TCTFG: You can't defend what you don't believe exists

Returning to a theme

Do churches and nations exist? That is to say, do churches and nations have a real existence apart from all the individuals that are contained and legally constrained by the various institutions that share a church or national label? Do they, put simply, have souls? I am coming to the conclusion that my belief – that they do – is shared by the vast majority of people in this country, and many of the problems we face in both church and nation arise because those in responsibility for church and nation in the end do not. This is a problem, because it is impossible to defend something if you do not believe that it exists.

I am emphasising the 'believe that it exists' because it sidesteps the morass that forms when simply asking 'do you believe in it', as in 'do you believe in the church' or 'do you believe in Britain'. Those are simply enquiries about tribal positioning, my point is more metaphysical. If you don't believe that something exists then it doesn't make any sense to ask if someone is willing to serve it, or love it, or take care of it. This, for me, has always been one of the principal reasons why Archbishop Welby's approach could never work – because he 'couldn't give a hang' about the church. That was a comment describing an organisation (to be managed and flow-charted into conformity), it was not a remark given by someone who loved something real. For the church is real, not simply in the sense that 'the Church is the Body of Christ' real but in 'the Church of England is a living entity' real. The Church of England is a real thing, a real creature, it has needs and loves and purposes. It is, in sum, what is classically called in the New Testament literature a 'principality' – see Walter Wink for a detailed exposition. As a creature, as a created reality, it also has a soul. I would say that very few of the leadership of the Church of England have any sense of that spiritual reality (Andrew Rumsey is at least one exception to that).

This is a problem.

What takes the place of a spiritual understanding of created realities is the received opinions of late-industrial capitalism, Modernism, in which we are all fungible widgets, smooth ball-bearings, atomised individuals needing to be steered and manipulated. In Church terms there is a variety of faith that functions very well within such an economic system, Protestant Evangelicalism, which is focussed upon the conversion of the individual soul. Indeed, a good case can be made for the intertwining of those two things from the very beginning, a la Weber. This is the default ideology of our present time, and there are various ways of telling the story of how it came to be so – McGilchrist's is a good one – but unless we are aware of how partial and incomplete this default ideology is, we have no chance of functioning well in matters of either church or nation.

For the nation has a real existence in just the same way that the church does, it is a part of the created order and it has a soul. Classically we are to love it – patriotism – as a development of the command that we are to honour our fathers and mothers that our days might be long upon this earth. The nation deserves our love, the love of nation is a virtue, it is an obligation placed upon all that belong to her.

Aye and there's the rub.

We face a situation, for both church and nation, where those who have been exercising responsibility for stewarding, caretaking, loving these principalities simply lacked the capacity to do so, a lack born entirely from an unquestioning acquiescence to the inherited norms of late Modern capitalism. It does not matter that the Church of England does not believe that England exists, so long as the individual souls of people who reside in the territory marked out as 'England' on a map are still converted to love the Lord. It does not matter that Britain experiences a radical shift in both ethnic and ideological demography for such things are just opinions, all opinions are valid, and if you object to this change then you're simply a bigot. This is an example of left-hemisphere capture.

In both spheres the blowback against this soul-less analysis, with all the pestilence that accrues as a result, is becoming unavoidable. In the Church it is mainly associated with 'Save the Parish' although my feeling is that StP only captures a part of the problem. In the political sphere it is populism that is gaining traction – Trump, Millei, Farage etc – and the difference, the appeal of such figures is not, I would argue, about any particular details of specific policies but only because such people seem to 'get it'. They exhibit unashamed patriotism, and most people – who haven't been educated out of such instincts – respond enthusiastically.

You cannot defend what you don't believe exists. If you don't have a spiritual understanding of the Church of England then you will never be able to properly love and guide it. If you don't have a spiritual understanding of Britain you will never be able to properly love and guide Britain either. I rather think that if the leadership of the Church of England started talking in these terms (under God) we might find people willing to listen to what we have to say. Whereas if we continue in the path that we have been following for the last few decades we will deserve the doom to which we are descending. Our leaderships are in dire need of a remedial metaphysical re-education – or, to be more specific about my own Church, we really need some Bishops who understand philosophy! Until that changes, the decline of both church and nation will continue. All we can do in the meantime is pray.