Secularisation

by Edward Norman

Secularisation is not a systematic attempt--of the sort which might be made by a social scientist--to describe and identify every feature of a fading religious landscape. It is a landscape, indeed, which was once familiar, and yet which now appears almost unrecognisable to those who have lived within it all their lives. They and many external observers are saddened by the decline of institutional religion in Britain and cannot clearly discern the full nature of the causes. Edward Norman, author of An Anglican Catechism and Out of The Depths, holds to account a number of the fundamental transformations in religious understanding itself which help the reader to grasp the bigger picture of the decline of the Church in Britain.

Genres: Theology

176 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2002

About the author

Edward Robert Norman is an ecclesiastical historian and former Church of England priest. From 1999 to 2004, he was Canon Chancellor of York Minster. He was educated at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he received an Open Scholarship.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked this one, even if the writing was a bit stiff. While reading it triggered a good amount of ideas regarding a topic I'm currently investigating, ideas not that clearly relevant to the concept of "secularisation", but even so, it managed to exemplify some interesting things - and it gave the book much more life than I expected. It is a bit too Anglican focused, something I seldom read about, so it was a bit unfamiliar and narrowly scoped that way - but the topics here are quite universal and still relevant - maybe more than ever.

[Tim James Milburn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is written by quite a conservative traditional Christian, Edward Norman, mainly to deplore the secularisation of the Church of England. The secularisation of England in general is regretted but not the focus. The focus is on how the Church of England has secularised in response to the broader culture. What is deplored is, roughly speaking, a shift of paramountcy from God to the value of human beings. Norman sees much of what passes for Christianity in England as Humanism with superficial Christian branding. For instance, in real Christianity, as Norman sees it, we don't help others because they have value as human beings, the goal is not to improve the lives of human beings on Earth. We help others as a spiritual practice designed to prepare us as individuals for a possible relationship with God. This is a relationship of obedience, where we always recognise our own worthlessness, and hope to receive forgiveness, even though we don't deserve it.

Being a humanist myself, I disagree with this stance. But, all the same, I appreciate the clarity and straightforwardness with which Norman describes it. Give me a devout erudite Christian any day, over wishy-washy vaguely postmodern vicar-waffle! And Norman's diagnosis of what has happened to the Church of England would seem to be accurate. This is why I give the book three stars.

I don't give it four stars because of noticeable problems with Norman's more general perspective. For instance, Norman tells us that the actual truth of Christian doctrine is established by the consensus of real Christians who make up the church, the body of Christ on Earth, founded by Jesus, and in some way given this ability of corporate discernment. The church is paramount in this, not the Bible, because, of course, it was the church which chose the New Testament canon in the first place. Presumably though, someone only counts as a real Christian if they believe Christian doctrine. When the Church of England moves towards a more humanistic view, this doesn't indicate to Norman that this view is becoming established as actually true, it just indicates that some of the members aren't real Christians anymore. So X is established by consensus within a certain group, but one only counts as a member of the group if one believes that X. Also, how can Norman say anything of Jesus founding the church, and the authority this engenders, if not on the basis of Christian doctrine? He just chases himself round and round in circles, where the content of the circle is highly idiosyncratic, based upon the vagaries of what a small group of people came up with in the eastern Mediterranean thousands of years ago.

Norman also thinks that children should be brought into the church through an unapologetic process of indoctrination. Authority simpliciter is the proper way for them to form fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality. According to Norman, not even priests can exercise individual discernment in regards to doctrine. Their job is not to determine doctrine, but simple to perform the utility of teaching it and enforcing it. Both these are further reasons to regard the epistemology above as highly dubious.

This is part of my own more general critique, though it doesn't apply directly to Norman's purpose in the book, and I acknowledge that. So I give the book three stars, one less than four because of the more general problems with the perspective that Norman brings. One other positive thing to say about the book is that it reads as if Norman is willingly tying a hand behind his back. His statements seem almost designed to be disagreeable to a "modern person". For that I can acknowledge admiration.