‘God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England’ by Bijan Omrani

There is only one major problem with this book and that is it’s title which I think is somewhat misleading, and the subtitle does not really either truly indicate what the book is about. It is in fact, for the most part, a remarkably eloquent and well-researched work of history which seeks to demonstrate how contemporary British (not just English) culture and institutions remain saturated in religious influence despite the waning of formal Christianity.

Bijan Omrani’s central argument is that the considerable decline in church attendance across all denominations, along with the accompanying decline in overt expressions of Christian belief and values since the 1960s, represents a change of direction of historic proportions. In his view, the cultural revolution that took place in the second half of the twentieth century should be seen as having greater long-term significance than the wars we fought in the first half. It represents an inflection point: a break with the past of vast consequence, and one that is not always easy fully to explain. It has, however, created a situation in which, though we do not always recognise it, much of our contemporary lived experience remains suffused with Christian influence - the legacy of a very different national history from the one we are now busy creating.

After a brief potted introduction explaining how England originally became a Christian country (Gregory, Augustine, Aethelbert etc), successive chapters set out how and in what ways largely unquestioned and all-pervasive Christianity went on to shape pretty well everything thereafter, and still does today, albeit in a subtler manner. Its presence is inescabable, like sugar dissolved in a cup of coffee. He deals with the law, education, music, literature, the arts, science, politics and more generally with the distinct features of our sometimes eccentric inherited ways of being; namely our ‘Englishness’. From time to time, he very usefully (and lucidly) sums up his argument:

Christianity, therefore, must form a grand part of any overarching narrative of English national identity. It is an intrinsic part of the national story. It is only with an understanding of the scriptures, doctrines and history of Christianity that one can grasp a coherent, integrated and holistic sense of not only national values and their origins, but also English institutions and the inherited body of English culture. It is from the impetus of the Christian faith that these values developed, and that much of the culture, ethics and mechanisms of social cohesion on which English society has been reliant have come. If these ethics, national values or mechanisms of cohesion appear to be in retreat at present, it would not be unreasonable to say that the decay of a shared understanding of Christianity, their general foundation, has played a significant part in such a decline.

The book reaches this conclusion via, in the main, the telling of stories. Later on there are some statistics presented to back up arguments, but in the main this is a very enjoyable read built on narratives. There is plenty of personal observation too. Bijan Omrani is a proud Anglican with, it would seem, a privileged background, but one with evangelical as well as more traditional high church roots. He is not at all blind to the failings of his Church and deals directly both with its damaging past activities and some of the more recent media scandals that have engulfed many churches, but he takes the view the overall balance sheet is very much weighted towards a positive historic contribution. And he makes his case eloquently, particularly when discussing the major developments that occurred two hundred years or so in response to urbanisation and industrialisation, and which were to give Victorian England so much of its distinctive character:

The fact that we now cherish and coddle the teenage years, rather than thinking them a ripe moment for the young to be sent away to work back-breaking shifts in ceramics factories, is a striking change in public opinion which occurred over the course of the Nineteenth Century. Yet this is just one of many alternations in public sentiment at that time whose legacy to us is the general moral code of English society today.

During that time, the slave trade and then slavery itself were abolished across the British Empire and suppressed by the British Navy throughout the world more widely. The English gave up on bear-baiting, cock-fighting and setting dogs on fire for amusement. They eschewed duelling. They reacted against sexual exploitation, particularly of girls and vulnerable women. They sought to lessen the burdens of endemic poverty amongst the working classes, which had been aggravated by the Industrial Revolution, rural enclosures and rapid urbanisation. They tried to lessen the prevalence of public drunkenness, especially among children. For the sick, the aged, the infirm, pregnant women, the blind, the deaf, disabled, orphans and prisoners they strove to improve the treatment and life chances. No longer was there widespread indifference to the indigent aged and terminally ill being left to perish in workhouses, or those with learning difficulties being left shackled and abandoned amongst the mentally ill, both to be treated as beyond hope of recovery. In every case, there was a fresh ethic of care and concern, a new and restless impetus to make things better.

Bijan Omrani is right to remind us of this element of the Victorian value system which is often nowadays downplayed, and also right to state that its impetus (along with the self-help movement too surely?) had its roots in the evangelical Christian revival movement associated with figures such as Hannah More, William Wilberforce, John Wesley and Thomas Barnado.

So often nowadays I read accounts of periods of history and, particularly, biographical studies (Paula Byrne’s otherwise excellent recent biography of Barbara Pym is a good example), which either downplay or expunge the spiritual dimension. This often baffles me and is I think simply a consequence of our now having become so secular a society and often so antagonistic towards aspects of the all religions that we cease to comprehend how infused past lives were in Christian belief, observance and values. Something of a collective blind spot is growing and widening, particularly in intellectual circles, and it is something to guard against if we are fully to appreciate and understand our past and its present significance.

Of course in none of these things is England at all unique, and my one complaint about this book is its tendency to stress a somewhat irritating and unjustified English exceptionalism. Pretty well all of Bijan Omrani’s major points apply equally in Wales and Scotland (not so much in Northern Ireland which retains its much more religious cultures), and exactly the same kinds of developments are occurring across Europe and much of the rest of the world. Societies have secularised everywhere, and the reasons for this do not differ so much from country to country, despite different political historical trajectories. The book should thus properly be seen as a case study that uses the English experience to explore a more general social phenomenon of our age.

I found Bijan Omrani to particularly persuasive in the part of the book where he lays responsibility for the more recent decline in Christian observance less to the rise of alternative humanist and atheist philosophies, and more to post-war affluence and technological developments, with their associated individualism. He also discusses the role of psychoanalytic thinking and the view that ‘the expression and satisfaction of the feelings and desires which earlier generations had sought to suppress should be pursued as the way to better mental health, fulfilment and freedom’. Social rules and constraints of all kinds need to be ‘shaken off’ in order that people can maximise, as of right, their personal satisfaction. We live and let live with gusto, while eschewing any personal obligation to social duty.

Aside from presenting a compelling overall argument, this book is also just very interesting. It is filled with all kinds of observations that I found were both thought-provoking and engaging. One is the claim Bijan Omrani makes that ‘there can be few collective bodies that have historically contributed more to scientific knowledge than the English clergy’. Another is his demonstration of the ongoing influence of historic Christian-inspired rulings by judges in our contemporary legal system. He is fascinating on the legacy of choral music and hymns in contemporary popular music, and does his readers a great service (as Bernard Levin one famously did for Shakespeare) in listing some of the many common phrases and turns of expression that come directly from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer: ‘how are the mighty fallen’, ‘to pour out one’s heart’, ‘to go the extra mile’, ‘a law unto himself’, ‘for better for worse’, ‘till death us do part’, ‘peace in our time’ etc. He also credits Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into English – by far the most widely-read book for centuries – with creating ‘a diction which became standard for good English: direct, unadorned, rugged, but still elegant and supple; understated, but dignified’. He then goes on via well-honed prose of his own to demonstrate its ongoing influence in practice.

All in all – except the title (!) – a very engaging and informative read.