front of the Bilal mosque and blink, yournwould think you were in the MiddlernEast” rejoiced the architect, who is ofrnIraqi extraction.rnAll the new mosques are necessary becausernof all the people of differing, sometimesrnmutually antipathetic, Muslim traditionsrnwho are now living in Britain.rnThere will be separate mosques built forrnBangladeshi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Pathan,rnTurkish, and Mauritian Muslims, and atrnleast one built for a heretical sect, thernAhmadiyas, in a disused dairy in Merton,rnsouth London, once more famous for itsrnAugustinian foundation of MertonrnAbbey, founded in 1114, where Thomasrna Becket and the founder of Merton College,rnOxford, were both educated, andrnwhere the Statute of Merton, the oldestrnon record, was enacted in 1236. (Most ofrnthe Abbey is now under a car park.)rnWhile all these projects are going on, extensionrnor refurbishment will be takingrnplace at 160 other mosques across therncountry. Not to be outdone by all thernHindu statues bleeding milk in London’srnHindu temples, Allah is now autographingrnthe inside of aubergines (eggplants),rnaccording to a recent newsrnreport from what is now the heavily IslamizedrnYorkshire town of Bradford.rnCompared to these signs of life, Christianityrnseems to be stagnant. Church ofrnEngland membership is only 40 percentrnof what it was in the 1930’s, and thernnumber of Sunday worshipers hasrndropped from 1.6 million in 1968 to 1.1rnmillion in 1992 {Daily Telegraph, Octoberrn30,1996). Over the last 25 years, 350rnAnglican churches have closed for goodrn(out of 16,000), although there has actuallyrnbeen a slight increase in the numberrnof Roman Catholic churches over thernsame period (four in 1994-95, to bringrnthe figure to 3,760). The Greek andrnEastern Orthodox congregations arernstanding still, and there are slight increasesrnin the numbers of Jehovah’s Witnesses,rnwho find recruits in the ranks ofrnupper-working-class people anxious forrnrespectability, but none too discerningrntheologically. Part of this is merely a naturalrnside-effect of the general aging ofrnBritain’s population, but it still seems arnlittle incongruous in the country whichrnproduced Milton, Bunyan, and Hopkinsrn—the country of which Dean Ingerncould say in The English Genius as recentlyrnas 1939, “Christianity is, I think,rnstronger in Great Britain than in any otherrnEuropean country.”rnThe decline of Anglicanism should bernviewed with trepidation because of itsrnstatus as the Established Church. Althoughrnit would be an overstatement tornsay that Anglicanism is England, it is notrnoverstating the case to say that the disestablishmentrnof Anglicanism, which is increasinglyrnlikely to happen, would meanrnenormous upheaval. A further reasonrnwhy conservatives should lament thernpassing of Anglicanism is that it is, orrnwas, a conservative faith, which was relativelyrnrational, where mysticism and dogmatismrnwere kept in check, which inculcatedrnthe national values of moderationrnand good sense, and whose vicars tendedrnto live modest and useful lives (a goodrnexample is that of Gilbert White of Selborne).rnIf ex-Archbishop of CanterburyrnRobert Runcie is to be believed, the reasonrnfor the decline in church attendancernlies in Anglicanism’s neglect of traditionrnand its heritage in favor of what he calledrn”happy-clappy” services, involvingrn”speaking in tongues,” playing guitars,rndancing, and the like. One can see whyrnthe evangelists are considered revoltingrn(one modern hymn for schoolchildrenrnboasts the couplet, “He gave me lips / Torneat my chips”), but the uncomfortablernfact is that it is the evangelists who arernthe most fervent churchgoers and thernstrongest conservative force in thernChurch of England today. It is largelyrnthe unintellectual “happy clappies” whornfill the pews every Sunday, and run thernvarious pro-family movements—althoughrnsimilar evangelists, full of egalitarianrnerethism, form the backbone ofrnthe Labour Party. Not for nothing has itrnbeen said that the Labour Party is wherernMarxism meets Methodism.rnAnglicanism is the product of an uneasyrncompromise between two equallyrnEnglish traditions—that of the harsh,rnjudgmental, democratic Dissenter andrnthat of the articulate, elitist, rational, effete,rnoften camp aficionados of what arernjocularly called “smells and bells.” Thisrnalliance reached its apogee in the 18thrncentury, when British Christendom wasrnunited against “Johnny Frenchman” andrnhis Jesuitic plots. Since the last war,rnhowever, the Low Churchers have beenrngetting the upper hand, as their roughrnequality is more suitable to an anti-elitistrnworld. High Church conservatives, suchrnas those who parade yearly at the shrinernof Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolkrn(where they are barracked by black-cladrnnonconformists anxious about Popishrnplots), the Eorward in Faith movement,rnwhich campaigned against priestesses,rnand individuals like Digby Anderson ofrnthe Social Affairs Unit and Roger Scrutonrnof the Salisbury Review are a veryrnsmall minority. If it were not for thernCatholic ban on married clergy, vestigialrndistrust of Romanism, and the aestheticrnsatisfaction provided by churches like thernfamous All Saints on Margaret Street,rnthere would be no High Church conservativesrnat all. Many who would havernbeen High Church conservatives in anotherrnage have arrived at their logicalrnconclusions, and converted to Catholicism,rnentranced equally by the intellectualrnrespectability and the romance of arnChurch where there are “statues… whorncan bleed, speak, walk and cry,” asrnThackeray’s Henry Esmond exclaimed.rn”All religions die of one disease, thatrnof being found out,” I remember readingrnsomewhere. Anglicanism, antimysticalrnand never strong on theology, is rationalizingrnitself out of existence, leaving Anglicansrnto flounder in a morass of relativism,rnwhere every faith is considered ofrnequal value, and even rites which mightrnbind the present Church to its own pastrnare discouraged. Anglicans, who are toornwell-educated to believe in anything supernaturalrnbut not well-educatedrnenough to believe all over again, are vulnerablernto fundamentalists because theyrndon’t understand the primitive fundamentalistrnmind. Anglicans need to uniternonce again—if unity can be regainedrnnow—repair their Anglican temples, andrnreinstall England’s official deities.rnDerek Turner is the editor of Right Now!,rnpublished in London.rnFor Immediate Servicern• • •rnCHRONICLESrnNEW SUBSCRIBERSrnTOLL FREE NUMBERrn1-800-877-5459rnAUGUST 1997/39rnrnrn