assume - of God's power.)
The Biblical 'Israel' (i.e. the true Church) is a nation. A nation scattered throughout the world, not defined by race, borders or culture, but by faith.
Yes, that was something I stumbled over too - nations are created things, just as human beings, trees and frogs are - they are part of what are called 'the principalities and powers' - not material objects but spiritual, nonetheless real for all that. Part of England's problem (and very much part of the Church of England's problem) is that it has absorbed a secular mindset and can no longer perceive spiritualities. Hey ho.
Sorry to interject, but secularity is every bit as imaginal a construct as the belief in Christianity, it is an idea held by large numbers of people, and so is materialism (which btw at a subatomic level is rubbish).
And imaginal constructions are not homogenous, they are a weave of various ideas, but at some point like a tapestry if you keep pulling out threads the whole thing unravels. Conflating nationality with citizenship and legal rights is part of the problem, the Irish have the slippery term 'non national' to describe immigrants, many of whom are Irish citizens. So this is very much a spiritual war, just that one side pretends the other side doesn't exist.....
My question at present is: can nations ever be 'Christian' and should Christians try to make them so? Obviously both the CofE and the Orthodox churches have been heavily involved in just such a project. With decidedly mixed results. Despite being Orthodox, my tendencies on this question are very much closer to Christian anarchism than Constantinean orthodoxy. But I can see both sides.
Isn't being Christian like being a member of an egregore? ('where two or three are gathered there am I). And that isn't tethered to a particular location. I'm Irish, and have been living in the UK for over 30 years, I believe Guinness is the best drink (obvs) and think cricket is utterly ridiculous .
Does that mean that I need to persuade everyone around me of these (to me) self evident truths? Or do I accept that these are my personal beliefs and can't be imposed on others. But although I will never be English, I have accommodated my beliefs to fit into the society in which I live.
Where I to hold the belief that playing cricket was blasphemous, I could not live in the UK. So I belong to two egregores, someone who is Irish and also someone who is English adjacent, someone who has enough English beliefs to live comfortably in England.
It's a matter of degree I think, not a bright line between English/not English, but thinking cricket is blasphemous is definitely not compatible with being part of the English adjacent/English egregore.
I think the English egregore is made up of multiple beliefs, many of which came from Christianity, but not all. The question is how many of these can you ditch before you would get ejected from the egregore? Maybe there's a critical mass? You just need to hold enough to be seen by others as recognisably English? So Richard Dawkins is still English even though he doesn't believe in God, but he has enough other identifying traits to be seen as English.
There are interesting parallels with Judaism, Jews have a distinctive identity and religion yet live in different physical locations and have different citizenships.
Like you said, Christianity is a universalizing faith, and so it can’t be nationalistic or parochial. That being said, because the Christian faith works anywhere and yet looks different everywhere, the practices of the faith in a particular place can have a positive, unifying effect on a people (so defined). But it must 1) be practiced, and 2) conform to “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). England (and Europe in general) seem to be a place where the moral foundations of Christianity (a la Tom Holland’s Dominion) remain for the most part, but the practice of Christian faith has ceased. The question is how long that can remain.
My two cents, and I’ve been thinking on this way too much this year, is that only individuals can be Christian. It sounds terrible because the modern cults of individualism have inverted the very idea of the “individual” from a sanctified dwelling place for God to a political ideal without bounds, so all associations with “individualism” can feel maniacally supportive of modern consumerism. But every time I read the Gospel, over and over all I hear is Christ speaking to individuals; even when he’s speaking to a flock, he’s not rapping philosophic about how to institute good flocking policy, but speaking to what the individual within that flock can do. In fact, Christ is so radical on this front that he famously claims you gotta hate your family to follow him, which no amount of theology has, to my mind, tempered down. As someone who thinks families are a good thing, I certainly have no idea what to do with those sayings, but I’m rather convinced it emanates from an absolute focus on the individual unit being the place wherein God dwells and the kingdom is realized. Nations might have souls, but I think it’s a category error to assume they might be Christian: that category is intended for one place, an individual creature.
I think this is where I am. I have two big problems with the idea of Christian nations. One is that, in every example I know, making a nation 'Christian' involves compulsion. And I don't think any faith can be compelled. Christ never compelled anyone to do anything.
The other problem is that, as you say, only an individual can in fact build a relationship with God. A nation might be nominally 'Christian' - like Ireland still is, for example - but most people are never in church, let alone trying to live a Christian life. It becomes 'cultural Christianity', which means basically nothing.
But then in the old days the nation was the king, the king embodied the nation, which is why those spreading a religion always targeted the big man. Then, the people followed him into the faith, not through compulsion (that sounds more like the modus operandi of Christianity’s spread via empire) but out of loyalty. Then gradually churches were built and the nation’s institutions spread the new faith (much as our deluded institutions now spread the woke delusion). It was much more organic. But the king came first. Today there is no such single embodiment of the state (unless perhaps His Majesty’s Inspector of Revenue), which is a symptom of our fragmentation.
My take:- In Orthodoxy, the fullness of salvation exists within the Church. The Church is the unifying, edifying guide that stops us going off course with our own preferences (like in the schism) and is the Kingdom of God on earth. For me as an individual, I have a relationship with Christ. That 'personal' (rather than individual) relationship is 'grown' and developed within the Church. The Orthodox Church is my 'nation'. Geography doesn't come into it.
Like you, I've been thinking way too much on this, but I think we've been conned since the Enlightment that we are all 'buffered souls', autonomous individuals, impervious to the moods and opinions of our fellow humans, and floating in an empty universe where salvation is an individual immortality project.
I disagree. My ten cents is that Jesus is saying that we are all actually connected subconsciously to each other and to the Universe by love. We just need to activate this connection.
And He shows us how, by gathering together to remember Him, where He will join us. He did tell us to leave our families, but only to join like minded people. And maybe nations do have souls, based on the number of active Christians in them, like yeast in bread, there might be a critical mass at which that soul becomes active. ....
Hey BM, yes, the post-Enlightenment view of "autonomous individuals" is quite harmful and wrong, precisely because it becomes situated in a materially-dominant cosmos absent God. But add God back to the equation, and I don't see how being autonomous would make us "impervious to moods and opinions of our fellow humans," especially since plenty in the Gospel is telling us to care about each other (which would presumably mean caring about others' "moods and opinions" as well). So I don't think "autonomy" itself is a bad idea; only a bad idea when esteemed as a primary orientation, and especially when esteemed as an exclusive orientation.
But this: "My ten cents is that Jesus is saying that we are all actually connected subconsciously to each other and to the Universe by love. We just need to activate this connection." While I agree with the sentiment, I'm a bit at a loss where Jesus is saying this in the Gospel? I'd be happy to change my mind if you show me!
If it's individuals vs nations, I'm with you on the individuals side, but I think we often hear Christ speaking to individuals, because -- except in the beautifully Southren "yall" and the departed English "ye" -- English doesn't have a plural you, so you sounds like you in the English versions. Often, though, it's second person plural in the Greek. Anyhow, I'm of a mind that Christianity only exists in very small groups -- about the size of a large family or small tribe -- "where two or three are gathered," etc: Not necessarily the literal quantity one plus one, or one more than that , but in any case, small enough to know one another face to face. Christian crowds don't exist, much less empires. (You gotta "hate" your family in the sense of breaking the usual kinship ties, in order to join the spiritual family of the (very small) gathering of Messiah-followers: "Looking at those sitting in a circle around him, he said: 'Here are my mother and my brothers.'" (Mark 3)
You're speaking to a Southerner, so "y'all" would substitute just fine!
That's interesting about the Greek and the plurality. I've been trying to look at the original Greek words when I can to see what gets missed and altered in translation, though I don't read the language and so rely even there on basic interpretations to English.
But you know, when I say I hear Christ speaking to individuals, I mean moreso that so much of his ministry is in the context of addressing individuals and healing them at their level. I'm always stunned at how this Son of God stops, looks at an individual, and addresses or heals them in one-on-one interaction. I have to imagine in those instances the Greek is singular, but maybe I'm wrong? But even when addressing flocks, such as much of Luke 12 (blessed be 12:22-37), isn't Christ urging people to do only what individuals can? Sell your possessions, let your loins be girded, store your treasure in heaven, do not be of anxious mind, etc.
The alternative, to me, could've been Christ saying something like, "Little lambs: enforce policies that tax the rich, setup union-controlled factories for your girding, join in numbers to block traffic, collectively own land, setup consensus-making apparatuses wherein each gets a vote and one veto but 90% passes the resolution, etc." Of course, individuals would still have to engage in these more collective efforts, but the focus in this alternative seems wholly different to me. When Christ speaks to individuals, such as to Bartimaeus in Mark on the road to Jerusalem, I hear him doing so in a way that's not at all based on a generalizable ethic or principle, but in a pointed, one-on-one, eye-to-eye valuation-of-this-unique soul way. I find it beautifully disarming.
And yes to scale: I get so stuck at trying to think through/feel/practice Christianity anytime it becomes bigger than a hillside.
Ah, yes -- all true. I don't know if you watch "The Chosen," but I love it, in that it draws out the face to face, heart to heart attention of Yeshua on real, individual human people -- not just symbolic stand-ins (the woman at the well is not just the stereotypical Samaritan (religious) harlot, but an actual woman, etc). That said, this thing that only individuals can do: sell your possessions, gird your loins [in the sense of be sober minded and always prepared to run like hell], store your treasures in heaven, don't be anxious --- these things are only really possible within the context of a supportive, nurturing, attentive, very small family-like community, right?
Also, not canonical, but lovely nonetheless is the Tang dynasty gospel, which says: "The kingdom does not belong to individuals. It becomes manifest in agape shared. Therefore the loaf must be broken so that agape may be known in the sharing." (Secret Sayings of Ye Su #60)
Well that might have been an over reach, it’s a bit late in the evening....but Luke 17-20-21 does say The Kingdom of God is within you and Jesus does speak often about the Holy Spirit..Meister Elkhart talks of God as the ground of all being. But my phrasing was clumsy.
I’m also heavily influenced by the ideas of Owen Barfield and his ideas about how human consciousnesses shifts over history.
I am also very interested in how technology is shifting human consciousness today. it is very obvious to me for instance that teenagers using social media are being influenced by mind memes, pushed by algorithms. To what extent are these kids actually autonomous individuals? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that they are individuals in the making with porous boundaries?
And therefore much more vulnerable to attacks from what in another age would be called demons? Isn’t this just spiritual warfare?
"Principalities and powers." Doesn't the Bible mention angels appointed by God to rule over the nations? So the principalities and powers might be literal nations, but also spiritual entities that rule them. Perhaps they are the gods of the pagans, so one would assume fallen, but can these angels also be converted? "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes," by Daniel L. Everett, is a memoir of his 20 years as a missionary who finally loses his faith among a previously uncontacted South American tribe. The tribespeople go into the forest and talk to their spirits who tell them to reject this Jesus, they don't need him. So clearly some of the spirits are fallen, but I find myself wondering about whole people converting. I always assumed it was at sword point, but perhaps not. Perhaps the missionaries needed to go into the forest and argue with the spirits, but that would be dangerous, wouldn't it?
Usually the Greek word translated as "nations" is more properly translated "people group" - it's ethne, where we get our word "ethnic". I think that makes a difference.
I hope you will indulge me in a very vague comment. I remember the 1990s localist green movement that you describe - I was too young to be a part of it but I feel I have got the texture and feel of it stored away in my mind somewhere, together with the associations I have with it. I was more consciously aligned in my late teens and early twenties with the anti-globalisation movement, which received favourable coverage in the Guardian and had Radiohead and Godspeed You Black Emperor as its court minstrels (though my involvement was pretty much limited to listening to those bands. approving of Naomi Klein without reading her books, and having friends who stole mugs from Starbucks).
20 or 25 years later and after something of an ideological hiatus I now feel that I sympathise strongly with both groupings, but they don't really seem to be there anymore. It's like realising that you are now in a place where you would really like to be friends with that man who you remember living on your parents' street, but when you knock on his door you find that he moved out years ago and left no forwarding address. Or deciding that the time has come for you to get really into classical music, only to find that nobody plays it or listens to it anymore so the cultural world you wanted to join has vanished.
This feels like something the Germans would have a word for. The best thing we can do I suppose is to call it "irony", but that really doesn't cover it.
Beautiful article. Ireland is arguably in a more advanced state of degradation, and we had no empire nor evenaccess to our own resources. Thanks for another thought provoking piece, beautifully written.
Outstanding piece, Paul. And dare I say, buoyant. For some readers longing for a return to a simpler, earth respecting life, look no further than the great saints Sarov, Herman, et al, and the Bible itself where God often shows his care for the animals, even above certain humans, e.g., Balaam’s donkey. For a wonderful if not sad modern example of heavenly believers whose faith is also earthbound, I recommend a new film titled Sacred Alaska. You won’t be disappointed. Just search for Sacred Alaska movie…
Great piece. Is this the best review essay ever, the introduction to the book I’m dying to read, a manifesto? Perhaps all of the above and well done, you.
Yours. The book that talks not only about the Machine but about the Garden too. A vision of Beloved Community, of New Diggers, of Green and Pleasant Lands, of Holy Wells, of an unorthodox Orthodoxy, how decolonize ourselves in a colonized world. You know: that thing you do.
True, some are. Others are evangelical and various other flavours. Some Catholic too I think. I think Africans are propping up the CofE in many places. Not that that's a bad thing. More power to them.
It is sad what the CofE has become. It should seek to go back to its roots in the 1662 BCP or even the proposed 1928BCP. Its dalliances with modernism has done nothing for it. Time to turn back.
Funny timing - I reviewed Ackroyd yesterday:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/may-june/english-soul-peter-ackroyd-christian-nation-secular.html
Happy St George's day!
I'll have a read!
Well now, that was rather stimulating. Not often I disagree with you so much (amidst much agreement too). I think my major disagreement is simply: present trends will not continue, things will change, and change radically, sometimes in expected ways, sometimes other than that. So the collapse of faith, of any sort, that is bound up with Mammon worship will cease to be attractive when Mammon is no longer in a position to offer the goods. The tolerance for multi-culturalism has already peaked - the future is more Birbalsingh's school than Babel - but the English soul, very real, has woken up, thanks to the detachment and abuse given to it by the governing classes, including the church. My concern is less that Islam will take over than that in a context of chaos the Muslims will be scapegoated in an English-flavoured reconquista. Most of all, though, I expect God to act. It may be that Britain is coming to an end (not sure) and it is certainly true that England is changing, in a multi-ethnic fashion, but England dying (now, not just inevitably one day) - that is a prediction I'm happy to reject until shown otherwise :) And I've ordered the Ackroyd, sounds right up my street.
Maybe you should read it again. Especially the last bit. Or maybe, even if you do, my argument, such as it is, is not clear. But I think we might be saying much the same thing. Hence all the talk about resurrections.
I actually don't believe that England will ever become Islamic either. I think there's a good chance that Islam in the country may even take on an English flavour. If that happens, I would expect more converts. Islam has a good counter-nihilism offer, after all. Does English Christianity? Not at the moment. Has it in the past, and could it in the future? Definitely.
Like you perhaps, and as I said in the essay, I feel a turning. This is probably the darkness before some kind of new light. Our challenge as Christians is likely to be steering things towards Christ, rather than towards the kind of nationalism disguised as Christianity which is already making itself known on the right. I might write something about that one of these days.
Like you, I am banking on Arthur waking up, inside each one of us ;-) To me, Orthodoxy has something to tell us about who we used to be. It has been preserved in the east. I want to explore what that has to say to us here and now.
It's possible that there was a red rag in there for me ;)
What was it? I'm intrigued.
"Where Christianity does flourish, it is not to be found in the twitching corpse of the Church of England, but in the Orthodox churches full of Romanians, Ukrainians and Russians, or the thrumming African churches south of the river."
Bit of a grinding of an axe there - but maybe my ears are too sensitive ;)
I agree with your edited comment btw, though not about Islam. Islam is fundamentally foreign and antithetical to the English spirit! Last Saturday I attended the Save the Parish event in Bristol (are you aware of it?) and heard Andrew Rumsey give a talk - if you're not aware of him, I think you'll like his emphases. In particular he talked about how the church is a living organism - the Body - and as such, it goes through rhythms. We are in/ have just been in/ a winter season, when all has seemed to die. Yet it seems to him, and it seems to me, that even though things still seem wintry, we are actually past the Spring Equinox, at least a generation ago, and the wind is lifting up the life of faith again. I don't know any clergy who aren't fundamentally orthodox - who would have been seen as raging conservatives by the Cupitts of this world - and even Dawkins is trimming to this wind (he's ripe for a deathbed conversion). In particular the intellectual argument against secularism and in favour of Christianity has been won - and as times become increasingly hard people are coming back. There is something about identity here that might be worth a fuller conversation (English identity and English church identity and how we think about it/ identify with it. Did you ever read my chapter from the Brexit Britain book?) I think it will take a crisis - not long off - to catalyse all of that. I think it will also need someone other than Welby to occupy the chair of St Augustine!! Arthur is indeed waking up
Well, fair enough. I was poking the CofE with a stick there, and I hold my hands up to it. I do of course appreciate that this does not apply to many of its actual attendees and clergy, such as your good self. In my defence, I will say that poking my national church this way is a bit like criticising my own parents. Makes me feel slightly guilty, but I think I've earned the right! I want the CofE to wake up and reclaim its legacy, which is also my legacy. There is so much good work it could do. Instead, we're getting raves in the nave.
I agree about Islam, of course. But I also think that it will inevitably have to take on a more Western flavour if it's to survive. What is attractive to some about it at present is also what attracts some, especially young men, to Orthodoxy: it has a strength and is uncompromising. I think the challenge for Christians is to be firm and uncompromising and also loving. A hard task! But then we are supposed to be trained for it.
It will take a crisis, but yes - it's coming. I would like to talk more about this.
We are all looking forward to Dawkins' deathbed conversion;-)
Full agreement to all of that. I also bash the CofE on a regular basis, but ultimately I'm deeply loyal. My eldest son attends Latin Mass, for the reasons you suggest - and that gives me all sorts of mixed feelings! I'd love to be able to provide something within the CofE that would meet his needs.
Yeah - I see a lot of those young men in Orthodoxy and it worries me.
So Islam.is "too foreign" but not Orthodoxy?!?
I didn't say Islam was 'too foreign.'
Orthodoxy is ultimately still Christian, so shares a big heritage with England and Britain.
Until 1054 what is England was still orthodox as well, including all early English and British saints. And until 1534 Catholic. Nor I find Chesterton any less English for being the latter?
I was the one who said Islam was too foreign! All forms of Christianity are less foreign than that (and actually, so would be something like Buddhism, beneath the language/culture)
What if the essence of the Fall was a holocaust of consciousness whereby we ceased to be narrated into being and we took over narrating ourselves into being, with disastrous results. Something of what your monk Coemgen was telling the merchant Paul, “the Master sings in you always and you cannot hear a thing! You’re barely even alive.”
And what would it mean if, as a nation or as a family or as an individual, we learned to let ourselves be taught to remember what we used to be, how it is to be narrated into being?
Paul, is there any interest for you in critiquing The Benedict Option from your orthodox perspective? I’m of the perspective that Dreher is too much about ‘saving democracy’ than saving an authentic witness to Christ. But this essay makes me want to hear your voice on that. Or perhaps you have already addressed it somewhere that I’m not aware of … 🙏
"So the collapse of faith, of any sort, that is bound up with Mammon worship will cease to be attractive when Mammon is no longer in a position to offer the goods."
This assumes that Mammon will not be able to do so. Moreover, if Mammon is good at nothing else, he is famously good at bait and switch.
Well, people will still worship Mammon to an extent - when not getting what they desire - as the religious rituals will maintain it for a while (think Romero's zombies in the shopping centre). But no, Mammon will cease to provide material wealth generally (and progress will also cease to provide what it promises) I'm pretty certain of that, on general ecological grounds
Lots of humans worship Mammon.
I believe in the Christian soul and understand it as a mode, a way of inhabiting the world wherever we might actually be living, but I don't believe in an 'English soul' . This carries an echo of machine-like thinking to me. The English soul, as a nation and place based imaginative framework once religiously rooted, then secularised, and now largely lost has been a powerful historical construct- a mode of cognition of both faith and place powerful in the West and with its counterparts in Eastern church history, but not I think present at the genesis of the church in the East in which Christian faith was a eucharistic way of living in places rather than identifying the faith with them. I'm all for waking the soul but think this will be at an altogether more modest and marginal scale.
Thanks for this, I really enjoyed it.
For me, I sense that the soul of the land is reflected best in Earth based religions. I think the sky gods imported into the land always have, and always will bring consternation and conflict. They don't sit naturally and have always has to be enforced - both as mechanisms of power and as templates for mind control.
Intrinsic to an Earth based path are land rights. I'd like to see a return to an Anglo Saxon model of ownership and a redistribution of land. Perhaps, initially as a dividend to the young administered along the lines of the 5 kingdoms. I realise this might seem anachronistic but is it any more so than one family hoarding vast tracts of land for over a thousand years whilst many sleep in doorways? It all depends on your conditioning. Sometimes you have to go back to move forwards.
We might be picking up the same vibe: I recently wrote 'To and Island People':
https://open.substack.com/pub/danoneill/p/to-an-island-people?r=3zg2g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
And 'Lines for the Landless': https://open.substack.com/pub/danoneill/p/lines-for-the-landless?r=3zg2g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Both deal with similar ideas.
There are no 'sky gods' in Christianity. That would be paganism you're thinking of.
I think the conflict between naturally-occurring 'Earth-based religions' and imposed 'sky gods' is a modern fiction, and one that has only arisen in ground laid by Christian morals and ethics. I've certainly never met a neo-pagan whose morality was remotely similar to that of the Vikings, Anglo-Saxons or Aztecs!
I do agree about politically returning to the Heptarchy, though. A man can dream ...
No, definitely thinking of the Abrahamic religions. Yahweh is a sky god. Spending time in Sinai I got a feel for where that god feels very tangible.
The sky, with its storms and thundering, is part of the Earth too.
'Abrahamic religions' think very differently from each other about God. Christianity is not Judaism. The Christian Father is simply not a 'sky god.' There's no such concept. In Orthodoxy we say that God is 'everywhere present and filling all things.' This was the understanding in the West too until fairly recently.
Panentheism.. From the Rhine mystics to Matthew Fox.. might be interesting for you to write about. My Roman Catholic congregation if very much that way. E.g. https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/category/panentheism/
Orthodoxy is often described as panentheist. It was one thing that attracted me to it.
Hmm, I think it's easy to get sucked into another wrong track, deifying the land and ignoring human beings. And in Ireland, over the nineteenth century the Land Acts restored the land to the general population, away from the elite, something that only struck me when I realised how many tenant farmers still existed in the UK, something that does not exist in Ireland anymore.
But if Paul looks around rural Galway, (an area I know well), he'll see that the locals aren't exactly eco friendly, with massive John Deere tractors, nitrogen fertiliser drenching the fields, torn black plastic on every barbed wire fence, massive methane emissions from the National Herd (copious amounts of airtime on RTE on this for some reason). The fact that it's Irish people doing this to Irish wildlife, water and soil is heart breaking, but no different to any other post colonial landscape imo.
So no, giving the land back to The People doesn't work, if the People have lost the values that kept the commonage safe in the first place. I would argue that we need to start with a hearts and minds reclaimation in both countries. And, like Englishness, Irishness has been diluted to a pastiche of Riverdance/Paddy whackery overlaid on a Michael O Leary zero morality consumer lifestyle.
In my opinion what is needed is an artistic revival, take back music, art, literature and film away from the Machine and give it to those with spiritual vision instead. We need a modern day Romantic movement. The late, great Sinead O Connor was one of the very few who successfully challenged the music industry and its relentless commodification of women. Her eviscerating honesty and quest for the divine through various religions could be uncomfortable for some, but the outpouring of affection for her on her death showed to me that the Irish knew that some people are not for sale and the Machine can't take their soul.
And wonderful piece of writing by the way Paul.
Chilling.
"Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator." - Chief Seattle
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/16/world-faces-deathly-silence-of-nature-as-wildlife-disappears-warn-experts-aoe
I wonder how many people are feeling what I'm feeling: that the Earth is becoming noticeably, alarmingly, devoid of life at the same moment the cacophonous, drunken party of modern culture rages on more noisily than ever. One can of course find plenty of articles and research papers on biodiversity loss, accelerating extinctions, "inexplicable" disappearances of invertebrates, collapses in phytoplankton abundance, trophic cascades, and much more. Still, what I've noticed more and more is how sickly and empty the landscape *feels*; how lifeless and skeletal. Often now, I will hear a bird, and then silence. *One bird*. In Ireland. In the spring. And I'm out in the sticks, not Dublin.
This otherwise great essay by Paul has a certain tone deafness from my perspective, because it's about people, and their distant future. I do not think they/we have one. We are not going to be able to live on this Earth for long with the web of life in ashes around us. That's a fantasy worthy of Elon Musk and his Mars colonies. And I suspect the way this plays out is what we see already: exploding rates of cancer, increasingly scarce and expensive and low quality, non-nutritious food, skyrocketing euthanasia, increasing repression and tech-assisted, AI-facilitated murder across a gray, toxic, post-industrial wasteland.
We as a species have long since rejected the idea that we are a strand in the web of life, and that kind of delusion is not sustainable, certainly not at this late hour, with Machine culture at its apex, grinding the last of the living planet into desert in endless pursuit of power and profit.
"Forests precede us, and deserts dog our heels." Religion? The societies that produced these Abrahamic religions had already made deserts of their land.
Anyone remember this guy:
https://derrickjensen.org/open-letter-to-reclaim-environmentalism/
I used to think this way. Dark Mountain was this for me. I don't any more. The problem with this worldview is that misanthropy and depression are its inevitable endpoint.
And is it true? Really? That Chief Seattle quote might be a bit suspect, but even if it is, that alone belies your point that 'We as a species have long since rejected the idea that we are a strand in the web of life.' You obviously haven't rejected it. Neither have I. Millions of people haven't. Whole cultures and faiths haven't.
The reason I write about the 'Machine' is that I think that, in fact, there is only one culture that thinks like this, and that's technological modernity. And even within this culture - where you and I live - millions don't see the world this way. We're just stuck in it. But if, as you say, this way of seeing is an unsustainable delusion (which it is) then ... well, then it can't be sustained. So it will fall.
I believe this fall is already happening. But I don't believe we will kill the Earth. We will damage it, and already have done, but life recovers astonishingly fast. Modernity won't beat it. Believeing that it could is all part of our progressive self-love fest. Our skyscrapers and internet server farms will be as Ozymandias's legs soon enough.
So in the meantime, I concluded, there must be some useful work to do telling better stories, and preparing the ground for when sanity is forced upon us again.
"I believe this fall is already happening. But I don't believe we will kill the Earth. We will damage it, and already have done, but life recovers astonishingly fast. Modernity won't beat it. Believing that it could is all part of our progressive self-love fest. Our skyscrapers and internet server farms will be as Ozymandias's legs soon enough."
This seems awfully sanguine at the pace the biosphere is unravelling (note this article is already using 8+ year old data: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048). I can easily see this culture outlasting the natural world by years, farming crickets, roaches, and ragweed and supplementing that with whatever Soylent Green-esque "solutions to the global hunger problem" boffins come up with) before it finally all goes belly-up. Even now, as the planet is utterly toxified and shockingly denuded, techno-industrial modernity hasn't missed a beat. There is clearly a sort of lag in the system where the fact there are, for example, no wild animals or insects left appears to affect nothing much for years. We can burn the Amazon rainforest to the ground tomorrow but oxygen persists long enough in the atmosphere where we won't notice we are suffocating for nearly 10,000 years.
The result is still a functionally dead Earth, which will in fact take millions of years to recover, rather than happen "astonishingly fast". "The food webs are made up of plants, mollusks, and insects living in ponds and rivers, as well as the fishes, amphibians, and reptiles that eat them. The reptiles range in size from that of modern lizards to half-ton herbivores with tiny heads, massive barrel-like bodies, and a protective covering of thick bony scales. Sabre-toothed gorgonopsians also roamed, some as large and powerful as lions and with long canine teeth for piercing thick skins. When these animals died out during the end-Permian mass extinction, nothing took their place, leaving unbalanced ecosystems for ten million years." (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54091048)
Finally, I would agree with you that Deep Green Resistance is, er, futile. And the reason for that ironically gets to your contention about the "one culture" that thinks like this. Fact is, the millions you note who would indeed abandon modernity are VASTLY outnumbered by those who would fiercely reject a Jensenesque return to pre-industrial life. People by and large have made their Spenglerian, Faustian bargain and are riding that (comfortable, air-conditioned) train to extinction. Think of how easily something like Extinction Rebellion was swept off the streets of London while most cud-chewing working stiffs were at most relieved to no longer be delayed on their commutes. And it's not just the West. It's also India and China, for starters. And those two combined are basically 5x the European and US populations combined. The virality of modernity only ever seems to accelerate.
So on simple democratic grounds, even were it possible, it would be immoral to impose post-industrialism on a world where the vast majority don't want it. And this finally gets to the root of it: most people have lost touch with the reality of life as a set of relationships within various communities (biological and otherwise), and have an internalized arrogance about our species' ability to do anything it wishes, up to and including living well indefinitely as the only species left apart from tasty chickens (or crickets) on an otherwise lifeless rock.
So yeah, I believe in coming to terms with the fact the sinking ship of fools will sink, taking the biosphere with it into the void, though I do realize that's an even less popular take than converting to Christianity.
That could happen. And certainly no-one (including Derrick Jensen) is going to voluntarily return to the pre-industrial world. At least not on anything other than a very small scale. It is great when people do of course.
So here we are. We can't predict where it will go though. It might also be sanguine to assume that our 'culture' can survive for years without a biosphere. Aren't we already going noticeably insane even at this level of 'civilisation'? Do we not have debt up to our ears, rocketing prices, declining resources, oceans dying, soil not offering up enough growth? I'd say it's equally likely that a chain collapse could come very quickly indeed.
But in the end we don't know. So we just have to do what we can. Nothing we know is likely to survive. But then neither are we. Not here, anyway.
A return to a pre-industrial lifeway would only matter on something approaching a planetary scale, so when I see people trot out the "hypocrisy" argument against anyone from Jensen on down for not heading by their lonesome out to some medieval, off-grid cottage (or cave, that old chestnut) I'd ask, "what is that supposed to do?" You make the sacrifice for none of the result when you could have stayed and (in Jensen's case) tried to stoke at the very least a sense of disenchantment with modernity that just might have actually meaningfully changed *something*. So yeah, no wonder essentially no one takes that deal other than as a showy demonstration of superior purity.
The real question would be this: would you be willing to surrender every modern convenience to rid the world of the environmental and cultural ills created by industrial modernity? There I believe you would see those millions you were speaking about raise their hands and affirm.
And at times I've wondered: if this were an actual political question, and a fair hearing of arguments pro and con were presented, how many people might actually vote to turn away from industrial life?
Whatever happens, on whatever timeframe, it seems certain more and more people will find themselves disenchanted with the Faustian bargain as the downsides become harder to hide.
I didn't mention hypocrisy. I'm not 'returning' either. My point was simply that it's neither possible nor desirable for 99.99% of people, including its critics, which includes me.
I think we have to bank on modernity becoming so horrific that it becomes unbearable for many. This might be closer than we think.
Perhaps, though (even cricket-flour) bread and circuses can keep an empire in power an awfully long time, though Rome never had to contend with a collapsed biosphere and summer temps exceeding 50°C. Morris Berman (a historian, after all) contends it's only force that ever changes anything. So expect nothing to change until people have no choice but to do so.
Your argument about supply chain collapse/unsustainable debt levels is interesting as a potential catalyst, but this is all unfolding under capitalism. As has been said, when all else fails (presumably even bread and circuses) they take you to war. They have three big ones teed up to choose from (Russia, Iran, China), or best of all: all three at once.
Not to mention that we are ruled by barely disguised sociopaths. This is always been the case, but these sociopaths have powers that make a Hitler or Stalin look like pikers by comparison, and they will without hesitation annihilate all of us rather than lose their perches.
Misanthropic? Depressing? To me, those are irrelevant. The only question to ask is "does it accurately describe and exp0lain observable reality?"
Looks quite real to me. But it always was. I'm reading about the Persian empire at the moment. Some of their Shahhanshahs make Stalin look like a tea boy.
As I said, the difference is that the sociopaths of today have far more power than any shah or comissar of the past.
It's very telling how sociopaths have somehow managed to avoid being problematized in this culture. On the contrary, they are often glamourized in the media (think shows like Dexter, The Sopranos, films like Scarface so many more). Note you cannot be hired for many jobs or get certain security clearances if you are an alcoholic or drug addict but there is no job you can't qualify for as a sociopath. In fact, any dispassionate look at our entire economic system might well conclude it's a system designed explicitly by and for the benefit of sociopaths.
Sociopaths, in my opinion, are not human. They are intra-species predators. There is the canonical sociopathic experience where at some point in childhood or adolescence they realize they are different than other people because other people have this incomprehensible "empathy" handicap which means there are many things they simply can't (in good conscience) do. Not having that handicap, the world for a sociopath becomes a sort of playground where you can use and abuse the living daylights out of others for your own advantage or sport.
Maybe sociopaths should be what we think of when someone uses that phrase "Homo-economicus". Why sociopathy hasn't been taken on as a disqualifying characteristic is quite curious. Sociopaths are allowed, for example, to carry the nuclear football and annihilate millions of people with a button-press, an act for which they could not experience any remorse. That is perhaps a prerequisite for high office in the Western imperium, as Keir Starmer recently demonstrated as he spoke of how unhesitatingly he would vaporize 13 million people (many orthodox Christians) in Moscow. Or anywhere else. This was all couched as his "unshakeable and absolute commitment to nuclear deterrence" in bloodless neoliberal-speak but wink wink nudge nudge say no more.
I once read a claim that the reason sociopaths get a pass in this culture is that if you take even one of them on, they will relentlessly seek to ruin your life, never mind all of them coming after you at once. You wonder if they were all gathered together in one place, if Starmer might agree to nuke them, or would he not do so because he'd be among the crowd? 🤔
Power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. And of course, sociopaths have an inherent advantage over other humans, because there is literally nothing they would not do to get power.
I often have wondered whether sociopaths have souls.
Researchers have found there has been a marked decline in empathy over the past 40+ years, at least in the United States (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/). And this tracks with how casually barbarous the place is getting, where fast food workers get blown away for failing to put enough hot sauce on the chicken and such.
I'd say it also tracks with how countless college students were smeared by Biden as antisemitic for protesting against their universities having military contracts with Israel on the same day news of mass graves being discovered in Gaza (https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/22/middleeast/khan-younis-nasser-hospital-mass-grave-intl/index.html) was being under-covered by the corporate media. As numerous as these students are, they remain far outnumbered by those who are unmoved by mass graves or any other atrocity.
I often wonder if there are souls at all, or if it's all a howling void and Goethe was right when he wrote, "life is a disease of matter". All I'm sure about is this culture has completely lost the plan and is racing towards some bleak endpoint.
Yup. I see much the same things, David Wallace-Wells-ischly, too. However: What Paul said; and, in a Serenity Prayer fashion: I can't change the present trajectory and ballistics of The Machine, but I can change how I relate (or do not) to its demands. I don't accept the sophisticated excuses for The Machine anymore. I suggest getting around more on foot and bicycle (days the old bicycle repairman ); put up a clothesline and tend some yard or garden. Maybe a composting toilet out back. Pull off the weedy tendrils, the ones that sneak in from the magic black mirror / communicator like I used to carry in my pocket. Thanks so much for sharing here.
PS: I don't get invited to the dinners of The Entitled anymore. I s'pose there's a downside to that, but I'm not seeing it.
Good article, covering a lot of ground. Disagree that Orwell was greatest essayist, preferring GKC.
Curiously, although Orwell is regarded as a Socialist and GKC as a conservative, the latter could have written the opening lines of your article. Having read "Real England" I suspect that you know this.
Cobbett described the political economic system he hated as "The Great Wen".
Chesterton, and Belloc, set up a campaigning group called Distributism to fight against it. Let me finish with some more GKC:
‘The Secret People
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,
For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.
Keep up the good work
Russell Sparkes
Chesterton and Orwell are my own personal Yin and Yang. Should be required reading in all schools!
yes
Thank you Paul, this has cheered me up (though I appreciate that you weren't aiming at simple cheery uplift!)
My local Catholic parish (in Hertfordshire) is predominantly black and Asian at the moment, and it is quite cheering to see the Nigerian priest talking about e.g. St Margaret Clitherow and other English saints to his decidedly non-indigenous flock. The church is rammed on Sunday mornings, and intriguingly is rammed again on Sunday afternoons when the local travelers (if that's not a contradiction in terms) have their own Mass. I hide out in the Anglican Ordinariate and the Latin Mass myself (I have a low cringe threshold).
The link between Labour and non-conformist Christianity seems to be of a piece with the general shape of English radicalism, in which reformers appeal to an earlier, happier state in which Englishmen had a fairer share of the land and the commonwealth. A genuinely English Lefty has to play at Saxons and rail against the latest iteration of the Norman yoke if he is to work with the grain of our traditions. This suggests to me that our Left need to be very wary of deracinating themselves too much, because without those roots they won't be able to sustain themselves.
“We have succoured and nurtured the imposter that squats on our throne, and now we complain that it is eating us, and thrash around looking for someone else to blame for its triumph.” Wow. What an essay to wake up to this morning! Moving, mournful and yet still hopeful, it has given me much to think about.
Paul, do you think that as England falls or triumphs so shall America? Living in a small town in the US, I sometimes feel more hope than others that my country can somehow figure a way out of this massive mess. I’m curious as to your thoughts on if England is the canary in the coal mine for the rest of Western nations?
Thank you as always for your beautiful and thoughtful writing.
England is America's ageing aunt or uncle, it seems to me. We made you - by accident and slightly by design. Then you supplanted us. Then we slavishly copied you. Now we are both together being eaten by the Machine we made. America has shallower roots but more energy. England has a venerable past but can't remember it properly.
I do tend to think that England invented the Machine and America brought it to perfection. So it must be up to both of us to work out how to bring it down ...
Excellent summary of centuries of history.
But England and America and all the nations are temporary constructs and will be eternally subjected to (or supplanted by) the New Jerusalem when the true King returns to planet Earth.
"Nations aren't really Christian things." But Jesus, or John quoting him, says that in the New Jerusalem there will be trees for the healing of the nations. I wonder what that means.
Good question. I go round and round on this. I am still not sure what I think about the relationship between nations and the Christian Way.
I wonder if nations are imaginal structures, particular aspect of a collective unconscious? So they exist in proportion to the number of people who believe in them. No people who think they are English means no England...and they are definitely Biblical, nation shall speak unto nation...
It would be easy to enjoy your splendid write up and the quick exchange with Sam, but , always a 'but' ... I don't believe in the machine, at least as I think you mean it. The machine as in AI-tech assist means in my view that Elon Musk's rocket comes to earth somewhat more quickly.
Nations? I turned the other night to Alasdair MacIntyre after he had argued with Thomism, lost, and converted Catholic. AM quotes Aquinas: "Since the soul is part of the body of a human being, the soul is not the whole human being and my soul is not I".
Lots of thoughts on Winstanley and his later life, and Cobbett who tried to look back beyond the 'Reformation' for his moral economy, Blake in London who saw what appears a non-Judaic precept, and of course the Etonian who did his turn as a policeman in a place we called Burma where the teak came from for the decking on the Cunard Line.
Biosphere we cannot know as you say, but there have been major geological turnovers like the PETM that provide uncomfortably close analogies for the current carelessness.
Oliver O’Donovan was particularly helpful for me on this front, especially his “The Desire of the Nations.” Still struggling with this too (currently writing an MA thesis about it), but your writing is always a welcome addition.
For some mind-blowing food for thought about this, I recommend the “Lord of Spirits” podcast (Fr Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr Stephen DeYoung) from September 25,2020: “Angels and Demons II: The Divine Council.”
https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/lordofspirits/angels_demons_ii_the_divine_council
It talks about spiritual beings in charge of nations.
Yes, I thought about that earlier someone denied that England has soul. I take Paul Kingsnorth to be writing somewhat figuratively, yet spiritually, with God giving England something that could be called a soul. Spiritual entities flowing from and "assigned" to nations seems to be a valid topic.
There are principalities and powers for nations appearing in scripture. Daniel chapter ten, for example has Daniel waiting long for help, which finally arrives. The arriving angel says << " But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.">>
(Also an interesting passage about the limits - chosen limits i guess we assume - of God's power.)
The Biblical 'Israel' (i.e. the true Church) is a nation. A nation scattered throughout the world, not defined by race, borders or culture, but by faith.
Yes, that was something I stumbled over too - nations are created things, just as human beings, trees and frogs are - they are part of what are called 'the principalities and powers' - not material objects but spiritual, nonetheless real for all that. Part of England's problem (and very much part of the Church of England's problem) is that it has absorbed a secular mindset and can no longer perceive spiritualities. Hey ho.
Sorry to interject, but secularity is every bit as imaginal a construct as the belief in Christianity, it is an idea held by large numbers of people, and so is materialism (which btw at a subatomic level is rubbish).
And imaginal constructions are not homogenous, they are a weave of various ideas, but at some point like a tapestry if you keep pulling out threads the whole thing unravels. Conflating nationality with citizenship and legal rights is part of the problem, the Irish have the slippery term 'non national' to describe immigrants, many of whom are Irish citizens. So this is very much a spiritual war, just that one side pretends the other side doesn't exist.....
Agreed!
My question at present is: can nations ever be 'Christian' and should Christians try to make them so? Obviously both the CofE and the Orthodox churches have been heavily involved in just such a project. With decidedly mixed results. Despite being Orthodox, my tendencies on this question are very much closer to Christian anarchism than Constantinean orthodoxy. But I can see both sides.
I agree that this is a very important question! I think that nations are redeemable so... yes, I think they can be Christian
Isn't being Christian like being a member of an egregore? ('where two or three are gathered there am I). And that isn't tethered to a particular location. I'm Irish, and have been living in the UK for over 30 years, I believe Guinness is the best drink (obvs) and think cricket is utterly ridiculous .
Does that mean that I need to persuade everyone around me of these (to me) self evident truths? Or do I accept that these are my personal beliefs and can't be imposed on others. But although I will never be English, I have accommodated my beliefs to fit into the society in which I live.
Where I to hold the belief that playing cricket was blasphemous, I could not live in the UK. So I belong to two egregores, someone who is Irish and also someone who is English adjacent, someone who has enough English beliefs to live comfortably in England.
It's a matter of degree I think, not a bright line between English/not English, but thinking cricket is blasphemous is definitely not compatible with being part of the English adjacent/English egregore.
I think the English egregore is made up of multiple beliefs, many of which came from Christianity, but not all. The question is how many of these can you ditch before you would get ejected from the egregore? Maybe there's a critical mass? You just need to hold enough to be seen by others as recognisably English? So Richard Dawkins is still English even though he doesn't believe in God, but he has enough other identifying traits to be seen as English.
There are interesting parallels with Judaism, Jews have a distinctive identity and religion yet live in different physical locations and have different citizenships.
You're completely wrong about cricket, but if you stay in England long enough you'll learn the error of your ways by a kind of sporting osmosis.
Like you said, Christianity is a universalizing faith, and so it can’t be nationalistic or parochial. That being said, because the Christian faith works anywhere and yet looks different everywhere, the practices of the faith in a particular place can have a positive, unifying effect on a people (so defined). But it must 1) be practiced, and 2) conform to “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). England (and Europe in general) seem to be a place where the moral foundations of Christianity (a la Tom Holland’s Dominion) remain for the most part, but the practice of Christian faith has ceased. The question is how long that can remain.
My two cents, and I’ve been thinking on this way too much this year, is that only individuals can be Christian. It sounds terrible because the modern cults of individualism have inverted the very idea of the “individual” from a sanctified dwelling place for God to a political ideal without bounds, so all associations with “individualism” can feel maniacally supportive of modern consumerism. But every time I read the Gospel, over and over all I hear is Christ speaking to individuals; even when he’s speaking to a flock, he’s not rapping philosophic about how to institute good flocking policy, but speaking to what the individual within that flock can do. In fact, Christ is so radical on this front that he famously claims you gotta hate your family to follow him, which no amount of theology has, to my mind, tempered down. As someone who thinks families are a good thing, I certainly have no idea what to do with those sayings, but I’m rather convinced it emanates from an absolute focus on the individual unit being the place wherein God dwells and the kingdom is realized. Nations might have souls, but I think it’s a category error to assume they might be Christian: that category is intended for one place, an individual creature.
I think this is where I am. I have two big problems with the idea of Christian nations. One is that, in every example I know, making a nation 'Christian' involves compulsion. And I don't think any faith can be compelled. Christ never compelled anyone to do anything.
The other problem is that, as you say, only an individual can in fact build a relationship with God. A nation might be nominally 'Christian' - like Ireland still is, for example - but most people are never in church, let alone trying to live a Christian life. It becomes 'cultural Christianity', which means basically nothing.
But then in the old days the nation was the king, the king embodied the nation, which is why those spreading a religion always targeted the big man. Then, the people followed him into the faith, not through compulsion (that sounds more like the modus operandi of Christianity’s spread via empire) but out of loyalty. Then gradually churches were built and the nation’s institutions spread the new faith (much as our deluded institutions now spread the woke delusion). It was much more organic. But the king came first. Today there is no such single embodiment of the state (unless perhaps His Majesty’s Inspector of Revenue), which is a symptom of our fragmentation.
My take:- In Orthodoxy, the fullness of salvation exists within the Church. The Church is the unifying, edifying guide that stops us going off course with our own preferences (like in the schism) and is the Kingdom of God on earth. For me as an individual, I have a relationship with Christ. That 'personal' (rather than individual) relationship is 'grown' and developed within the Church. The Orthodox Church is my 'nation'. Geography doesn't come into it.
Like you, I've been thinking way too much on this, but I think we've been conned since the Enlightment that we are all 'buffered souls', autonomous individuals, impervious to the moods and opinions of our fellow humans, and floating in an empty universe where salvation is an individual immortality project.
I disagree. My ten cents is that Jesus is saying that we are all actually connected subconsciously to each other and to the Universe by love. We just need to activate this connection.
And He shows us how, by gathering together to remember Him, where He will join us. He did tell us to leave our families, but only to join like minded people. And maybe nations do have souls, based on the number of active Christians in them, like yeast in bread, there might be a critical mass at which that soul becomes active. ....
Hey BM, yes, the post-Enlightenment view of "autonomous individuals" is quite harmful and wrong, precisely because it becomes situated in a materially-dominant cosmos absent God. But add God back to the equation, and I don't see how being autonomous would make us "impervious to moods and opinions of our fellow humans," especially since plenty in the Gospel is telling us to care about each other (which would presumably mean caring about others' "moods and opinions" as well). So I don't think "autonomy" itself is a bad idea; only a bad idea when esteemed as a primary orientation, and especially when esteemed as an exclusive orientation.
But this: "My ten cents is that Jesus is saying that we are all actually connected subconsciously to each other and to the Universe by love. We just need to activate this connection." While I agree with the sentiment, I'm a bit at a loss where Jesus is saying this in the Gospel? I'd be happy to change my mind if you show me!
If it's individuals vs nations, I'm with you on the individuals side, but I think we often hear Christ speaking to individuals, because -- except in the beautifully Southren "yall" and the departed English "ye" -- English doesn't have a plural you, so you sounds like you in the English versions. Often, though, it's second person plural in the Greek. Anyhow, I'm of a mind that Christianity only exists in very small groups -- about the size of a large family or small tribe -- "where two or three are gathered," etc: Not necessarily the literal quantity one plus one, or one more than that , but in any case, small enough to know one another face to face. Christian crowds don't exist, much less empires. (You gotta "hate" your family in the sense of breaking the usual kinship ties, in order to join the spiritual family of the (very small) gathering of Messiah-followers: "Looking at those sitting in a circle around him, he said: 'Here are my mother and my brothers.'" (Mark 3)
You're speaking to a Southerner, so "y'all" would substitute just fine!
That's interesting about the Greek and the plurality. I've been trying to look at the original Greek words when I can to see what gets missed and altered in translation, though I don't read the language and so rely even there on basic interpretations to English.
But you know, when I say I hear Christ speaking to individuals, I mean moreso that so much of his ministry is in the context of addressing individuals and healing them at their level. I'm always stunned at how this Son of God stops, looks at an individual, and addresses or heals them in one-on-one interaction. I have to imagine in those instances the Greek is singular, but maybe I'm wrong? But even when addressing flocks, such as much of Luke 12 (blessed be 12:22-37), isn't Christ urging people to do only what individuals can? Sell your possessions, let your loins be girded, store your treasure in heaven, do not be of anxious mind, etc.
The alternative, to me, could've been Christ saying something like, "Little lambs: enforce policies that tax the rich, setup union-controlled factories for your girding, join in numbers to block traffic, collectively own land, setup consensus-making apparatuses wherein each gets a vote and one veto but 90% passes the resolution, etc." Of course, individuals would still have to engage in these more collective efforts, but the focus in this alternative seems wholly different to me. When Christ speaks to individuals, such as to Bartimaeus in Mark on the road to Jerusalem, I hear him doing so in a way that's not at all based on a generalizable ethic or principle, but in a pointed, one-on-one, eye-to-eye valuation-of-this-unique soul way. I find it beautifully disarming.
And yes to scale: I get so stuck at trying to think through/feel/practice Christianity anytime it becomes bigger than a hillside.
Ah, yes -- all true. I don't know if you watch "The Chosen," but I love it, in that it draws out the face to face, heart to heart attention of Yeshua on real, individual human people -- not just symbolic stand-ins (the woman at the well is not just the stereotypical Samaritan (religious) harlot, but an actual woman, etc). That said, this thing that only individuals can do: sell your possessions, gird your loins [in the sense of be sober minded and always prepared to run like hell], store your treasures in heaven, don't be anxious --- these things are only really possible within the context of a supportive, nurturing, attentive, very small family-like community, right?
Also, not canonical, but lovely nonetheless is the Tang dynasty gospel, which says: "The kingdom does not belong to individuals. It becomes manifest in agape shared. Therefore the loaf must be broken so that agape may be known in the sharing." (Secret Sayings of Ye Su #60)
Well that might have been an over reach, it’s a bit late in the evening....but Luke 17-20-21 does say The Kingdom of God is within you and Jesus does speak often about the Holy Spirit..Meister Elkhart talks of God as the ground of all being. But my phrasing was clumsy.
I’m also heavily influenced by the ideas of Owen Barfield and his ideas about how human consciousnesses shifts over history.
I am also very interested in how technology is shifting human consciousness today. it is very obvious to me for instance that teenagers using social media are being influenced by mind memes, pushed by algorithms. To what extent are these kids actually autonomous individuals? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that they are individuals in the making with porous boundaries?
And therefore much more vulnerable to attacks from what in another age would be called demons? Isn’t this just spiritual warfare?
Anyway, hope this makes sense...
"Principalities and powers." Doesn't the Bible mention angels appointed by God to rule over the nations? So the principalities and powers might be literal nations, but also spiritual entities that rule them. Perhaps they are the gods of the pagans, so one would assume fallen, but can these angels also be converted? "Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes," by Daniel L. Everett, is a memoir of his 20 years as a missionary who finally loses his faith among a previously uncontacted South American tribe. The tribespeople go into the forest and talk to their spirits who tell them to reject this Jesus, they don't need him. So clearly some of the spirits are fallen, but I find myself wondering about whole people converting. I always assumed it was at sword point, but perhaps not. Perhaps the missionaries needed to go into the forest and argue with the spirits, but that would be dangerous, wouldn't it?
Usually the Greek word translated as "nations" is more properly translated "people group" - it's ethne, where we get our word "ethnic". I think that makes a difference.
Dana
I hope you will indulge me in a very vague comment. I remember the 1990s localist green movement that you describe - I was too young to be a part of it but I feel I have got the texture and feel of it stored away in my mind somewhere, together with the associations I have with it. I was more consciously aligned in my late teens and early twenties with the anti-globalisation movement, which received favourable coverage in the Guardian and had Radiohead and Godspeed You Black Emperor as its court minstrels (though my involvement was pretty much limited to listening to those bands. approving of Naomi Klein without reading her books, and having friends who stole mugs from Starbucks).
20 or 25 years later and after something of an ideological hiatus I now feel that I sympathise strongly with both groupings, but they don't really seem to be there anymore. It's like realising that you are now in a place where you would really like to be friends with that man who you remember living on your parents' street, but when you knock on his door you find that he moved out years ago and left no forwarding address. Or deciding that the time has come for you to get really into classical music, only to find that nobody plays it or listens to it anymore so the cultural world you wanted to join has vanished.
This feels like something the Germans would have a word for. The best thing we can do I suppose is to call it "irony", but that really doesn't cover it.
Beautiful article. Ireland is arguably in a more advanced state of degradation, and we had no empire nor evenaccess to our own resources. Thanks for another thought provoking piece, beautifully written.
Outstanding piece, Paul. And dare I say, buoyant. For some readers longing for a return to a simpler, earth respecting life, look no further than the great saints Sarov, Herman, et al, and the Bible itself where God often shows his care for the animals, even above certain humans, e.g., Balaam’s donkey. For a wonderful if not sad modern example of heavenly believers whose faith is also earthbound, I recommend a new film titled Sacred Alaska. You won’t be disappointed. Just search for Sacred Alaska movie…
Great piece. Is this the best review essay ever, the introduction to the book I’m dying to read, a manifesto? Perhaps all of the above and well done, you.
Tell me more about this book you're dying to read.
Yours. The book that talks not only about the Machine but about the Garden too. A vision of Beloved Community, of New Diggers, of Green and Pleasant Lands, of Holy Wells, of an unorthodox Orthodoxy, how decolonize ourselves in a colonized world. You know: that thing you do.
This sounds good. If only I could work out how to write it. Maybe prayer will help ...
odds are good!
Would those thumping African Churches not be Anglican?
True, some are. Others are evangelical and various other flavours. Some Catholic too I think. I think Africans are propping up the CofE in many places. Not that that's a bad thing. More power to them.
It is sad what the CofE has become. It should seek to go back to its roots in the 1662 BCP or even the proposed 1928BCP. Its dalliances with modernism has done nothing for it. Time to turn back.
Interesting and depressing if it wasn’t for God’s word which leads us through these times to His triumphant return.
" And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and ah! bright
wings" ~Gerard Manley Hopkins
These lines keep popping up in my head when I think of the 'last lights' of the West.
Maybe all is not lost....
Thank you for these thoughts on this Feast of St. George