Keeping the Faith

Yesterday I accompanied Mrs N – who is rather keener on this sort of thing than I am – to an event in the cathedral titled 'Keeping the Faith: Can Christianity Save the West?' Three good guest speakers were lined up – Jamie Franklin, author of The Great Return: Why Only a Restoration of Christianity Can Save Western Civilisation; Bijan Omrani, author of God Is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England; and Nick Spencer, author of Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity – and each gave a good account of their particular perspective. It was all very well-mannered and good-humoured, but there was not much talk about saving the West, or what it needed saving from, and indeed the question was not explicitly asked by the chair until near the end, so there was not a great deal of time to explore it. One of the themes throughout was how deeply imbued our values, institutions and ways of thinking are with ideas that are clearly derived from Christianity, and it…