Reading again Mathew Arnold’s poem, Dover Beach, I got for the first time - rather slow of me I admit - the inspired aural pun contained in the phrase ‘The sea of faith’. In a word, references to the authority of the church, as in Bishop’s See, and to the watery images that are in the poem. Together with the last line, 'where ignorant armies clash by night', the phrase has remained with me all this week.
Hourly broadcasts tell of the killing and wounding that go on while contending forces jockey for position and power, many deriving additional strength from a fervour that has little to do with the moderate philosophies that religions rely on to foster peaceable and kindly lives - philosophies that, as I understand the world, have come down the ages from physical experience. As Shakespeare has it, ‘there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently’ (Much Ado 5.1.36). And in our impatience to find anaesthetics we have dulled not only pain but also our need for religious fortitude in coping with it. Kate Hotspur in Henry IV Part One would have prayed over her husband’s agitated condition. In today’s world, she would phone her doctor and before you know it Harry Hotspur would be admitted to a psychology unit specialising in treating Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome acquired from previous hard fought battles. The warrior presents with at least 5 of the necessary criteria.
I was reminded again in an article in the FT Weekend, 11 Sep 2010, written by John Cornwall, that the religious battle lines are always drawn up and that it is best to be on the qui vive. In particular, the author asks if Pope Benedict is hastening the beatification of Cardinal Newman merely to put a damper on one of the Vatican’s most inspired critics. Whether it holds or not, the piece emphasises the point that history is littered with people of faith playing politics, going for each others’ throats, and in a word, behaving like the rest of the natural world, even amongst their own kind.
Will the makers and shakers of all the religions eventually come to recognise that because they are human and part of the natural world they too are subject to the forces of Darwinism? I doubt it, but if they allowed the point it might quieten a predilection for lusting after the blood of those who do not agree with them. Also, and here is something I shall never get my head round, if the Creationists are the ultimate winners in this lottery of survival and are the ones to fly up to heaven - think El Greco’s 'Adoration of the name of Jesus' - how will they square it with themselves that they have got to the top of the tree as everything seems to do - by a Darwinian progress of good luck. An answer might be that everything is ordained. But again, doesn't that smack too much of the old penny dreadfulls, when, after the hero is left in the previous chapter facing a sure and horrendous death, 'with a bound he leaps free' at the beginning of the next.
Perhaps I should pop these and similar thought into a drawer in the hope that when I next look into it the moths will have got at them and there will be nothing there but dust….
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