August 29, 2004
FROM RESPECTABLE TO SECULAR (via Mike Daley):
The death of religion & the fall of respectable Britain (Christie Davies, Summer 2004, New Criterion)
There has, then, been a series of linked changes in Britain, that I have termed the rise and fall of respectable Britain. In the late-nineteenth century, crime rates fell dramatically, as did drug and alcohol abuse, and illegitimacy became less common. All these indexes of deviance were fairly steady between World War I and 1955. After 1955 they all rose massively to create a U-curve of deviance, over the period from 1847 to 1997. Behind it lies the rise and fall of British respectability, of which the rise and fall of the Sunday Schools is both an index and a cause. In the late nineteenth century, the Sunday Schools grew rapidly in numbers and influence to a peak in the decade 1901-1911. After the First World War they declined slowly, and after a brief revival in the early 1950s, they collapsed totally in the last half of the twentieth century. The two patterns fit together very well indeed.The story outlined above may well have many echoes in the American
experience-but, given the greater religiosity of the United States, it might
have to be told in a very different way. I leave that to American observers
and historians to decide.There is, however, another story to be told, and one that contrasts a
totally secular Britain with a much more religiously diverse United States,
substantial sections of which are intensely Christian. The only comparable
region in the United Kingdom is the province of Northern Ireland, where both
Protestants and Roman Catholics have retained an intense attachment to their
religion.This second story relates not to the daily behavior of the people but to a
political phenomenon. The politics of homosexuality, abortion, and capital
punishment have taken a very different form in Britain: there has been no
American-style culture war, but rather an overwhelming and unchallengeable
victory for the forces of secular liberalism. [...]Only in Northern Ireland has there been any strong opposition to this trend;
indeed, hostility to homosexuality is one of the few issues on which the
Protestants and Catholics of the Province agree. The laws of both Northern
Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland (the old pre-1967 English law),
however, have been struck down by the European Court of Human Rights, a
secular institution of a secular Europe. In both parts of Ireland there was
strong support for the laws against homosexual conduct on religious grounds,
but Europe is an overwhelmingly secular continent and the Irish lost out.
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland constitute an odd anomaly that
in religious terms resembles the United States rather than Europe.Ireland also remains one of the few countries in Europe where there is
significant opposition to abortion being easily available. In Britain there
is in effect abortion on demand, and women from both the province of
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland travel there to obtain
abortions. Attempts to prevent such travel by blocking the dissemination in
Ireland of information about clinics in other countries, by the government
and courts of the Republic of Ireland (where the ban on abortion is built
into the very constitution of the Republic), have been struck down by the
European Court of Human Rights. [...]By a curious convention adhered to by the main British political parties, capital punishment is not used as an electoral issue. Also, although a majority of the people are in favor of capital punishment, murder is a rare crime even in the violent and increasingly violent Britain of the twenty-first century, and capital punishment is not a sufficiently important question for the majority-who would like to see it restored-to disturb the established convention that has kept it out of politics.
The Labour and Liberal politicians are strongly united against capital
punishment on ideological grounds, and the Conservative politicians are
divided and uncertain. If the Conservatives had campaigned strongly in favor
of capital punishment in the last half of the twentieth century it would
have gained them votes but split their party. The Conservatives did,
however, refuse to sign Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human
Rights, which outlawed capital punishment permanently and completely on the
grounds that it was a matter for the British parliament to decide. In 1998,
the Labour government, which had come to power in 1997, did sign Protocol 6.
It was a further step by which Britain was absorbed into the shared secular
liberal ideology of Europe that sets that continent apart from a more
vigorous and more religious United States.
It seems an unlikely coincidence that Ireland combines one of the few thriving economies in Europe with a higher level of religiosity than the rest. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 29, 2004 6:01 AM
Big tax breaks that lasted for ten years didn't hurt either...
Posted by: jsmith at August 29, 2004 11:12 AMIt seems an unlikely coincidence that Ireland combines one of the few thriving economies in Europe with a higher level of religiosity than the rest.
Uh-huh. Yet, it probably is a coincidence.
So, if there was a sea of deviance in Great Britain before 1847, and religiosity and prosperity are inextricably linked, however did they achieve that World-spanning Empire ?
Also, Mexicans are very religious, but they don't have first-world prosperity.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at August 29, 2004 2:16 PMoj's argument is the same one Islamic fundamentalists use to explain why Muslim nations are in the crapper.
Why are they so messed up? Obviously it has nothing to do with education, an environment where the able and hard-working are able to prosper or business-friendly economic policies.
Ali:
They're right--they need to become more like Christianity, as does secular Europe.
Posted by: oj at August 29, 2004 3:43 PMHuh? I don't follow.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at August 29, 2004 3:51 PMThe Mexican government has always hated the Catholic Church.
Posted by: Vince at August 29, 2004 4:46 PMYet Mexico has gotten more and more prosperous as its government has gotten more and more secular.
I'm sure glad to know that the highly religious and moral northern Irish disdain queers, even if blowing up schoolchildren does not disturb them. You gotta start somewhere, I guess.
If it's true that religion is decaying in Britain, then you have the problem of serial decay. Anglicanism has been, notoriously, decaying for over 200 years. Now the chapel has been rejected.
Could it possibly be because the inhabitants have found, by experience, that religion is a curse?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 29, 2004 7:10 PMHarry:
No, they've shucked their Leftist past and adopted Americanness. It's the End of History and the rush is on to act like us.
Posted by: oj at August 29, 2004 7:48 PM"In the late-nineteenth century, crime rates fell dramatically, as did drug and alcohol abuse, and illegitimacy became less common. "
So, crime, drug & alcohol abuse, and illegitimacy were at high levels in early and mid 19th century Britain. A secular period? I don't think so.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 29, 2004 10:42 PMNo, an impoverished one. It's instructive though that they have the same pathologies.
Posted by: oj at August 29, 2004 11:24 PMIt seems an unlikely coincidence that Irelands economy has burgeoned along with strikingly increased secularism over the last 20 years.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at August 30, 2004 7:46 AMJeff:
That is a long term problem for them, though their levels of immigration may compensate. It's more like America in terms of religion than the continent though and, not surprisingly, more similar in terms of economic freedom and growth.
Posted by: oj at August 30, 2004 8:44 AMEconomic growth depends on wealth-creation; humans acting freely, in accordance with contracts (enFORCED by gov't, if necessary), are the best way to increase wealth. In market activity, wealth can be a positive sum game.
Gov't redistribution is pretty much zero-sum. It gives to its friends (whether the unlikely poor or, more usually, to the rich "in the name of the poor") but only what it takes.
Secular folk want a gov't to replace God. Doesn't work. Not under socialism, not under EU Brusselcrats.
Posted by: Tom Grey - Liberty Dad at August 30, 2004 11:53 AMOJ, you don't suppose that Britain's 300% government debt had anything to do with that poverty, do you?
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 30, 2004 3:12 PMRobert:
No, their impoverished were the richest poor in the world at that time as are ours now.
Posted by: oj at August 30, 2004 4:11 PMThey were well off "poor" and they had religion. So why all the crime, drug & alcohol abuse, and illegitimacy?
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 30, 2004 4:23 PMPoverty is stronger than religion. Religion is a weak force which is why it's so dangerous to attack it.
Posted by: oj at August 30, 2004 4:30 PMComparative poverty rates, at any particular time, can be instructive.
It's true that the English poor were richer than the French poor, who were richer than the Italian poor, who were richer than the Irish poor, who were better off than the Swedish poor.
All were Christian, so that cannot explain the differences.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 30, 2004 7:43 PMCorrect. That they were Christian explains why they collectively dominated the world.
Posted by: oj at August 30, 2004 8:06 PMI don't think the Italians dominated anybody.
England was a weak and negligible place when it was only Christian. It got strong when it substituted secular knowledge for Christian superstition.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 31, 2004 1:58 AMHarry:
You're pegging the incoherency meter by arguing the Britain that defeated Napoleon was poor because Christian, incapable of dominating anyone because Christian, and had its best days before it when it became secular--a point we can probably safely place right after WWI when it actually began its decline.
Posted by: oj at August 31, 2004 7:26 AMOJ:
You are pegging the inchorency meter by claiming a specific benefit to a common mode characteristic. Christianity is common to a lot of places, some secular and rich, some authoritarian and poor. Since religion is a common mode to both, it is very unlikely to explain any difference.
"It's more like America in terms of religion than the continent though and, not surprisingly, more similar in terms of economic freedom and growth."
That wasn't my point. The point was the difference between then and now. At one time authoritarian and poor, now secular and rich. There is no way to use religious belief or observance to explain the very welcome changes in Irish society, or its change from an emmigrant to an immigrant society.
Well, actually, there is--secularism works, religious imposition does not.
Jeff:
Except that the point is the two most successful, us and the Irish, are the least secular--us not much at all. Indeed, the only period of American decline came in the secularizing 60s and 70s. Fortunately we woke up. Europe hasn't and likely won't.
Posted by: oj at August 31, 2004 8:41 AMThe Irish trend is very much towards secularism, and Irish prospects have improved significantly as a result.
And I'll be willing to bet that American religious belief is at least as secular now. Last time I checked, the second most popular religious belief in the US, at roughly 20% is variations on "none of the above." And the number gets far larger when you include those who don't believe in hell.
What keeps us going, and Europe mired, is a uniform language, unrestricted internal migration, a huge contiguous economic area, and 50 competing semi-autonomous entities. Given those preconditions, we could all be animists with the same results.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at August 31, 2004 12:11 PMJeff:
Yes, their trend makes them more likely to decline with the rest of Europe than continue to rise with us.
Posted by: oj at August 31, 2004 1:24 PM