Strident and polemical New Atheist and biological scientist Richard Dawkins has described himself as a cultural Christian, by which he means he has a subjective aesthetic appreciation of the art and culture of Christianity and feels more comfortable with the ethos and values upheld by a Christian past than the alternatives. Furthermore his new enthusiasm for the Christian heritage he worked hard to undermine is in part due to his fear of Islam filling the void created by the decline of Christian belief in the West.
Other public figures such as Douglas Murray have also identified with the culture and ethos of Christian heritage while being atheist in terms of their personal beliefs. There are several problems with this. Three spring to mind. First it overlooks that aesthetic and ethical values are as much about faith as intellectual assent to a creed. Secondly, to claim the Christian ethos and aesthetic heritage is superior is a value claim that depends upon the transcendent. Thirdly, to ignore the cause of the values and aesthetics you believe should be adhered to removes the justification for what you are trying to justify.
Dawkins famously referred to his love for the aesthetic of Anglican evensong. He does not seem to realise that this appreciation of the beauty of Anglican evensong is a participation in the beautiful, moving towards worship. His attack on religion has only ever been on the assent to the creed and the conceptual claims of that creed. He seems not to realise that another aspect of religious faith is affective.
This is because he only thinks within an Enlightenment paradigm. He has reduced religion to its components and separated them out. Therefore the affective experience of worship is separated in his mind from the intellectual assent to the credal claims of the religion. These two are the beauty and truth of religion, just as the Christian ethos is the goodness of the faith. You cannot detach these three aspects as though they can be enjoyed in isolation. The truth manifests in beauty and goodness. The beauty of evensong and the goodness of the ethos it teaches are because the creed is true.
We encounter religion through all three aspects of this Platonic trinity. The immersing in the beauty can, if we allow it, help us to participate in the truth that generates the beauty. And, if we allow it, this participation in the truth through the beauty helps us to live according to the ethos of the faith.
To break this down further. The Christian heritage is beautiful and good, as Dawkins seems to acknowledge, because it is true - which he refuses to acknowledge. If we look at it the other way around then there is no religious art without the belief. The evidence of the modern art of secular society is proof enough of this. There is no ethic without the metaphysical justification - the metaphysical truth justifies the ethics he so appreciates.
Islam is more harsh and less loving because it does not recognise Christ is the Second Person of the Trinity Incarnate. Otherwise Dawkins must answer where does the ethos come from and why does he wish to follow it over Shariah law? Is it simply his own subjective taste or was England participating in something of transcendental value before it became secular?
One is reminded of Kant's transcendental argument. Without the justification of the transcendent what you rely upon falls away. Without the Triune God, the second Person of which became man, there is no ethos and art will degenerate (as it clearly has done in the West).
There is a sleight of hand with this atheist endorsement of the faith without participating in the faith - they have already acknowledged a hierarchy of values by stating that the Christian ethos should be preferred to the Islamic.
A more intellectually honest atheist, such as Friedrich Nietzsche understood the implications of atheism. It meant the old table of values would be smashed. The compassionate love for the weak could now be replaced with the Will to Power, that was to inspire the Nazi movement and indeed the relativism of postmodernism.
In his famous passage about the madman in the marketplace Nietzsche spelt out the real implications of atheism not understood by types such as the complacent bourgeois Englishmen:
'Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! Is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea voyage? Has he emigrated? The people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? For even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console our selves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has so far possessed, has bled to death under our knife, who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history so far!" Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers ; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished.'
Of course the God that had been killed, as Christos Yannaras demonstrates, was not the God of the Church, but the intellectual concept of God developed through scholasticism not met through prayer - the God of the philosophers. In slaying that God the revolution of the Enlightenment might have done the West a favour inadvertently, in clearing the way for a rediscovery of the God of the Church and the Bible - the living God, not a dry conceptual theory. And the real God is indeed encountered through the beauty of ritual and self -emptying goodness.
Nonetheless, there may be something in the English character that is too pragmatic and fails to see the implications of what atheism really means. Religion is only understood in terms of its social efficacy. The Englishman is in his heart a utilitarian and he rarely escapes this curse that blinds him to the depth of reality. Nietzsche understood and finally fell into lunacy himself.
That English utilitarian spirit is alive in this empty shell of Cultural Christianity - the faith in the personal and triune God is reduced to social uses. It has a utilitarian benefit, but the transcendental truth, indeed the necessity of that truth is ignored. And what that means is, if we simply use Christian heritage for social purposes then we are never personally transformed through a relationship with God. In that way this cultural Christianity could be very dangerous. It might on the other hand be a stepping stone for many to faith. Whether this island once known as the dowry of Mary, the Mother of God, will be re-enchanted again remains to be seen. We pray it will be, God willing.
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