Welcome

You’ve come to the blog of the book about who we are these days and what we really believe in. Britain has been transformed. All the old certainties of a generation ago have gone. My new book tells the story of how that happened – but also explores what we are becoming, and whether it might actually be something to celebrate. Here you will find reviews, articles, images and film clips relating to the book, as well as the reason for the provocative title. I hope you will comment freely and often. Thanks for coming.

Twitter and the next Archbishop of Canterbury: some background to the story

For those who are interested in the background to today’s story in the Sunday Telegraph about the Church of England and Twitter, below are two relevant passages from the CofE’s website. 

Here is the news story. A Church of England spokesman told me the invitation to suggest names and views would be publicised through the church press, the national press and through Twitter.

Here are the quotes from the document. The italics are mine. The link to the original is here.

“The Prime Minister’s and Archbishops’ Secretaries for Appointments will conduct a wider consultation exercise to inform the Commission’s consideration of the needs of the mission of the wider Church of England and the Anglican Communion.” 

“Who will be consulted in the “extensive consultation” process? 

An announcement will be made in the church press inviting people to write in with comments on the challenges of the role. In addition, the Appointments Secretaries will consult with a wide variety of people from church and public life including senior church representatives, representatives from other Christian denominations and  representatives from the Anglican Communion.

Senior figures in other faiths, the secular world and the life of the nation will also be invited to comment in the light of the national significance of the role of the Archbishop.”

I’m posting this because on Twitter this evening @c_of_e is saying “there is no such consultation” and that “someone read an exaggeration somewhere”. The document suggests otherwise.

Some thoughts about talking to Richard Dawkins on the telly and getting abused for it …

I had an email this evening from someone who had watched The Big Questions on BBC One on Sunday and seen the discussion I took part in with Richard Dawkins. He felt compelled to tell me that my contribution had been zero, and that I was a hypocrite. I’m not sure how I had managed to contribute nothing and say enough to be a hypocrite, but never mind. I’m also not sure why someone would send an email like that, beyond the cheap thrill of abusing someone they don’t know. However, it seems you can’t take part in a discussion with Professor Dawkins without being drawn into the polarised world he inhabits.

To summarise, atheism is truth and theists are idiots. That’s pretty much all you need to know. From time to time, as you will have seen, he goes on to this or that programme and flirts with self parody in his unshakeable conviction, and the producers put up against him a God botherer or two of equally solid conviction.

They shout at each other. He winds them up, they get angry or flustered (or in the rare case of Giles Fraser on the Today programme, they cleverly and wittily land a gentle blow on the Professor, who is a brilliant scientist but shows signs of believing his own hype, so leaves himself vulnerable to that sort of thing. If only there were more like Giles). Then they all go away and the internet becomes awash with Dawkinsites spinning like fury and telling anyone who will listen how great he was and how utterly assured they now are in their convictions that there isn’t a God and if there was he would be just like Professor Dawkins. Anyway, the producers of The Big Questions didn’t do that.

They asked me to contribute, and to challenge the assumptions in his recent survey of believers in this country, which I was happy to do. I’m not a spokesman for the Church. Far from it. I’m an observer, who wrote a book trying to map out how we got to where we are in terms of spirituality and culture and where we might be going.

New year, new job …

Yes, I know it’s February, sorry, I’m playing catch up. At the beginning of the year I started a new job writing interviews, reportage and features for the Sunday Telegraph, and it has been a busy period. You might be interested in a couple of pieces that have appeared so far, one of which is an interview with Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons and someone who is tipped to become the first woman bishop in the Church of England. The other is a piece about public prayer, in the wake of the judge’s decision that is unlawful for councils to hold prayers at the beginning of formal meetings, but also written from the Brune Street mosque in Spitalfields, where 500 men pray in the street every Friday. There’s a lovely quote from GK Chesterton at the end, courtesy of Martin Wroe, so please keep going until you get there. Or scroll down, of course …

Anyway, more will follow. Thanks, as ever, for reading.

Dying for a cup of tea

This morning I met Ivy, a woman who lives in North London. I met her through the pages of a new book by my friend Martin Wroe, The Gospel According to Everyone. which is a thing of beauty and wisdom. He has collected the stories of some of the people who live in his neighbourhood, on the basis that the life of the Church is sometimes called the Fifth Gospel. Long hours of conversation are edited down into deceptively simple first person accounts. Each person is the subject of a portrait painted by Martin’s wife Meg, and these too are beautiful. So, I would suggest you think about buying a copy of this book from this web page. In the meantime, here’s Ivy talking about the war, which she spent in the same streets that are still her home.

“In those days, people used to have to get all dressed up for church, to wear a hat and gloves. The men wore bowler hats and suits. All very refined. But in the war people stopped going so much.

During the war, you’d come home from work and go straight down the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden. You stayed all night, until the all clear. In our shelter it was Mum, Dad, Bob our brother and us two. Sometimes Dad would go to the house to get a cup of tea. Some people died doing that – a direct hit when they were boiling the kettle.’ Makes me grateful for the cup I’m sipping now. Thanks, Ivy.

Fasten your seatbelts, say the Anglicans …

… this may be a bumpy ride. That’s what it says in the newsletter for Anglicans Online, which uses a review of ‘Is God Still An Englishman?’ to consider the way things are. It’s an enthusiastic review, which welcomes the challenges in the book. “Moreton’s book, with wit and bite and devastating clarity, examines just where in the world the Church of England is in the 21st century.” You can read the rest here 

Gosh, ‘The Lady’ loves me …

a wonderful review in the weekly magazine ‘The Lady’, which calls the book: “A brilliant history of the last 30 years, both ecclesiastical and personal. Whether you agree with the author’s analysis of the dramatic change in the British Establishment or not, this is a terrific read.” Why thank you, Ma’am. You can buy a copy of ‘Is God Still An Englishman?’  here.

PS I’ve just noticed the review is by Tim O’Kelly, the owner of One Tree Books in Petersfield, the Independent Bookseller of the Year for 2010, so worth supporting here. 

Did you think ‘The Hour’ was gorgeous television or deadly slow? Here’s a piece about meeting Dominic West and Ben Whishaw on set

from the outside, Hornsey Town Hall looks grim and abandoned. But if you press the right buzzer and step through a side door, you walk straight into 1956 – and onto the set of a stylish new television drama that’s already being hailed as the British answer to Mad Men. ‘Silence,’ says a female voice, and men in suits with slicked-back hair come striding down the corridor, on cue.

The actress Romola Garai steps out from behind a filing cabinet, looking immaculate. She collides with Dominic West, who used to be a star of The Wire but is unrecognisable in high-waisted trousers and braces. ‘I love you,’ says West, in the clipped tones of a Fifties newsreader, which is what he is today. She laughs. ‘What does that mean?’ And the invisible voice says, ‘Cut. Wrap.’

This is a piece I wrote for Live magazine after visiting the set, back in early Spring. You can read the rest here:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1393522/Mad-Men-UK-Exclusive-preview-BBCs-6m-ride-1956-Dominic-West.html#ixzz1SdUM4NKt

‘Sparky …’ says The Independent. ‘This is a penetrating book.’

“the start of this sparky book is like one of Max Beerbohm’s cartoons in which famous figures meet their younger selves. Cole Moreton imagines meeting himself as “a cocky young Christian” offering platitudes to a dying friend: “I would have punched his lights out.”

He takes the spiritual pulse of Britain in a host of ways: “Why do we believe… playing football or queuing to buy Rawlplugs [is] better than going to church?”

Though he ends by comparing the Church of England to Wile E Coyote running furious though he’s over a cliff, he praises the “poignant and personal” sermon in the Anglican church where Jade Goody’s funeral took place. Though he sometimes overdoes the chirpy chappie stuff, this is a penetrating book.”

Review by Christopher Hirst.

You can order a paperback copy of the book for little more than a fiver by clicking here.

‘The Conservative position is, in my view, a no to nuclear power’ So will Zac Goldsmith press his own nuclear button now?

we’re going to have a new generation of nuclear power stations. The sites have just been announced. The news made me think immediately of what Zac Goldsmith said to me, when I interviewed him ahead of his standing as a Conservative candidate for Richmond. Here’s an extract:

‘I wouldn’t live near a nuclear power plant,’ he tells me. In addition, he says, add up all the costs to the taxpayer, obvious and hidden, including security, and it’s clearly not economically viable. ’If you do that properly, if you’re honest about it, you’re not going to have nuclear power plants,’ he says. ’So the Conservative position is, in my view, a no to nuclear power.’

What if he watches his leader give in and approve more nuclear energy? Will he walk? ’If and when the Conservative Party forms the next Government, regardless of my role within that, it’s not going to stop me pushing these ideas. If David Cameron, with his clear rhetoric and understanding of the gravity of the situation, doesn’t get to grips with these issues in his time as Prime Minister, then we’re stuffed. He made it a big part of his message.’

And if he fails? ’It’ll be incredibly demoralising for anyone who’s concerned. People will just throw their arms in the air and say, “What’s the point?”‘

So there you have it. That’s all from the Mail On Sunday’s Live magazine, September 2009. Over to you, Zac.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1210961/David-Camerons-300m-signing-Can-Zac-Goldsmith-turn-Tories-green.html#ixzz1Q7H2QmX2

Four stars in The Telegraph and – phew – they’ve called off the men in the white coats …

four stars for the paperback in The Sunday Telegraph: “Half the people in this country, says Cole Moreton, believe in a Higher Power but seem to deny themselves any formal means of worshipping such a power. That rather (to me) curious contradiction is examined in sprightly prose in this book, whose author shows a sharp eye for all manner of oddballs. The title is from Bernard Shaw’s remark about the English belief that God was one of us. I liked Moreton’s coldly accurate accunt of the death of Princess Diana.”

Thank you very much, Nicholas Bagnall. You can find out if he’s right by clicking here to order a copy. 

Phew. I think that means The Sunday Telegraph has called off the men in the white coats. When John Preston reviewed the hardback last year he said: ”There were times during this book when I thought it was one of the most perceptive and original studies of the English that I’ve read in ages.” I was with him all the way at that point, as you might imagine. Thinking about tracking him down, buying him a pint and offering to be his new best friend. But he went on. “Yet there were other times when I was equally convinced I was reading the work of a major loon.”

All he meant, as it turned out, was that he didn’t agree with bits of it. And only bits. ”His analysis – for the most part – is leavened by humour, acuity and fluency. However, it’s when he speculates as to where the English soul might be going next that he crosses the line from the estimable to the quite possibly sectionable.”

Dubious language, I thought, in an otherwise entertaining review. But now I can safely go down to the Telegraph’s Ways With Words festival at Dartington on 15 July without fear of the paper’s in-house crack team of interventionist psychotherapists grabbing me by both arms, all of a sudden. So that’s nice.