Even more extraordinary than the things some people believe, I realise, is the ease with which they seem to come to believe them. Barely a decade after the New Atheists proclaimed the final triumph of scepticism and critical thinking over the supposed nonsenses of the world’s religions, we find ourselves in an age of all kinds of startling and extreme beliefs, an age in which social circles — or social media circles, at least — are more than prepared to finish the jobs that propaganda starts; in which respectable and cherished institutions, venerable or apolitical as their stated purpose may be, are panicked into ceding to shrill and simplistic ideologies, in all their stridence and unreasonableness. Never mind that certain ideas might even five years ago have seemed extreme and far-fetched; never mind, indeed, that things have already changed so much and so fast in our culture that we now must believe things directly and in many cases spitefully) contrary to our forbears of only seventy years ago; never mind that the two societies cannot both be right: in our unshakeable conviction that Progress must be inevitable — and that those who think otherwise are contemptible and must be defeated utterly — we persist, as mainstream culture has since the Sixties, in the assumption that any idea deemed to be new must be embraced without hesitation, and that anything deemed to be old must provide some justification as to its ‘relevance’ if it is not to be cast out. Thus, whatever is Progress today must be pursued with all our might, and what was Progress yesterday must be condemned. And as for what Progress will mean tomorrow, the race is on to find out.
One of the reasons why, for reasons quite distinct from the pandemic, many people have found Britain’s political atmosphere so alarming over the course of the past year is that we have been able to see quite clearly that high office, academic qualifications and even long experience are no guarantees against an undue rush to embrace beliefs that are suddenly fashionable, however contentious or extreme. And yet I suppose it is no wonder, in this age of rootlessness, loneliness, peer-pressure and self-consciousness. Before we are ever critical thinkers we are searchers for belonging and affection, and many people are finding these things hard to come by. Amid the weakening of familial, local, cultural, social and religious bonds — bonds which, as we will find out too late, alas, serve to protect as much as to constrain — they are searching elsewhere, notably in the sphere of politics, for a spiritual home. In such a situation, that prudence of consistency of belief can hardly compete with the thrill of togetherness in a noble cause. Nor is it always obvious, in the cold glare of public scrutiny, that such consistency of belief is worth the loneliness and isolation that it sometimes entails. Peer-pressure has always been a tremendous force to resist; it always did take backbone to stand on principle: in our own day, when so many people are already lonely and uncertain, and the Internet is awash with political tribes, it is no surprise that so few people have the courage of their convictions.
Sometimes whole societies, like individuals, do indeed need to change their minds very quickly, as we have rightly done within living memory about plastic waste, seat-belts and smoking. I can think of a few other moral questions where I think a sudden volte-face is quite likely within a matter of decades. One may agree or disagree with the general direction of change in our society in the past seventy years. But its pace, the sheer speed of its conquest, ought to give pause for thought even to those who approve of it. Yes, the unimaginable can happen; just as today’s world would have seemed unthinkable to our great-grandparents, tomorrow’s may have some surprises in store for us. If millions of people can be persuaded to adopt such radical changes of ideas and values in so little time, what else, good or bad, might we yet be persuaded to believe in years to come?
Of course, it is nothing new, as this week, Holy Week, reminds us most painfully every year. How long did it take the jubilation of Palm Sunday to curdle into howls for Barabbas? It is the very same crowd, the very same people, who, having first cheered Christ into Jerusalem, waving palms in joy, singing Hosanna and acclaiming their king, then, not even a week later, bayed for His blood and roared for the release of a violent criminal who had meant nothing to them before that moment. As Samuel Crossman wrote,
Sometimes they strew his way,And His sweet praises sing,Resounding all the dayHosannas to their King.Then ‘Crucify!’Is all their breath,And for His deathThey thirst and cry.
Our old friends the Pharisees and the chief priests and scribes may, as ever, have been the ring-leaders, but they could not have done it by themselves. People can smell power; we know by instinct where it lies, and if we understand the world only through the lens of power, it will be to power that we are drawn, and all the more strongly if we are afraid; the growing following emboldens the ring-leaders, whose waxing influence in turn attracts still greater numbers; once the tipping-point of a majority is reached, the situation is, as it did on Good Friday, likely to turn tyrannical. Thus Governor Pilate suddenly found himself faced with a baying mob threatening violence. And the mobs have never stopped howling — on Twitter, they want Barabbas every day — and even in virtual form it is a frightening thing to see.
It struck me this year to hear in the Gospel for Palm Sunday that ‘many witnesses brought false testimony against Jesus, but their evidence was conflicting.’ I have held it to be a wise maxim that lies never win out, that they always founder on the rocks of truth, but these words reminded me that it does not always prevent the damage being done. The disciples must have hoped for the trial of Christ to collapse amid all the lies and falsehoods, and indeed it did descend into chaos — but the worst still happened; He was crucified and died. Even so, what matters most is what lay on the other side of this worst thing: the one hope that remains when all earthly hope is lost.
In the course of its history, the Church has often had to work to respond to scepticism and apathy, but no harder than it has to constrain excesses of belief, to tame radical ideologies. Too much of the wrong kind of faith can be, and is in our own day, as great a challenge in its own way as a loss of faith. The Church has some extreme and extraordinary beliefs of its own — there is no denying that — but these beliefs have, apart from anything else, remained constant over two thousand years, and only been clarified and developed with the passage of time, never superseded or overthrown. Give me, then, the Church, and its mind that has never changed about the true source of love and justice, nor ever will.
The choir of King’s College, Cambridge, under the late Sir Stephen Cleobury (1948–2019), sing the first of the Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens of Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986): Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
