IF YOU want to be on your own, there is no better religion for
it than Christianity. We are good at solitude, Professor Linda
Woodhead said on Faith in the World: Living alone well
(Radio 2, Tuesday of last week). Our monastic tradition has taught
us the benefits of the quiet life, and we are generally better at
keeping our own company than Judaism or Islam, for example, where
family is naturally regarded as the highest virtue.
An ex-Carmelite-nun-turned-hermit, Rachel Denton, spoke of how
intrusive the convent community became on her solitude, and how,
after a period contemplating marriage, she realised that true
satisfaction for her lay in the middle of a field in Lincolnshire.
She now claims to be more extrovert than ever, although how that
extroversion is revealed we were not told.
Rabbi Julia Neuberger complained that Judaism was not adapting
fast enough to a world in which many people are choosing to be on
their own. Mona Siddiqui gave a similar account of Islam, something
supported by attendees at an Asian singles night in London, all of
whom spoke of the family pressure to get hitched.
These testimonies, and many more, were garnered by Hardeep Singh
Kohli for a programme that functioned as the centrepiece of Radio
2's Faith in the World Week. The theme of loneliness and solitude
was an imaginative and challenging one for this annual season; and
one that, sadly, Radio 2 producers and presenters only barely rose
to.
Among the themed discussions and interviews there were items on
the loneliness of long-distance runners, mountaineers, and sailors
(during the Chris Evans Breakfast Show), and a piece on
Thursday's Drivetime about online dating, which turned out
to be an extended plug for a particular web-based service. But what
these - and the main documentary - lacked was any sense of outrage
that faiths are not yet catering effectively for our atomised
society.
In his opening address to the Free Thinking Festival last Friday
(Radio 3, various programmes last weekend), Sir Michael Marmot
addressed the same issue of society in flux from a different angle
- that of health. Sir Michael chaired a World Health Organisation
commission for health inequality, and it is his work that has
furnished many a startling headline about life expectancy in
different societies.
He opened with a few: one in ten women in Afghanistan die in
childbirth, compared with one in 46,500 in the West; there is an
18-year gap in life expectancy between the wealthiest and the
poorest parts of the borough of Westminster, and a 28-year gap
between the wealthiest and poorest parts of Glasgow. His research
has delineated gradations of life expectancy between ranks of
Whitehall civil servants, and his conclusion is that it is not lack
of food, shelter, and hygiene that causes these disparities, but
lack of empowerment.
There is much here to think about. What, for instance, is life
expectancy in Sir Michael's analysis, and is it the correct tool
for analysis here? But this was heady stuff. It is just the sort of
thing that ought still to be featured in the Reith Lectures over on
Radio 4.