VERY little Church of England news this week, though
Jonathan Petre demonstrated again his unnerving gift of
resurrection with a story claiming: "The Church of England is
embroiled in a row over proposals to sweep away laws that forbid a
full Christian funeral to people who have taken their own
lives."
When dead stories arise at Petre's command there is
always a witness: not the gardener, but the Senior Member. Sure
enough, he turned up this week: "One senior member said: 'The
Church has always opposed suicide on the basis of the commandment
Thou Shalt Not Kill, and that includes yourself.'"
Petre is, of course, a good journalist, and he
understands very well that the story is based entirely on the
make-believe that synodical debates represent "the Church". Four or
five paragraphs in, you discover that "Under centuries-old church
rules, it is technically illegal for clergy to use official funeral
services to bury those who have 'laid violent hands' upon
themselves, particularly while of 'sound mind', although in reality
the law is almost universally ignored."
Never mind: he got Lord Tebbit to denounce the
Church for changing its mind, and that will do for the first week
in January.
THE Episcopal Church in the United States supplied
some real news, with the genuinely shocking and disgraceful
story of the Rt Revd Heather Cook, who was elected Suffragan Bishop
of Maryland last year, despite an arrest four years ago for
extremely drunk driving while smoking marijuana. In December, she
killed a cyclist with her car and fled the scene of the
crime.
What compounds the story is the suggestion in
The Washington Post that the diocesan authorities knew of
her earlier conviction, but that this knowledge was withheld from
the wider electorate who chose her.
I know that Episcopalians are genteel folk, but it's
difficult to imagine that her rivals would have made no use of the
story: "I would like to share about the astonishing grace which
enabled our sister Heather to recover from her DUI. I find it so
inspiring I can hardly bring myself to stand against her."
I leave out of consideration the kind of
self-knowledge that might have stopped her from putting her name
forward at all. That she appears to have lacked entirely. This
should, in itself, have disqualified her.
IN The Paris Review, there was an
extraordinary interview with the French novelist Michel
Houellebeck, whose latest book foresees the 2022 presidential
election as between Martine Le Pen, of the National Front, and the
imaginary leader of a "Muslim Party", who wins.
I have no opinion of Houellebeck's literary merits.
He has won prestigious French
prizes, but we need not hold that against him. What makes the
interview worthy of note is that he sees the triumph of Islam as a
consequence of conversion, not of immigration.
The rise of the hypothetical "Muslim party" he
compares to that of the Communists: "If we look atthe way the
Muslim Brotherhood has done it, we see regional networks,
charities, cultural centres, prayer centres, vacation centres,
health care, something not unlike what the Communist Party
did.
"If you ask me, in a country where poverty will
continue to spread, this party could attract a lot more than just
'average' Muslims, if I can put it that way, because really there
is no longer such a thing as an 'average' Muslim, since we now have
people converting who are not at all of North African origin."
What makes the interview so interesting is that his
interviewer is one of those people who simply can't see the point
or attraction of religion. Houellebeck says: "I think there is a
real need for God and that the return of religion is not a slogan
but a reality, and that it is very much on the rise."
The interviewer retorts: "That
hypothesis is central to the book, but we know that it has been
discredited for many years by numerous researchers, who have
shown that we are actually witnessing a progressive
secularisation of Islam, and that violence and radicalism should
be understood as the death throes of Islamism."
To this the reply is simply: "This is not what I have
observed, although in North and South America, Islam has benefited
less than the Evangelicals. This is not a French phenomenon, it's
almost global. . . I remain in many ways a Comtean, and I don't
believe that a society can survive without religion.
"The book started with a conversion to Catholicism
that should have taken place but didn't. The despair comes from
saying goodbye to a civilisation, however ancient. But in the end,
the Koran turns out to be much better than I thought, now that I've
reread it - or rather, read it."
I find it difficult to imagine a well-regarded
British novelist saying these things. It certainly wouldn't be one
of those conventionally regarded as shocking, like Martin Amis, or
Ian McEwan.