This is another one I wrote ages ago, but never got around to actually publishing.
I've been telling you for ages that religion isn't inevitable, you know. You have to remember that it's a sociological phenomenon like any other. Such phenomena are characteristic of the societies where they occur (talk about tautological arguments - I can't believe I ever wrote something that banal), but once the society changes, they can come to seem - well, perhaps rather quaint.
Religion has been a dominant theme in most times and places throughout human history, it's true, but that's also true of other ideas whose time has been and gone. The idea of the divine right of kings, for instance, much invoked by Charles I, was upheld by royalty across the world and across the ages. The worldly and heavenly powers attributed to the monarch/deity tag team varied from one benighted tyranny to the next, but the principle itself remained solid for millennia. Similarly, human sacrifice has been a constant in human history outside the monotheistic era (in which it was banned for blasphemy, not for cruelty).
And now there's some evidence which suggests religion might be about to go the same way. Let's start with Britain. According to the Times, Over half of Britons claim no religion (full UN report here). We are now no longer a faith community, no longer even a patchwork of different faith communities, but a faithless community.
This data fits with the Guardian survey of December 2006, but not with the census data from 2001. In that survey, 72% of respondents identified as Christian. Although the generation who were raised in a solidly Christian country during and after World War 1 have been dying off in the last six years, I suspect that the main cause of this change is something else.
I think that when people said they were Christian, what they meant was C of E. In other words, they'd been baptised in a Church of England church, maybe they'd got married in one, maybe they'd buried people in one.
Since then, religion has become a political issue. Obviously Islam has been in the news almost constantly since 9/11, but also militant atheism has been in the media a lot, and people have become more polarised on the issue. As a result, people who don't believe in God no longer get their kids baptised, they no longer get married in church, and they no longer say C of E on official forms.
And when Richard Dawkins turns up on the telly and says religion is a pile of cack, the majority of people in Britain think you know, I think he's right. And when some wanky old bishop or Madeleine Bunting or somebody starts going on about how extreme he is, most people think who the fuck are you? At least science is a proper subject. Your specialist subject is like Santaology. Not a small cabal of militant rationalists. Not just the educated, not just the articulate. The majority.
This simple fact provides the context for Rowan Williams' recent remarks about sharia law. The Church has realised that the only way they can hang onto special status is by extending that status to other religious groups. Even with Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and Jedis on board they're still in the minority, but at least that ad hoc theistic caucus gives them control over the Labour Party, which is what matters for lawmaking.
Globally, religion remains mystifyingly popular, but even there we can see encouraging trends. Here's an article in the Atlantic. And if that's too much to take in, here's the same thing in a nice picture.
It can rapidly be seen that there's an inverse correlation between material comfort and religiosity. Standards of living are rising across the planet, so the implication is that secularism should infect everywhere. Other inversely correlating factors are material security (eg health care, pensions, unemployment benefit), political freedom, education and geographical mobility.
So as you can see, it all comes down to the coming global crunch. If we can get through global warming, adjust our economies to sustainable practice and make a world where everyone gets a slice of the pie, we can wave goodbye to bishops, imams, pastors, shamans and the whole sorry gang. If we can't, and if the vision of a decent standard of living for all turns out to be a mirage, then they'll be back, and looking for vengeance. I don't want to get all Churchillian on your ass, but what do you want - broad sunlit uplands or the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted religion?
Cheer up, it might be our finest hour.
