To Bury Caesar

Fr Donald the ex-hospital chaplain was very exercised the other day about The Times's scraped-together survey of Anglican clergy who were, to a person it seemed or was made to seem, exhausted, despairing, and convinced the UK can no longer be described as a Christian country in any sense of the term. 'Just selling newspapers', he fumed, though why the paper should have thought what the Anglican clergy think about themselves or anything else is a matter anyone outside the Church of England should be interested in, I'm not sure. I don't feel particularly overworked and I suspect my moments of despair are to do with my deplorable character rather than my circumstances, but the state of the nation's faith is nothing more than obvious: unbelief triumphant, it seems.

In the Co-Op that evening I met Ella the Rainbows unit leader who runs an engineering business with her husband in town, who described a work event - and I can't recall the context, it must have been rather specific - in which it became apparent that 'our millennial junior staff' didn't know who Julius Caesar was. 'Wasn't he sort of a Roman?' was the closest any of them got. I tried the question on the young lads who I turfed out of the church porch when I locked up this afternoon, and they looked at me blankly. Clearly no point advancing any further into Classical history there. 

Now, lay to one side my feelings about my priestly ministry - as a historian I find the idea that young people don't know who Julius Caesar was deeply depressing. We live in a time in which vast areas of human knowledge and experience are there for the looking-up, easily available in almost everyone's home - in almost everyone's hand, for heaven's sake - and yet very, very basic things that frame the mental landscape of humanity are mysteries.

Could it be, then, that the advance of unbelief in the modern West is not due to increased human knowledge, but the lack of it? I was reluctant to accept it, but perhaps it's the case. Atheists might fondly imagine that millions are disconnecting from religion and religious awareness because they have taken conscious decisions to do so, analysing the claims of faith and finding them wanting, whereas in fact they're just falling into line with the people around them. A triumph, not of progress, but of ignorance.