Community social life is necessary to healthy religious life

It wasn’t that the American farmer lacked the social instinct or had any less of it than anyone else. It was that the conditions of rural life and, often, that of local clergymen, operated against its realization in the social habits of the people. In Clermont, Ohio, for example, a survey conducted in 1914 showed the clergy’s stand on the following social activities: Sunday baseball (100 percent against), movies (65 percent against), dancing (90 percent against), playing cards (97 percent against), pool halls (85 percent against), and the annual circuses (48 percent against). Only tennis, croquet, and agricultural fairs received general approval.

....

The authors of that report concluded with some irony that the churches were strongest where the lodges were strongest and that “both are expressions of the same spirit of fraternity and sociability.” Two clear conclusions were drawn: “(1) Community social life is necessary to healthy religious life, and (2) If the church is going to succeed it must recognize the social needs of the community and assume its share of the leadership in social activities.” Perhaps the strongest indictment that can be made against the Puritanism and Protestantism of developing America is that, far too often, they sought to ensure the life of the church at the expense of the life of the community.

R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987), 73

These Methodists preach Salvation through Faith in Christ without Repentance from Sin and I preach Repentance from Sin and then Salvation through Christ

These Methodists preach Salvation through Faith in Christ without Repentance from Sin and I preach Repentance from Sin and then Salvation through Christ. No wonder that the first takes with disorderly people more than the last for if they may be saved without forsaking their Sins tis an easy thing to say they have Faith, but it is not an easy thing to forsake their Sins. 

W. Holland, Paupers and pig killers: the diary of William Holland 1799-1818, ed. J. Ayres (1984), 270 [Sunday March 3, 1816]

It is not possible he can believe that religion to be genuine whose ministers destroy his game

'I have laid down two rules for the country: first, not to smite the partridge; for if I feed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau. The squire never reads, but it is not possible he can believe that religion to be genuine whose ministers destroy his game.

H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), 161

How do people expect a church to keep going for 3 occasions in a lifetime?

It set me thinking how strange it is that a man who had never set foot in his village church should wish to have his funeral service there. Churches are used 3 times it seems, wedding, christening & funeral. At the first two, solemn vows are made which people have no intention of keeping-at the last trump I suppose there’s a glimmer of hope of everlasting life in a sort of heaven. Can you explain it? How do people expect a church to keep going for 3 occasions in a lifetime? A sort of superstition, a leftover from childhood? It soon won’t be that as few children are taken to church in the way that our generation was.

Deborah to Diana, 3 September 1999, ed. C. Mosley, The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters (2007), 876

Not a real church like Swinbrook, more a hall with kitchen food

Dink/Terry are coming here from June 11 to 21, I’m so excited for their visit. She/Benj are planning a 50th wedding anniversary for Bob/me on 20 June – you’ll be getting an invite. It’s to be at what Benj calls the ‘FUCK’, i.e. First Unitarian Church, Kensington. No Hen not a real church like Swinbrook, more a hall with kitchen food. 

Jessica to Deborah, 14 May 1993, ed. C. Mosley, The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters (2007), 812

It's a tendency of all our royal family. They came from the continent you see.'

[JP-H:] 'I understand there is what is called a High Church and a Low Church. Now the Duchess of Teck was Low Church, and hated anything that "smacked of ritualism" and they all though going to mass in Florence (which they often did to hear the  singing) was mummery.'

[Archbishop Fisher:] 'Do you know Lady Cynthia Colville?'

'I know her well. But she  is very High Church I believe.', A

'That's what I mean. She could tell you, because she isn't Low Church. Now let me see, yes, Queen Mary was what you would call Low Church, it's a tendency of all our royal family. They came from the continent you see.'

....

Take Princess Margaret now, she understands doctrine - knows what it's all about. In fact Princess Margaret is a thoroughly good churchwoman.'

...

He took me out into the passage and promised to read the doctrinal passages in my proofs.

J. Pope-Hennessy, The Quest for Queen Mary, ed. H. Vickers (2018), 222-3, 224, 227

Its dispute with Jerusalem over the canonical jurisdiction of Qatar

The different churches had different reasons for boycotting the Council. Antioch's official position was that it reserved the right to decide not to go to the Council if its dispute with Jerusalem over the canonical jurisdiction of Qatar was not resolved before the Council.

B. Gallaher, 'The Orthodox moment: The Holy and Great Council in Crete and Orthodoxy's encounter with the West', Sobornost 39:2 (2017), 59

The Council in question was in 2016

Faith communities in which people worship together are arguably the single most important repository of social capital in America

Faith communities in which people worship together are arguably the single most important repository of social capital in America. "The church is people," says Reverend Craig McMullen, the activist co-pastor of the Donchester Temple Baptist Church in Boston. "It's not a building; it's not an institution, even. It is relationships between one person and the next." As a rough rule of thumb, our evidence shows, nearly half of all associational memberships in America are church related, half of all personal philanthropy is religious in character, and half of all volunteering occurs in a religious context.

D. Putnam, Bowling Alone (2000), 66

I thin this really sums up the two sided nature of US religiosity. It is their dominant vehicle for cohesion, but it's do resistant to institutionalisation that it can easily just go off the rails.

You could see he was an Englishman first and a Christian second

Arthur Box-Bender was seeking to make himself agreeable to the domestic prelate '... not a member of your persuasion myself but I'm bound to say your Cardinal Hinsley did a wonderful job of work on the wireless. You could see he was an Englishman first and a Christian second; that is more than you can say of one or two of our bishops.' 

E. Waugh, Unconditional Surrender (1961), in collected edition, Sword of Honour (1984), 435

They went to the Church with a world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with power and prestige behind it

But what do you achieve, after all, by getting rid of such primal things as patriotism and religion? You have not necessarily got rid of the need for something to believe in. There had been a sort of false dawn a few years earlier when numbers of young intellectuals, including several quite gifted writers (Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Hollis, and others), had fled into the Catholic Church. It is significant that these people went almost invariably to the Roman Church and not, for instance, to the C. of E., the Greek Church, or the Protestants sects. They went, that is, to the Church with a world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with power and prestige behind it. Perhaps it is even worth noticing that the only latter-day convert of really first-rate gifts, Eliot, has embraced not Romanism but Anglo-Catholicism, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Trotskyism. But I do not think one need look farther than this for the reason why the young writers of the thirties flocked into or towards the Communist Party. It was simply something to believe in. Here was a Church, an army, an orthodoxy, a discipline. Here was a Fatherland and — at any rate since 1935 or thereabouts — a Fuehrer.

G. Orwell, 'Inside the Whale' (1940), in Essays (1984), 121-2

I think 'Inside the Whale' is my favourite of all of Orwell's essays, certainly of the political ones. To be honest people should just read the whole thing. 

Church of England services ... harmless enough compared to murder.

What your grandfather would feel if he knew we had the police in the house - it's enough to make him turn in his grave. A strict Plymouth Brother he was all his life. The fuss there was when he found out I'd been attending Church of England services in the evening! And I'm sure that was harmless enough compared to murder.

A. Christie, A pocket full of rye (1953), 87

Protestantism is a disreputable young brother

My reactions are most unorthodox. I feel less hurt about your entering Islam than I would if you were to become a Protestant. That is wrong, for Protestantism is a disreputable young brother but still of the family. Whereas Islam is the old enemy.

A. Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), Malayan trilogy edition: 244

The parochial organisation should always be attacked

Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that 'suits' him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organisation should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy [God] desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape letters (1942), 81

But rebellion and hell-fire are synonomous

"But rebellion and hell-fire are synonomous," said the priest, "and loyalty is the road to Paradise

A. Trollope, The Vendee (1850), Kindle ed. loc. 637

Religion is the most dangerous thing in the world

'Exactly. Religion is the most dangerous thing in the world. It is not little girls in their communion frocks and silly holy pictures and the Children of Mary. It is,' he said, 'high explosive, dynamite, the,' he smiled at the conceit, 'splitting of the atom.'

...

'Your church,' I said, 'anticipated Carlo's reforms.'
'My church knew what it was doing,. It knew it would turn into a club for upperclass Englishmen. You may laugh at it, but it's a safe church, not like yours. It's tepid, because it knows that fire burns. It thinks fire should be imprisoned in an Adam fireplace, not held in the hand. Never despise tepidity,'

A. Burgess, Earthly Powers (1982), 345 and 629


I've paired these two, because I think they summarise Burgess' view of religion, which threatens to be true. The first is spoken by the catholic priest who later becomes pope; the latter by an English poet. This juxtaposition is as telling as the words, and it's the great glory of Anglicanism that it's almost true, but, just, not quite.

The synod made an ass of itself; as synods always do

The synod made an ass of itself; as synods always do. It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing--otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men

A. Trollope, The Claverings (1867), Kindle loc. 4850