English conversations
While wearing a cassock on Britain's streets
“I like you Christians,” said the old Jewish man I met in Spitalfields. “You looked after us after my parents were sent to Auschwitz. My aunt and uncle managed to get me out.”
The last two weeks, I have been back in my native England leading a group of student organists, eight Japanese and one Australian, from my university chapel in Tokyo. Most of the time, I have been wearing my cassock on the streets, as is my habit (boom boom). Given the current state of the Church, and especially the revelations of abuse coverups at the end of last year, I had been afraid of the reactions I might get. I’ve had the “paedo” jibe before, and I know of priests who have been spat at and threatened. Yet this time, at least, I had nothing to fear. The old Jewish man who came up to me outside Hawksmoor’s brooding Christ Church in Jack the Ripper territory was only one of several positive conversations that the cassock invited.
In recounting them, I have spared any details which might give the identities of the people who spoke to me away, and have broken no confidences.
There was some less positive news on the street. A German priest told me that since Gaza, the Jewish population of Whitechapel was living in fear. The three synagogues which used to serve so many East end Jews were all closed now. A Muslim activist had even broken into the German church and assaulted a member of staff there on the grounds — the irony of this was not lost on the priest — that Germans are “friends of the Jews.” When the church reported this to the authorities, they were warned of being charged for Islamophobia. The priest told me that the local council is so dominated by Bangladeshis that all its charitable funds have been channelled into community projects run by Islamic centres and mosques. There is nothing the non-Muslim minority of residents can do democratically to challenge the nepotism they see at every turn. Even leaders found guilty of corruption keep getting re-elected. That this came from a German Catholic, who as a group are known for their liberal tendencies, was telling.
“Are you an Orthodox priest? Catholic?”
This time, the questioner was an Ethiopian woman, herself a Christian. She told me that she had fled her own country some years ago on that account. Her stall in Old Spitalfields Market offered such suitably Lenten vegetarian delights as to pacify my carnivorous cravings, and I was chatting to her as I ordered. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of an Anglican priest, but I found that the Ethiopian Church’s fasts are rather more stringent than ours, or even those of the Orthodox: no food at all until 3pm. I left with delicious fare and mutual blessings.
There was one point in London where I thought I had it coming. A young lad, and a bit of a likely one, swaggered up.
“You a priest?”
It’s a surprisingly frequent question, given that I’m wandering around in a black cassock sporting a cross and white collar. On another occasion, in a pub, I replied that despite my perfect physique (it isn’t), I was not in fact the stripper. But this occasion, I thought, demanded a simpler and perhaps slightly resigned “yes.”
The feared barrage did not come.
“Good on you, mate. Good to see someone standing up for something. Most people are pieces of sh*t.”
A little nonplussed, I replied sheepishly that under the robes, so am I. He smiled.
“Yeah, yeah, we all are, me too. But anyway,” he repeated, “it’s good to see someone standing up for something.”
I thanked him and offered God’s blessing.
“Uh, yeah, God bless you, too. Thanks.”
We were warmly welcomed at both the Catholic and Anglican cathedrals in Birmingham, and at the hardworking St Martin’s in the Bullring, with its admirable ministry to the poor and homeless — of whom there are many.
A recent report in the Telegraph suggests that the poorest of Birmingham are poorer than the poorest of Slovenia. On the streets, it shows, to the extent that I was embarrassed for my Japanese guests to see what it had become. The city centre on Saturday was chaotic and the students found it threatening. The smell of weed hung around clusters of homeless people. Islamic evangelists pumped out muezzin calls on loudspeakers to rival Christian charismatics shouting about Jesus on the other side of the street. Football hooligans marched through the crowd chanting boorish slogans. Semi-clad hen parties and groups of drunk skinheads lurched around New Street station. Some of the painted eyebrows raised at the unexpected sight of “the vicar.”
But the churches, especially St Martin’s, continued to offer their quiet hospitality and sanctuary. And in the press of the crowd, a young black man caught my eye and said, “God bless you.” He had vanished in the throng before I could reciprocate.
In a busy little pub not far away, an old fellow at the other end of the bar bought me a pint: “Get one in for the Father, landlord.” He gave a nod of approval as I saluted him with my glass in thanks.
Two conversations stuck out in the East of England. One was with our taxi driver, taking us to our accommodation. I could not place his accent, so I asked him where he came from.
“Iran.”
He was an older man, perhaps in his sixties. Everything had gone wrong since 1979. He had left to escape the religious police. His family had kept the ancient Persian faith of Zoroaster, and for this were unwelcome in their own land.
Later, I spoke to a lady who had long since left her homeland to make a living in England. Certain of her forefathers had been Armenian Christians. Their parents were killed in the genocide which the Turkish authorities still insist never happened. Thereafter, they were raised by Muslim relatives, and told that they, too, were Muslim now. It would be easier on them that way.
My new acquaintance was left suspicious of religion. She wanted to make sure that her daughters had the educational opportunities that girls where she came from were denied. But she was happy with what church schools in England had offered and found working in a Christian institution surprisingly positive.
I have saved the least expected conversation until last. It begins almost like a joke: a Christian priest and a Buddhist monk walk into a bar. But only almost, because the Buddhist monk was already sitting in the bar, saffron-clad, when I got back to our hotel at midnight after a long day trip.
He was upset. After many years at a nearby monastery, he had suddenly discovered such corruption and perversion among its leaders that he walked out immediately with nothing but his robe and ‘phone. Prompted by a YouTube recording of Compline, he had decided to take refuge in a Christian monastery he knew.
What might we make of these anecdotal snapshots from a mere two weeks in England? A certain unease about Islam came across, uninvited on my part. Notably, it was only migrants to England who expressed that unease to me, in some cases because they had fled Islamic countries. Regular readers will know that I have done some albeit limited work with Islamic theologians, one of whom I count a dear friend, and that I have sympathy with more Platonic strands of Islamic spirituality. But there can be no doubt, even so, that outside the academy, a different story is being told. I did not choose what people told me, and have not taken an editorial decision only to include stories that fit any particular narrative. But pretending that there is no problem will not make it go away: indeed, given the recent exposure of the predominantly Pakistani rape gangs, pretending that there is no problem makes it far worse.
In contrast to the fear about Islam, though, I found a greater sense of sympathy towards Christianity than I had expected in modern Britain. It would be far too easy to turn the widespread fear of Islam into hatred, and exploit it for the sake of whipping up a new Christian nationalism, especially with keffiyeh-clad gangs marauding through the streets calling for the death of Jews with their useful young leftist idiots in tow. Some Christians are already exploiting the situation. I would caution that hatred does not belong in the arsenal of Christian evangelism. The Gospel is good enough news in itself that we do not need to rouse up fear to make it compelling.
That said, I have long maintained that for a nation to own a common good, it must have a common metaphysics, without which we are left only with relativism and the redefinition of the “good” by the strongest voice or majority vote. The only popular platform for such a metaphysics is religion. Even the ancient Platonists in the end, failing to compete with the Church, tried to justify their philosophy to the masses by appealing to pagan ritual practices. This ivory tower paganism did not work. Christianity and Islam proved the lasting vehicles of Platonic ideals. Ultimately, if Europeans really aspire to a metaphysically absolute Good which can bind their society and give the lives of their people a common sense of identity and meaning, they will have to choose between one of these two.
Demographics alone are proof enough that secular materialism is incapable of sustaining peoples. Secularist Europe and East Asia promotes self-advancement above all things, in which calculus children are merely an impediment. Marriage is to be postponed if it is to be had at all. Non-reproductive sexual unions are accorded high social status and public awards. The inviolable sanctum of the abortion clinic is warded by the police from the taint of silent prayer. Environmental lobbyists exhort voluntary infertility, with childlessness regarded as one of the goods to which right-thinking people should aspire.
Meanwhile, Muslims and Christians worldwide continue to have children. Both prize community over the self, albeit at times to damaging excess. Having worked in a London parish where Muslim pupils at the Church school encouraged irreligious white children to take God more seriously, I have seen Islam and Christianity work to complement one another at the grass roots level. I can understand why Muslims look at the life of secular England in horror at its degeneracy. But honesty demands me to say that I would not want to live in a Britain that was like what I saw in Whitechapel or Birmingham.
England needs to recover its Christianity. It needs a Christianity which is strong and confident in love, rather than in fear or hate. This is what will win conversions, both from the lapsed and atheist generations, and from Islam. The Church is where the repository of the national memory lies buried, waiting to be dug up and restored. Realistically, Islam will remain, and Christians will need to work with rather than against Muslims. With them and the Jews, in God, we share the greatest Good. If we want them to know that the perfection of that Goodness is found in Christ alone, then we must show it by our fruits.
We start by going public. It may take courage for clergy to go out in a cassock or even just a collar these days, but it can lead to conversations and connections you would never have had otherwise. The laity, too, must not be afraid to wear the sign of the cross, to make it in public as we pray over our food, or to be seen reading the Bible or praying the office on bus or train. Take courage to be more public in your Christianity, and you will give courage to others. At the very least, you will give them someone to talk to. You never know what difference that conversation might make.
Amen and amen
Thank you for this.