On Losing Faith

On Losing Faith January 16, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-01-11 at 1.48.57 PMIn one of the better memoirs I’ve read, that of Roger Scruton called Gentle Regrets, Scruton reflects on England’s loss in England’s loss of its religion. Scruton’s reflections concern the inter-relation of faith and community, if not faith and nation, which in his case is about the Church of England. But loss of faith for most people entails a loss of one’s church community, or one’s parents and siblings and family members or close friends. Faith, when done right in other words, comes to expression in the church.

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Faith, Scruton rightly observes, is all encompassing and that means it captures how a society ought to be formed and how its people ought to live:

Faith is not simply an addition to our repertoire of ordinary opinions. It is a transforming state of mind, a stance towards the world, rooted in our social nature and altering all our perceptions, emotions and beliefs (220).

One of the more insightful sections of this chapter is about both the degree of loss in losing faith and the world one inhabits after the loss of faith, and he compares Matthew Arnold and F. Nietzsche, observing that Arnold propped up his new worldview on the old worldview of his church while Nietzsche jumped ship totally. Many today have themselves left the faith but retain much of their old worldview because the world they indwell permits or encourages or already has that worldview.

The distinction between Arnold and Nietzsche is the distinction between two kinds of loss. Arnold’s loss of faith occurs in a world made by faith, in  which  all  the outer trappings of a religious community remain in place, like the outward signs of holiness in a Gothic Revival church. Nietzsche’s loss of faith is an absolute loss, a loss not only of inward conviction but of the outward symbols that make it possible. Nietzsche is foreseeing a new world, in which human institutions will no longer be shored up by pious habits and holy doctrines, but rebuilt from the raw, untempered fabric of the will to power. Loss of faith for Arnold is a personal tragedy, to be mourned but concealed. Loss of faith for Nietzsche is an existential transfiguration, to be accepted and affirmed, since the world no longer permits an alternative. The contrast between these two attitudes can be witnessed today, with the   scientific   optimists   joining  Nietzsche   in   welcoming  our liberation from the chains of faith, and the cultural pessimists joining Arnold in his subdued lamentation (220).

But losing faith is inextricably social.

Losing the Christian faith is not merely a matter of doubting  the  existence  of  God,   or  the   incarnation,  or  the redemption purchased on the Cross. It involves falling out of communion, ceasing to be ‘members in Christ’, losing a primary experience of home. All religions are alike in this, and it is why they are so harsh on heretics and unbelievers: for heretics and unbelievers   pretend   to   the   benefits   of   membership, while belonging to other communities in other ways (221).

He takes a sweeping, un-nuanced shot at the Church of England in this one:

 And you could be confident that God was an Englishman, who had a quiet, dignified, low-key way of visiting the country each weekend while being careful never to outstay his welcome (229).

And this one:

The Church is not there to propagate the Christian faith, but to forgive those who reject it (230).

He ponders the diminishment of a society — England — with the demise of the CofE, a society always seeking for ultimate grounding:

It is as though our society is seeking to define itself as a religious community, whose very lack of faith has become a kind of orthodoxy (232).


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