Diarmaid MacCulloch: evaluation

Transcript context

…But I see numbers published that say 5 percent of Englishmen go to church. If you just pulled white native-born Englishmen: “Do you believe in the Trinity?” How many millions would say yes compared to the number of Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims that would profess a loyalty to their religions? Is it, in terms of actual belief, now a minority religion in England? I think you’re comparing apples and carrots, really, because what you’d be examining with Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus is a religion based on practice, not on systematic thought or theology. These are religions of orthopraxy, to use a piece of technical jargon, not orthodoxy. That makes you a very different sort of practitioner of religion. Christianity, Anglicanism — they’re religions in which you may know a lot about technical matters, but you may not. You may do what the Hindu does and just go into a sacred space. That is a very common attitude within English religion, and it seems to me a perfectly healthy one. Doctrine, theology — yes, Christianity is a religion of such things, but that’s not all that there is to it. Do think it’s possible to have a sustainable Christianity without strong beliefs in hell? If I think of America, where I live, a lot of Americans either still believe in hell or at least proclaim they do, and they’re not outright lying. And we’re much more religious than Western Europe. Isn’t some notion of hell necessary?…

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