When we lose God, what should we do? Go shopping? Easter seems like a good time to ponder this question. The decline of organised religion in the west is one of the most striking trends of our age. But it leaves a gap.
I will be going to church this Sunday, despite not believing in the resurrection. I’ll be there to accompany an elderly relative, but also for a dose of rhythm and ritual, to sing with strangers, and to be able to quietly reflect on things outside of myself. It occurs to me that I seek similar benefits from yoga and mindfulness, both of which have their roots in eastern faiths. The much-vaunted decline of “religion” is perhaps not quite what it seems.
Traditional places of worship are losing their hold. In 2020, fewer than half of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 70 per cent in 1999. In the UK, only a third of people say they are Christian, down from two-thirds in 1983; half say they belong to no religion.
But a recent survey of “nones” — Britons who claim no religion — throws up intriguing contradictions. According to the Theos think-tank, 17 per cent of this group believe in the power of prayer, 16 per cent in reincarnation, 14 per cent in the healing power of crystals, and 42 per cent in some form of the supernatural. On TikTok, #crystaltok videos of people talking about their supposedly healing stones have had more than 6bn views. And people who wouldn’t dream of taking communion flock to see comedian Russell Brand, a reformed hedonist whose new show opens with a 20-minute meditation and is called “33”, supposedly the age that Jesus died.
We live in an age of DIY spirituality. A study in America has found many white working-class men who have given up attending services, instead searching online for a spiritual fix, including merchandise bearing the words of the Serenity Prayer (opening words: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change”).
Since time immemorial, humans have sought a sense of something greater than ourselves. The big religions were adroit at offering a glimpse of the divine, often by co-opting ancient ceremonies. The word “Easter” in both English and German, according to Bede, comes from Eostre, the name of an Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess. Christmas is aligned with pre-Christian midwinter celebrations. So we should not be surprised by the resurgence of what one might call paganism.
I came face to face with this on a country walk around some standing stones in Oxfordshire. It was a mild afternoon — the spring equinox. A large group of witches, druids and hangers-on were drumming, chanting, drinking mead and worshipping nature with various flags and symbols. It was a friendly, jolly, but also reverential event. On their Facebook page (every modern pagan has one), the group describe themselves as “a fully inclusive pagan group”.
This intrigued me. I grew up with quite a broad sense of the divine. My grandfather was a Church of England vicar who, towards the end of his life, expressed doubts. My father was an expert on comparative religions, folklore and the occult, who once celebrated the solstice with druids at Stonehenge. I still have his crystal ball, despite neither he nor I ever having managed to see anything in it. He was sceptical of all the belief systems he studied but respectful of them too. Both of us were drawn to standing stones, to the ancient places and their sense of power.
What does secular society offer instead? We are embarrassed to talk about religion, which may be the final taboo. But what is meditation, if not an attempt to glimpse something akin to the divine?
We avidly read self-help books telling us we will be happier if we express gratitude, but have lost the rituals which enabled us to do that. We mourn the loss of community but are unsure how to reconstruct it. I envy my Jewish and Muslim friends, whose communities often show a commitment to their old people and their fellow worshippers, which lapsed Christians lack. That doesn’t mean I want to spend hours being preached at, nor accept testaments with which I disagree. But it does seem unfortunate to have reached a position of either having to embrace every aspect of a faith or else denigrate it.
DIY spirituality has several problems. First, it rarely comes close to the beauty and majesty of the language, art, music and ritual which were the work of centuries under the organised faiths. The people who built vaulted roofs and wrote chants to sing under them were master craftsmen who knew how to touch the soul. Modern attempts to rephrase the Bible sometimes miss the point: we want not explanation but mystique.
Second is the co-opting of religion by cults. When two years ago, QAnon supporters gathered in Dallas awaiting the resurrection of John F Kennedy Jr, I was reminded of the quote widely attributed to GK Chesterton: “When men choose not to believe in God they do not thereafter believe in nothing: they then become capable of believing in anything.” And last, few alternatives offer a ready-made community and soothing weekly routine that also encourages us to look outwards and help others. True enlightenment may mean shedding the self, but my own ad hoc flirtations with eastern practices tend to be inherently selfish.
True Christians will, I know, be disappointed by my lukewarm defence. I accept that, for real adherents of a faith, you can’t pick and mix. But this Easter, I offer the following thought: that despite the confident assumption made by Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud 150 years or so ago, that science would triumph over God, we are still not secular rationalists. Far from leaving religion behind, we are attempting to recreate it.