There was a time when religion was a public matter in England. Queen Victoria was very much in favour of faith, seeing it as a force for good, uplifting the downtrodden and helping correct human imperfection. One of her prime ministers – Lord Melbourne – was of a different cast of mind. An unreconstructed roué, Lord Melbourne is reputed to have said, after walking out of a church service following a sermon that offended his sensibility by speaking ill of adultery: “Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to interfere with private life.”
Lord Melbourne may well have been prescient. Certainly, contemporary England has nicely put religion in its place: on the margins.
It is not that the English are stridently irreligious – even though arguably the most secular of the European powers – or that they are indifferent to the cultural and aesthetic functions of religion, only that they don't like to mix the two spheres: the spiritual and the temporal.
And this in a land where the term Lords Spiritual means something and the head of state is the Defender of the Faith.
The frustrating ambivalence many Britons have toward religion is nicely encapsulated by Roger Alton, the editor of The Independent, when he tells The Catholic Herald that he is in “a funny blurry line,” deeply admiring of church services (especially requiem masses), and persuaded of the church's historical and moral relevance, but not inclined to declare a firm religious affiliation.
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