JUST days after Wikipedia’s co-founder Larry Sanger announced his conversion from atheism to Christianity, I was keen to hear Radio 4’s Sunday report on a “major poll” finding: that 62 per cent of the British 18- to 24-year-olds questioned described themselves as very, or fairly, “spiritual” — albeit this is a term notoriously flexible in its meaning.
Vox pops are better at revealing editorial agendas than actual public opinion, but two things jumped out at me from the short monologues by a diverse group of young adults which formed the backbone of the feature. First, there was a sense that some young people were turning to religion because their lifetimes had been characterised by the failure of secular institutions, which is an interesting inversion of how most people in the Church of England think that the world is changing.
Second, there was a sense that religious beliefs were freely adaptable by individual believers to suit their particular needs — something said explicitly even by those who described themselves as practising Muslims.
The poll had been commissioned by Christopher Gasson, whose interest in the subject was kindled by reading “great atheist books” with his youth discussion group at St Mary the Virgin, Oxford. It found that explicitly atheist beliefs were most prevalent among people in their fifties. Generally, these fell below their peak in the years after 9/11 and the forever wars that followed: events that young adults missed.
This confirmed suppositions that I have expressed in public; and yet I found the piece inconclusive. A man hears what he wants to hear, and, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe — in this instance, that the country will soon be full of bright, articulate, 22-year-old women who run the Sunday school at their local inclusive Anglican church, like one of the contributors.
Moving from contestable evidence to fiction, Drama on 4’s Margaret White and the Alcoran of Mahomet (Wednesday of last week) fictionalised the publication of the first English translation of the Qur’an in 1649. That year was a combustible year in English religious life. We know that the translation by Alexander Ross was, indeed, controversial enough to be discussed in Parliament.
Given deft treatment, this subject could allow for fascinating historical speculation. Unfortunately, the Irish-Palestinian playwright Hannah Khalil gave us a heavy-handed 2020s diversity sermon instead. “Ayesha”, an imagined escapee from a slave ship docked in London, is employed as a domestic servant by a printer’s wife. While the two women hold to a 21st-century vision of liberal universalism, the men are crude religious bigots who don’t even appreciate Ayesha’s spicy cooking.
Ayesha finds her true vocation by moving to Portsmouth to open a food stall selling the culinary delights of her native land, and thus a homily on inclusion ends in a crude ethnic stereotype.
