Is there a case for protecting Christian values or Christian heritage?

This is follow-up to the previous post, which allows me an easy way to link back to Butterflies and Wheels, and to the recent Carnival of the Godless. If you can’t stand the suspense my answers are no and maybe.

“Christian values” is a term that is causing me trouble, because I genuinely don’t understand what specifically Christian values are. I can understand that Christians believe in justice, honesty, respect and charity. So do Muslims, Hindus and atheists. They’re good values for a society so it’s not surprising that so many people adopt them. This doesn’t disprove Christianity, but it does show that Christians don’t have a monopoly on morality. It also suggests that morality doesn’t derive from God. This should not be a shock. The overwhelming majority of Christians I know are very nice people with a developed sense of right and wrong. If God manifested himself and explained that he’d changed his mind and what he fancied right now was some Old Testament style slaughter, then none of the people I know would toddle off to the kitchen to rummage through the knife drawer. They’d assume they were tired, dreaming, mad or even deluded by Satan but God himself could not persuade them that arbitrary murder is a Good Thing. If they were at a church that shifted values and started preaching hate they’d leave and join another church. Pronouncements from the pulpit are not automatically worthy of respect simply because they come from the pulpit.

So while I think a lot of the morality espoused by Christians is a Good Thing I cannot see what makes it Christian. It would be rather some group declaring they own the English language. They could do it, but to they shouldn’t be surprised if no-one is inclined to buy their dictionary.

A more interesting view the Archbishop of York has is also on the value of Christian heritage. On reflection I have some time for this. Unfortunately the example he uses is an interior decoration dispute. There’s a lot more to Christian heritage than that.

Something I’d like to do if I have time is a podcast on the village of Eyam, following a podcast by Alan Cann. Eyam was a village which became infected by the plague. The local vicar persuaded the villagers to isolate themselves, thus preventing the spread of the infection. You could argue that faith in God had no benefit for the villagers, the vicar ended up seeing his own wife die, but that is missing the point. Here faith bound the village together in a period when people were dying together. There must have been a huge urge to escape. Perhaps you could argue that it was the man, William Mompesson, who protected the neighbouring settlements from the plague, but it seems reasonable to assume his faith helped him. These things can be forgotten, but they should not be and protection is necessary. Personally I’d protect heritage sites around the village purely because of their historical context, but their Christian context is bound up in this.

True, Christian heritage isn’t all positive. There are witchfinders and corrupt clergy in the past, but there are also people who genuinely sought to aid and comfort their parishes and if you criticise Christianity for one, then surely you have to credit it with the other. In the face of an unknown or capricious nature the church has helped to provide comfort. It did puzzle me why such an example hasn’t been used. A couple of possible explanations occur to me.

One is that the story of Eyam is positive and portrays Christianity as a strength in adversity, even if it is under attack, in this case from nature. This is contrary to the message of the address which is that Christianity is a victim and this Archbishop wishes to be a martyr.

Another is that perhaps Eyam and other disasters are the wrong sort of heritage. Consider modern plagues. In a period when biology was unheard of the church offered a supernatural lever to try and control the unknown. When Bird Flu comes you still have the option of praying, but personally I’d prefer the funding of some sort of vaccine. This is exactly what the Archbishops of York, Canterbury and Westminster have been complaining about. In the past this was divine judgement, if you’re going to have people examine the evidence without reference to God, then this goes out the window.

Ophelia Benson has said this is about job security. If yours is a God of the Gaps then there has to be some pretty staunch defending of the gaps. So is it a surprise that Dr John Sentamu, is asking Muslims to ally themselves with the Church of England against secularism. Obviously some cynics might say that placing faith above evidence leads to some horrific consequences, but fortunately there’s always an Imam handy in Nigeria to explain why things like polio happen.

Just as antibiotics are removing the need for prayer for the sick, so other changes are rendering other aspects of Christianity irrelevant. Evidence-based reasoning is an option in many places where it previously wasn’t. This doesn’t mean the days of religion are numbered. I think belief in the supernatural is probably linked to the theory of mind. The supernatural is what happens when you take the weather personally. A willingness to see intent in random forces means that even if Gods don’t exist then we’ll find them anyway. Perhaps an enlightened Christianity will be one that seeks out to find where Christ is, rather than trying to stake out reservations for him. If this is the case then rational argument can only help by removing the places where he isn’t.