WeeklyWorker

21.11.2024
Church of England: nationalised Catholicism

State and secularism

Justine Welby is going, but we need to see the back of the Church of England as the state religion too. Jack Conrad takes to task SWP opportunism and makes the case for treating everyone - the religious and the non-religious - equally

Yet again, the Church of England is embroiled in a crisis over sex. This time it is not masturbation, premarital birds and bees, divorce, women priests or gay relationships, but the fallout from John Smyth - he horribly abused at least 130 young men and boys from the 1970s at Christian ‘Iwerne’ camps in England and then in southern Africa till his death in 2018.1

Iwerne camps - named after the Dorset village - began in 1932 under Eric (Bash) Nash. Most readers will know by now that they were open to young Christians from Britain’s 30 top public schools. The idea being to promote a militant evangelicalism by getting ‘key boys from key schools’ into leading positions in the Church of England: those who attended the Iwerne camps included one Justin Welby.

Iwerne camps encouraged a Spartan pride amongst the elite: pride in privilege, pride in sporting prowess, pride in good looks, pride in faith, pride in willingness to suffer. Smyth berated and savagely beat them in the name of Jesus: “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.”2 A hundred of the best just for wanking. Sadism built character - the kind of character needed to be a reliable member of the ruling class.

Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the 85 million-strong global Anglican Communion, was forced into a reluctant resignation on November 12 over the Smyth scandal. He has, effectively, admitted the sin of omission in a cover-up that, of course, long predates his occupancy of Lambeth Palace.

In part Smyth got away with his crimes simply because he was a QC and therefore could threaten endless legal challenges in any court case and subsequent appeals. But he was too very much part of the rightwing establishment and its fight against the tidal wave of liberalism, permissiveness and smut engulfing Britain. He acted for the Christian morality campaigner, Mary Whitehouse, against Denis Lemon, editor of Gay News, and the National Theatre over its production of Howard Brenton’s The Romans in Britain. When Smyth’s abuse became impossible to ignore, he was moved, first to Zimbabwe and then South Africa.

There is, however, a deep-seated institutional problem. Welby’s resignation came because he had lost the trust of the evangelical wing of the church and the rightwing media. But, it is clear, Smyth was no lone rotten apple. The 2022 report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that deference to ecclesiastical authority, taboos surrounding the discussion of sexuality and a culture that supported perpetrators rather than victims helped make the Church of England “a place where abusers could hide”.3 Countless impressionable and often highly vulnerable young people have bled for Jesus.

Here, in other words, is a moment to press home our immediate programmatic demand for the disestablishment of the C of E and once again explain what we mean by secularism.

Origins

The term ‘secularism’ was first “adopted” in 1851 by George Jacob Holyoake, an Owenite cooperative socialist.4 Secularism for him was “a code of duty pertaining to this life, founded on considerations purely human, and intended mainly for those who find theology indefinite, or inadequate, unreliable and unbelievable”.5 Holyoake urged the abolition of all religious oaths, as required by law, and the disestablishment of the Church of England. His secularism combined a materialist approach, when it came to studying nature, with an ethical striving for the earthly perfection of humanity - physically, morally and intellectually.

Once he began publishing The Reasoner, local secular societies were established throughout Britain. They tended to see religion as the root of all evil. And, though an agnostic, and increasingly craving respectability in later life, Holyoake has the enduring honour of being the last person in England to be officially prosecuted for atheism.6 He got six-months.

Obviously, secularism, albeit without the name, has a history that long predates 1851. Of course, we need to be careful about projecting modern concepts onto the distant past. That said, I think we can safely trace secularism all the way back to ancient Greek philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Theodorus, Epicurus and Democritus in the first millennium BCE. These intellectuals mocked the old gods and their all-too-human attributes and began to explain nature in a materialistic fashion: that is, without reference to mysticism or spirits. Epicurus - a particular hero of Marx’s7 - taught that the gods, if they existed, made no impact on human affairs. Similar thinkers arose in the Middle East, India and China. Indeed Confucianism and Theravada Buddhism as religions are almost secular in the sense that they show little or no concern for supernatural beings. They are more social practices than belief systems - devotees strive to do the right thing (either by loyally serving their superiors or achieving individual salvation).

Modern secularism develops out of the Enlightenment and therefore, ironically, in the main out of western Christianity. Long-distance maritime navigation, the discovery of the Americas, machine production, new chemical and metallurgical techniques, the advance of mercantile, agrarian and industrial capitalism necessitate the rebirth and, following that, the continuous expansion of scientific knowledge. Nature, not the Bible, not even the works of Aristotle, thereby becomes the primary source of practical truth. An ever-growing intellectual space encouraged by, and in turn feeding into, social criticism. A rising arc which can be traced under names such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith and Georg Hegel. Marxism represents both the pinnacle and negation of bourgeois thought.

Modern meanings

Today secularism carries a variety of meanings. In the realm of philosophy it is a rejection of religious ways of seeing the universe - there is no need for god or the supernatural. Secularism is also sometimes associated with the diminishing prestige and power of organised religion and the absence of theological categories in mainstream political discourse. Then there is the growth of scientific knowledge and the so-called consumer society. As a result western European countries are sometimes described as secular. But, when it comes to the state - and that is what primarily concerns us here - things are pretty straightforward. Secularism denotes the separation of religion from the state and abolishing discrimination between religions. People should be free not to believe in god and free to believe and practise the codes of their creed.

Naturally, secularism is flatly rejected by the traditionalists who stand guard over Catholic orthodoxy. Doctrine and history dictate that the Vatican cannot concede that religion can simply be a private affair. Their god is “author and ruler” not only of individuals, but also of society. Nevertheless, though the Catholic church might in its madder theological moments still hanker after state formations along the lines of Éamon de Valera’s Ireland, the fact of the matter is that there has been a long history of retreat and compromise. When forced, the Catholic church is ready to grant that “a secular education in the public schools may be the only possible one”.8

Equally to the point, a wide array of religious people say they would be perfectly happy with a secular constitution - it does, after all, promise an end to discrimination by one religion against another. Hence, in the name of mutual toleration, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45), a brave anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor and theologian, founded what has been called secular Christianity. He rejected what he called “cheap grace”, which is “sold in the market” and sees “the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner”.9 In fact, Bonhoeffer took his stand on the cardinal importance of this world, not the next. Other secular Christians can be cited: eg, Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann, Joseph Fletcher and John Robinson. There is also the noted Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor. Despite being a committed Catholic, he favours the separation of church and state, because, while secularism allows the growth of what he calls “unreflective unbelief”, it also allows religion as a conscious, albeit hard, choice.10

Most countries are nowadays explicitly secular, according to the terms of their constitutions.11 However, there are shortcomings and rank hypocrisy involved with many of these claims. Three examples will suffice.12

Anglican constitution

What of the United Kingdom? The constitutionally established religion of the English part of the realm remains in many ways a nationalised form of Catholicism. The Church of England traces itself back less to the 1534 Act of Supremacy and more to the 6th century and St Augustine of Canterbury (and therefore the apostolic succession). Henry VIII’s schism and the creation of the Ecclesia Anglicana saw virtually no change in ecclesiastical law, administrative structures, theology or liturgy. True, during the reign of Edward VI there was an influx of continental reforms and innovations inspired by Martin Bucer, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin. But, apart from the brief return to Catholicism with Mary and the domination of puritanism under the Commonwealth, Anglicanism was equated with the nation.

The Church of England is Erastian. It operates under the direction of the state and performs loyal, grovelling service. Edmund Burke (1729-97) - widely viewed as the philosophical founder of modern Toryism - unashamedly celebrated this salient fact: “The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the sovereign of the world, in a confidence in his declarations, and in imitation of his perfections.”18 In the late 20th century JCD Clark lamented the loss of certainty. What the jaundiced Tory historian called the “atheist, multi-racial, high-divorce, high-crime society” was nostalgically contrasted with the Anglican ascendancy that saw the aristocratic-gentry oligarchy safely through the convulsions that punctuated the period from the 1660 Stuart restoration to the Reform Act of 1832 (it gave the bourgeoisie the vote and was roundly condemned as unChristian by Church of England tops).19

Anglicanism took a middling theological position between the “extremes” of Rome and Geneva, but, unlike them, never taught that there is a right of people to rebel against unjust government.20 The Church of England saw itself as the servant of the monarch and guarantor of the state. The Anglican world view was resolutely hierarchical and unfailingly conservative. Rebellion was sinful and ran counter to the natural order and god’s divine will. The fabulous wealth of the landed elite went unquestioned. Ditto the poverty of the mass of the population. Starvation was certainly considered a deserving fate for the indolent, the feckless, the profligate.

British state identity and religion has been historically intertwined. It should never be forgotten that official Britain was founded in the early 18th century as a nation-state which was aggressively Christian and aggressively Protestant. Catholic France constituted its defining other. Until the Enlightenment and the French Revolution of 1789, European politics were often fought out using arcane justifications culled from the Bible. True, after 1688, the so-called Glorious Revolution, and then the 1832 extension of the franchise, the Church of England’s self-conception contracted somewhat. Other denominations had to be recognised - no matter how reluctantly. Yet it was only in the 1960s that the Church of England began seeing itself as a voluntary society of believers and not as the nation at prayer.

Nowadays the Church of England talks about the plural society. Despite that, it remains the established church. True, alongside the Church of England, countless coexisting and semi-incorporated Christian factions are benignly tolerated - Roman Catholicism, Baptism, Methodism, etc. All have been digested into the status quo. And, needless to say, the political class enthusiastically courts Muslim, Hindu and Sikh mosques, temples and gurdwaras.

Nevertheless, state, established church and monarchy together form a single organism. Church and monarchy constitute what Walter Bagehot called the “dignified parts”, as opposed to the “efficient parts”, of the constitution.21 Royal weddings and state funerals are conducted according to high church ritual. And, of course, the monarch, the head of state, is also head of the established church. There is a quid pro quo. The men and women of the armed forces are blessed by the Church of England; and its archbishops and bishops, the “lords spiritual”, sit by “ancient usage and statute” in parliament.22 As for the ‘impartial’ BBC, it broadcasts daily Christian prayers and full services every Sunday. All-state schools are meant to teach religion as a subject and around a third of them - some 8,000 in total - have a specific religious designation: 68% are C of E, 28% Catholic, the remaining 4% being Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu.

So many of our children are taught the miracle stories of the New Testament as verity, or at the very least that Jesus was some sort of well-meaning founder of an admirable new religion. And, though Henry VIII helped himself to the wealth of the monasteries, it can hardly be said that today the Church of England shares the lot of the poor. While repeatedly complaining about severe financial shortfalls, it is hugely wealthy. It holds a portfolio of stocks, shares, property and other such assets, which in 2021 had “grown to £10.1 billion”, according to the church commissioners report.23

Not surprisingly, some account for the nose-dive in Church of England attendance with reference to its thoroughly compromising subordination to the state. Former cleric Michael Hampson pleads: “For the sake of the future church it is time to disestablish and dismantle what remains of the ancient Church of England.”24

Anti-secular socialists

In terms of the constitution, any idea that Britain is a secular country has been shown to be manifestly false. Nor has religion been entirely removed from political discourse. Top politicians still line up to parade their pro-religious credentials.

At the top of my list here must be George Galloway. Having been a Labour MP for Glasgow Hillhead, he was expelled in 2003 because of opposition to the Iraq war. He then went on to help form Respect, being elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 general election, then Bradford West in a 2012 by-election and finally he won the Rochdale by-election in 2024. Today, of course, he leads the Workers Party of Britain.

Though a Catholic, Galloway has developed an almost uncanny ability to appeal to Muslim voters - the key to his successes in Bethnal Green, Bradford and Rochdale. He knows how mosques work, he knows the business connections with local communities and he knows how to combine socialist rhetoric, anti-imperialism and social conservatism. Whenever the opportunity arises, he readily pronounces upon his “deeply held” Catholic principles, which, of course, means he opposes abortion and assisted dying. Naturally, therefore, when asked about Muslim schools, he eagerly confirms his support ... on the basis of equality. That means repudiating, of course, the traditional socialist demand for the separation of religion from schools.

My polemical target here, though, is as much the Socialist Workers Party as it is George Galloway. Why? Because between 2003 and 2007 they were glued together in the Respect popular front: it was the SWP and its leftwing outriders such as Alan Thornett, Nick Wrack and Linda Smith, the Muslim Association of Britain, various British-Asian businessmen and, of course, Galloway himself.

So back to Respect’s October 30-31 2004 conference, where SWP members were dragooned by its then power couple, John Rees and Lindsey German, to vote down one socialist and democratic principle after another. Particular venom was directed against those - ie, the CPGB - who called for Respect to constitute itself a “secular” organisation, “open to those of all faiths and none”, and to strive for a society “in which people of all faiths and none are equal”. Clear and, one would surely have thought, uncontentious. But not for the SWP. Chris Bambery - then Socialist Worker editor and to this day a close ally of the Rees-German Counterfire outfit - was their preprogrammed megaphone.

He would be “concerned at Respect calling itself secular”. After all, secularism has been used in France to justify the Islamophobic ban on the hijab in state schools. Therefore, one presumes, secularism is now a bad thing and should be condemned. Exaggeration? No, not at all. During his time in the labour movement in the west of Scotland, Bambery claimed he had never known “a resolution being put, saying we are secular”. Hard to believe, especially given the sectarian bigotry that still blights daily life in Glasgow. Anyhow, what he was saying is that socialists would be right to vote against any motion which suggested or demanded that those identifying with the Catholic church and those identifying with the Church of Scotland ought to be treated as equals under a secular constitution. Bambery even depicted secularism as somehow akin to favouring discrimination against religious minorities.

Further plunging into the depths, he rhetorically asked: “Do we have a problem here with people with extreme religious views?” “No”, he boomed. And to rouse his troops into a frenzy he ended with a final flourish. The “real fundamentalists” are Bush and Blair, who are deliberately stoking up Islamophobia.25 Those calling for secularism, he implied, were doing the same thing. He urged and got his vote to kill the motion for secularism.

Bambery put things too crudely - at least, it would seem, for some other SWP high-ups. Despite using deliberately Aesopian language, Alex Callinicos tried to do something of a rescue job in his regular Socialist Worker column. Bambery had foolishly thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Therefore Callinicos slyly defined Respect as “an alliance against neoliberalism, racism and war that unites secular socialists and Muslim activists”.26 Presumably that formulation was meant to do a twofold job. Firstly, it credits SWPers with being “secular socialists”. Secondly, it excuses so-called “secular socialists” voting down secularism. To create his own diversion, Callinicos too launched himself against the left in France, for defending “a secular definition of the state that refuses to acknowledge that millions of the victims of French imperialism now live in France, and are deeply and legitimately attached to their Muslim faith”. Unlike a bungling Bambery, however, a cynical Callinicos does at least admit that there are disputed definitions of secularism.

Alex Cowper of the so-called Fourth International and its British section used similar arguments. Secularism should not be rejected by socialists. However - and here is the spoiler - the SWP “correctly opposed” committing Respect to secularism, because it is a “broad-based organisation”.27 This shameful construct fails to acknowledge the simple fact that secularism is not something for narrow-based organisations alone. Secularism is the answer for religious people and society at large - surely a very broad-based organisation. Effectively Cowper counterposes secularism and religion and seems to view secularism as being exclusively for the private consumption of consenting members of this or that tiny confessional sect.

Nor was the now near defunct left nationalist Scottish Socialist Party any different back in 2004. Its conference voted down an unexceptional motion demanding the abolition of all faith schools. Alan McCombes - then the SSP’s press spokesperson - argued that such a commitment would unleash a reactionary storm. He might be right. As already noted, Scotland has a deep religious fault line.

The Catholic church, in particular, would almost certainly urge its flock to join a fanatical crusade against any move towards secular schools, as it has done in the past over divorce, abortion, homosexuality, etc. That is why any campaign for a secular education system would have to be conducted with the greatest care and sensitivity.

But what McCombes offered was a multiculturalist cop-out. Instead of secularism he recommended religious equality - not equality between religious and non-religious people. That means refusing to challenge the existence of faith schools and in effect condoning the continued indoctrination and segregation of children, and religiously coloured lessons and festivals. McCombes’s backsliding won the day with the help of the Socialist Worker platform (which later defected to Tommy Sheridan’s dead-end Solidarity). Particular concern was expressed by SW platform speakers for the sensibilities of the Muslim community.28

Amazingly, the SWP’s new-found hostility to secularism was also manifested over Palestine. Chris Bambery may have claimed to have never come across a resolution on secularism. The poor little man obviously forgets the countless resolutions on Palestine moved by ... errrr, the SWP. It still routinely demands the immediate abolition of the Israeli-Jewish state and its replacement by a “democratic, secular Palestine”.

But back in October 2004 the SWP was in opportunist overdrive. At the Respect conference the SWP fielded its majority to defeat that very position. Moira Nolan - soon to be elevated to its central committee and briefly its industrial organiser, before disappearing into the ether - proposed an amendment deleting an offending paragraph which contained the phrase, “unitary, democratic and secular state”. “Personally I agree with a unitary state,” claimed Nolan. “But it’s about entering into dialogue with people” who “might not join Respect if they disagree” with a one-state solution. “We should be one step ahead of them, not 15.”29

On the face of it, her argument seemed to be pretty much in line with what the SWP had been saying on issues like socialism, republicanism, abortion and open borders: ‘ordinary people’ are not yet ready to adopt our position, so we must water down or abandon awkward ‘shibboleths’ in the bid to win their votes. A chemically pure form of opportunism that, sadly, produced no splits, no dissent, no internal debates. The “brilliant” Cliffites who formed today’s Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century went along with the whole farce.30 This we should never forget, nor should we forgive.

Of course, what the SWP really feared in 2005 was not advocating a single-state solution in Israel-Palestine. It was secularism. In Respect it was “Muslim activists” who set the programmatic limits ... and what they envisage in Palestine is a single Muslim state solution - and that under the rule of an Islamic theocracy. The SWP’s problem with secularism (along with the unrestricted right of a woman to choose to have an abortion, etc) was that it was seen as endangering the continued presence of Galloway and “Muslim activists” in Respect. Having correctly identified Muslims as a particularly politicised section of the population because of the Bush-Blair ‘war on terror’, the SWP concluded that Respect must steer well clear of any mention of secularism.

Such is the predictable outcome of popular frontism. At this point in the argument, a necessary aside, therefore. A popular front, typically - that is, with post-1935 ‘official communism’ - refers to an electoral formation in which the working class component, usually the majority, limits itself to achieving an ‘anti-fascist’, a ‘progressive’ or a ‘peaceful’ capitalism. Towards that end, advanced demands are substituted by the lowest common denominator and ‘all things to all people’ platitudes. Often the liberal bourgeoisie or the trade union bureaucracy set the programmatic limits. Those who dare criticise this shameful approach from the standpoint of Marxism constitute an accusing reminder of principles once held dear and of life before the fall. Left critics are therefore organisationally silenced, surgically removed or, failing that, brutally crushed - the logic of the popular front is counterrevolutionary.

Well known governmental examples being Manuel Azaña in 1936-39 Spain, Léon Blum’s in 1930s France and Salvador Allende’s in Chile in the early 1970s. The results have not been good. On the contrary, the workers’ movement has paid dearly. Many thousands killed, many thousands imprisoned, many thousands driven into exile.

Of course, with the SWP we were not dealing with a popular front which involves mass parties of the working class. Respect was one of those unpopular fronts of the type sponsored by the ‘official’ CPGB in the 1930s - it consisted of the CPGB, plus an ill-assorted collection of pacifists, left reformists, anti-fascists and Christians who had little in common apart from opposition to the Tory-dominated national government’s foreign policy.

To state the obvious, it is one thing to march with the MAB against the war and occupation of Iraq. It is quite another to establish a political party specifically designed to incorporate - or, that failing, be acceptable to - Salma Yaqoob, Yvonne Ridley, Anas Altikriti and George Galloway.

A political party objectively serves this or that social class or stratum, and implies a shared world view. By definition a party, no matter how small, entails unity around a common governmental project. That is what resolutions, programmes and manifestoes are all about. They make a claim on the present, but promise government, when it comes to the future. And here’s the rub. In the words of the Marx-Engels Communist manifesto, we seek to organise workers “into a class” and “consequently into a political party”, which is politically independent of other classes and strata.31 Or, in the words of Lenin, communists want to organise workers into a “separate workers’ party” and not “amalgamate” it with other classes and their political trends.32 And, needless to say, the MAB hardly represents the interests of the working class.

Incidentally, John Rees brilliantly shot himself in the foot over the 1930s popular fronts presided over by Stalin and the little Stalins in every country. In 2003 he stated, rightly, that the “fault” with the popular front “was that it subordinated the radical forces to the political priorities of the most conservative forces in the alliance”.33 Exactly!

Equal rights

Be it Britain, Germany, USA, India, Israel, Iran or Saudi Arabia, any principled democrat must surely favour the complete separation of religion from the state. There should neither be the domination of religion by the state nor the domination of the state by religion. Hence, the privileged position for one particular cult - whatever it may be - in schools, state institutions and the legal system must be ended.

Of course, to simply endorse the equality of all religions is an elementary mistake. There should be the equality of believers and non-believers. The mere equality of religions involves maintaining difference and therefore disunity. In the last analysis, that serves the interests of capitalism, which, being the rule of a small minority, relies on dividing the majority - ie, nowadays, in most countries, the working class. That is why multiculturalism - and its latest leftwing iteration as intersectionality - should be firmly opposed. Yes, each ‘culture’ is considered separate, but equal. But the intention is that each separate ‘culture’ will be a supplicant before the state with material interests to emphasise and exacerbate difference. Logically that leads to Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and even Black Majority Church schools.

What is objectionable is using the education system as a means to promulgate, normalise and freeze religious divisions amongst children. Parents, of course, ought to be able to take their children to religious ceremonies and celebrations. The same goes for Sunday schools and their various Friday and Saturday equivalents. Such occasions are a private concern and the state should not interfere. But in school there should be no prayers, no hymns, no sermons, no nativity plays, no equal celebrations of Easter, Diwali or Ramadan. In other words, keep religion out of schools.

Religion, like physics, mathematics, geography, history and the English language, ought to be studied as an academic subject. World history has, after all, been unmistakably shaped by religious ideas, and billions still believe. The working class movement here in Britain has its origins with religious dissenters. Certainly modern English is as much a product of the James I Authorised version of the Bible as it is of William Shakespeare. In his amusing book, The God delusion, Richard Dawkins has a section called ‘Religious education as a part of literary culture’, in which he lists 129 biblical phrases which any cultivated English speaker will instantly recognise and many use without knowing their source: ‘the salt of the earth’; ‘go the extra mile’; ‘I wash my hands of it’; ‘filthy lucre’; ‘through a glass darkly’; ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’; ‘hide your light under a bushel’; ‘no peace for the wicked’; ‘how are the mighty fallen’.34 A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is, he says, verging on the barbarian.

People should be allowed to worship whatever god, spirit or supernatural force they wish and practise their religion as they see fit - with the sole proviso that it does not harm others. By the same measure, people should have the right to deviate from established doctrines without any legal sanction being incurred. So, from the biggest and most traditional church to the smallest and most obscure sect, there must be freedom of religious observance. Once again, by the same measure, there must be freedom for the likes of myself to deny the existence of all gods and argue for the scientific investigation of religion. The secular principle of mutual toleration is thankfully nowadays considered perfectly acceptable by most religious people. Secularism is about equality of all ... including agnostics and atheists.

Advocating secularism goes right to the heart of the UK’s rotten, quasi-democratic constitution. Secularism rejects the situation whereby a particular religion and a particular religious institution is privileged by the state. Going back to the London Corresponding Society and the Chartists, the working class left has demanded the disestablishment of the Church of England and the complete separation of religion from the state. In short, a democratic, secular republic.

Does that amount to a declaration of war against religion? Not at all. A secular constitution should guarantee religious freedom, including the freedom of religious expression. Without freedom of religious expression it is self-evident that equality is fake - and, therefore, so too is secularism.

Marxists unwaveringly oppose those who wish to conduct a war on religion. The idea that religion must be repressed or banned because of its harmful effects - eg, wars, hatred, irrationality - is dangerous nonsense. All such attempts are diversionary and martyrdom certainly fertilises religious feelings. Therefore we oppose university prohibitions on religious cults, government investigations into Scientology and visa bans on “dangerous hate preachers” to stop the “rise in extremism” in Britain.35

Religion, by the way, often preaches crazy mumbo-jumbo and invents social demons both to explain the world and to give a sense of purpose to those who otherwise feel crushed, empty, abandoned and despised. Be that as it may, in no manner, shape or form do Marxists defend or seek to emulate the anti-religious nightmare perpetrated in the name of communism by the Stalinite states. At the most extreme, Albania under Enver Hoxha declared itself to be the world’s first “constitutionally atheist state”.36 In practice that meant a regime sadly reminiscent of Torquemada’s inquisition.

Life itself has certainly shown such pretensions to have been pitifully hollow. It was not Sunni Islam or the Catholic church in Albania, the Orthodox church in Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria, the Catholic church in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania that collapsed under the weight of their own ‘inevitable’ decay - leave aside all the oppressive measures (exile, imprisonment, torture, killing) intended to destroy them. It was, on the contrary, bureaucratic socialism which turned to dust almost overnight.

France

Following September 11 2001 - despite the protests of many leftwingers - Muslims have become the butt of increased repression and a divisive, ideological assault aimed at creating a climate of fear and intolerance. In France, of course, this includes the ban on “conspicuous religious symbols” in state schools - yes, a ban carried out in the name of republicanism and secularism. A thin veneer for othering the Muslim minority. Although the law claims to be even-handed in its attitude to different religions, Muslim female garb is the front line of attack.37 Yet, since all religious and political symbols are banned, there is no intention, it is claimed, of singling out Muslims - an oppressed minority, which is overwhelmingly working class, often poor and disproportionately unemployed.

But the French legislation specifies that symbols must not be “conspicuous” - therefore crucifixes are deemed acceptable, provided they are not “of an excessive size”. If, for example, a student staggered into school carrying a cross on their back then that would definitely not be permitted. But then Christians do not normally carry crosses of “excessive size” as part of their everyday religious activity and manner of presentation.

Naturally, as secularists, Marxists defend the right to wear the hijab - even in his kilted dotage Chris Bambery might be surprised that this position is likewise advocated by MAB’s Raghad Altikriti. He argued that a “secular state should give the individual freedom of religious choice without interfering in that choice”.38 By the same logic, however, Marxists would defend the right not to wear the hijab: a voluntary discarding of the veil is, of course, something we positively wish to bring about, and that can best be achieved in an atmosphere of working class confidence, democracy and female emancipation. Unfortunately the left in France did adopt a badly mistaken position - instead of opposing the ban on “conspicuous religious symbols”, the left either passively sat on the sidelines or actually provided political backing.

With a few honourable exceptions the left in France showed itself to be trapped in the past. The fact of the matter is that the heritage of the First Republic is a mixed one and the French left of today owes more to the statist tradition of Jacobinism than it often cares to admit. Let us see why.

The rising bourgeoisie in France militantly opposed the Catholic church and indeed many of its best thinkers and outstanding actors were deists or even outright atheists. One of the foremost demands during the opening phase of the great French Revolution was for the nationalisation of all ecclesiastical property. Church estates were subsequently sold off in order to meet the revolutionary government’s growing budgetary needs. However, a complete separation of church and state was never achieved. Far from it. A state-sponsored constitutional church was established in 1790: its priests were expected to take their cue from Paris, not Rome.

Victory for the Jacobin mountain and their Hébertist and other such allies on the far left brought to power those who were committed anti-clericalists. Many wanted to deChristianise France. Priests certainly faced unremitting hostility from the revolutionary crowd. On November 23 1793 the Paris city commune actually closed all churches. Not that this was to the liking of Maximilien Robespierre. As a matter of both principle and cold calculation, he stood for religious toleration and feared that atheism and a war on religion would alienate the conservative peasantry and play into the hands of the forces of reaction. “There are,” he astutely observed, “people who are superstitious in perfectly good faith ... They are sick people whom we must restore to good health by winning their confidence; a forced cure would drive them to fanaticism.”39

Atheism was branded aristocratic. Anti-revolutionary too, because it fostered conditions that would provoke civil war and another Vendée. In short, declaring war on religion was either treachery or childish immaturity. George Rudé - a member of the famous historians group of the CPGB - somewhat generously drew a parallel between Robespierre and Lenin’s tactical acumen. Though Robespierre lacked Lenin’s theoretical sophistication and political vision, he knew when to “attack or withdraw”.40

Robespierre was, though, no secularist. He favoured neither the restoration of the Catholic church nor atheist bannings: rather a new state cult of the supreme being, based on the philosophy of Rousseau. This religion dispensed with traditional priests and stipulated that man had a sacred duty to “detest bad faith and despotism”, “to punish tyrants and traitors” and “assist the unfortunate”. Formally inaugurated on June 8 1794, while the cult ran against the grain as far as the revolutionary atheists were concerned, it was meant to “appeal to the bulk of religious-minded revolutionaries, whether professedly Christian or not”.41 Virtue was to be an end in itself - the cult was also launched to unite the revolutionary movement and the broad mass of the French people. It did not work. Both the deChristiansers and the deist followers of Voltaire saw an attempt to revive Catholicism through the back door. Robespierre was accused of entertaining ambitions of becoming the pontiff of a new religion. Nor were the masses attracted. Most remained stubbornly indifferent.

With Napoleon Bonaparte and then the full-blown, counterrevolutionary restoration of the monarchy, there ensued an extended period of half-hidden, half-open conflict between anti-clericalism and clericalism. Things began with a marked religious revival. Church congregations and those signed up to religious orders increased significantly. Bonaparte brought back the Catholic church in 1801, having agreed a concordat with Pius VIII; he tried to effectively reduce the church to being a mere instrument of the state. Under Charles X, religion went onto the offensive. His coronation brought back all the old religious paraphernalia, ceremonials and holy hooey. There seemed the distinct danger that the state was going to become an instrument of the church. Yet, though bishops might have dreamt of a return to the conditions which prevailed under the ancien régime, “the terms of the concordat were too favourable to the papacy to abandon”.42 Anyway, negotiations to revise it came to naught.

Despite that minor hiccup, bishops were in 1821 handed powers to supervise all secondary education. Then a high ecclesiastic was put in charge of the universities and in 1824 it was agreed that all teachers in primary schools were to be appointed by the church - often it chose priests or nuns. Added to that, the church was provided with special legal protection. Anything in the press that caused “outrage” to the church became a criminal offence. And the Sacrilege Law of 1825 made the “profanation of sacred vessels and the Eucharist” an act of blasphemy punishable by public execution.43

In 1832 the Catholic church issued the encyclical Mirari vos, which denounced as wicked all progressive ideas - the ending of censorship, separation of church from the state and education, universal suffrage, etc. The 1851-70 regime of Louis Bonaparte saw the church further consolidate its hold, especially over education. Half of boys and nearly all girls attended church primary schools. Even in state schools religious instruction was compulsory. Not that anti-clericalism and rationalism was completely routed. Though thrown back by Bonapartism, anti-clericalism maintained deep roots in French society and throughout the rest of the 19th century a bitter struggle ensued.

Bishops, abbots, priests and monks fought hard to maintain their grip: they bayed against Dreyfus, revived medieval anti-Semitism and in general sought to undermine the Third Republic. The rise of the working class socialist movement, though highly fragmented till 1905, added a new enemy and an extra urgency. French utopian socialists and communists carried on and gave fresh impetus to the anti-clerical tradition of 1789. For good measure many were committed to a blood-curdling war on religion: ‘hanging the last capitalist with the entrails of the last priest’ and all that.

In retrospect, the great revolutionary, Auguste Blanqui (1805-81), could never forgive Robespierre for his cult of the supreme being. Philosophical materialism and atheism served the masses in their struggle against the bourgeoisie. Indeed at times Blanqui was “inclined to regard the fight against religion as primary”44 - the judgment of Samuel Bernstein. “God,” according to Blanqui, “is a means of government, a protector of the privileged against a conflagration and a mystifier of the multitude. The proletariat ... should distrust any emblem which does not bear in bold letters the motto: atheism and materialism.”45 Marxists took a different view: they put the class struggle first, and demanded not the abolition of religion: rather the neutrality of the state in relation to all religious beliefs or lack of them.

Meanwhile the French establishment was paralysingly split. A swathe of the financial and banking elite, the army general staff, the old aristocracy and the Catholic bishops hankered for another Napoleon or dreamt of restoring either the Orleanist or Bourbon dynasties. Liberal politicians, sections of the state bureaucracy and the middle class professions tried to advance their own position and satisfy the working class by championing anti-clericalism. After many battles and decades of small advances, the Catholic church and the French state were formally separated by law - in December 1905 Bonaparte’s concordat was finally annulled. In retaliation the Vatican excommunicated all 341 deputies who voted for the legislation.

Article one of the new law read: “The republic will ensure freedom of conscience. It will guarantee the free exercise of religious practice”; article two: “The republic does not back, finance or subsidise any religion.” Incidentally, with that in mind, it is astonishing that supporters of France’s hijab ban can seriously claim that it conforms to the 1905 law. If the wearing of the veil was already prohibited, why was the new legislation necessary? While the 1905 law did not specifically enshrine the right to wear or display religious regalia, it most certainly did not ban it. Equally to the point, it is clear that Blanqui’s version of anti-clericalism lives on in the French left. Leftwing backers of this ‘secularism of fools’ are many indeed. Some of them claim that female school students who want to wear the hijab are part of a fundamentalist plot that endangers French secularism and democracy.

Either way, following the 1905 law, crucifixes were taken down from courtroom walls, religious instruction in state schools ended, church administration was passed to laypeople, church land was nationalised and bishops and priests were removed from the public payroll. Legislation abolishing the concordat had been proposed by the socialist deputy, Aristide Briand, a supporter of Jean Jaurès. He became minister of cults … but decided to pursue a thoroughly conciliatory course. Administration of the church by bishops was soon restored and church schools were allowed to continue, albeit without state grants.

Today, however, something like a third of all schools in France are church-run and have since 1951 been generously financed by the state. Charles de Gaulle (president 1959-69) sought to construct a conservative bloc of the right, and that effectively necessitated another concordat with the Catholic church. Though the French ruling class still claims to uphold the republican traditions of 1789, in practical terms the state now purchases the prayers of the church in order to ideologically reproduce the social forces of conservative France ... a logic which has led to Marine Le Pen and her National Rally.

Capitalism in decline

France can be generalised. Opposition to religion, as espoused by the bourgeoisie in the 18th century, reflected the confidence of a rising class which was convinced that private property, market competition, international free trade and equality before the law offered the key not only to technological, but social, progress. Bourgeois rationalists fervently believed that the development of capitalism and the application of science could solve all the problems of humanity. There was no room for religious superstition. Indeed the church was vehemently denounced as a feudal hangover, an outworn barrier to human fulfilment.

With the tremendous growth of working class power and a dawning realisation that capitalism was stacking up intractable contradictions, that confidence drains. As organisation fills the vacuum left by a retreating law of value, paradoxically the system becomes ever more uncontrollable. Crises, inflation, wars, strikes, the mass socialist movement, fascism - these are modern ghouls and have to be explained away. They are put down to alien forces. In place of implacable anti-clericalism and philosophical materialism there comes the nihilism and moral relativism of academia and the end of hostility to institutionalised religion by the bourgeoisie as a class. Religion is given the go-ahead to pacify, console and befuddle the masses.

Intellectually, religion survives only in claims of a first-cause, personal experience and in the ever diminishing gaps left by scientific progress. Standard cosmology “reliably” traces the universe back to 0.001 of a second after the big bang when the universe expanded from an ultra-dense singularity.46 But what happened before that? Believers claim that god must have been the first cause … as if the universe cannot be its own cause. And if there has to be a first cause, what then was the cause of god?

As soon as scientists solve one intractable problem, the gap theologians dishonestly retreat, albeit deeper and deeper into smaller and smaller redoubts - for, while science advances, sometimes spectacularly, our knowledge of the universe will always be relative and never absolute. There will always be gaps. However, as the gaps shrink, so does god. Not for nothing does Philip Pullman in His dark materials trilogy (1995-2000) depict the once powerful and vindictive Christian god as decrepit, doddering, senile.47 In the end he happily dissolves in puff of wind.

David Hume, Thomas Jefferson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau adopted a hostile, thoroughly disrespectful attitude towards the church, its accumulated wealth and power, and muddled and contradictory doctrines. Yet nowadays mainstream politicians bend over backwards to display a toadying respect for organised religion.

It is not that they are necessarily professed believers. A few admit to being agnostics or atheists: Neil Kinnock, Roy Hattersley, Ed Miliband and Sir Keir Starmer come to mind. But, religious or not, the political establishment is determined to discourage anything that might upset Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Jewish sensibilities. Sir Keir’s own children are brought up according to the Jewish faith.

No-one should say anything to offend religious leaders and their easily roused ‘communities’. It is quite legitimate to hotly dispute the merits of Manchester United versus Manchester City, to prefer rap music to Beethoven or to vote Labour as against the Tory; but to question the religious version of the universe is another matter entirely. To deny the existence of god or mock the myths of Abrahamic religions is considered impolite, provocative and even criminal. Religious feelings are deemed sacrosanct.

Sections of the intelligentsia, the despairing, the defeated, the decadent seek comfort from religion. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and his metaphysical idealism shot to vogue with the bourgeoisie in Germany after the 1848 revolution because of the fear that the self-activity of the masses had provoked; Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) and his brand of theology later served as the source for existentialism and extreme subjectivism. Postmodernism, with its giddy celebration of fragmentation and difference, its loss of faith in progress, linear history and the supposed end of what Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) calls “metanarratives”, is a fitting theory for a declining capitalism.

It holds up a shattered mirror to the extraordinary complexity of contemporary capitalism. But the confusion that reigns in society is only exacerbated by its relativism and loss of historical perspective. Religious cults and their beliefs are depicted as merely another commodity - equal to and no different from any other. The Catholic church is no better and no worse than Superman comics; honour killings are a cultural trait akin to eating fish and chips; Albert Einstein’s ideas on relativity should not be considered superior to the claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Each is just something to buy or buy into. Clearly, postmodernism is a theory of despair coined by demoralised and disorientated intellectuals. Politically, for example, Lyotard was once an active Marxist. In 1948 he helped found Socialisme ou Barbarie (related to the libertarian Solidarity group in Britain) that rejected the orthodox Trotskyite analysis of the Soviet Union as a degenerate workers’ state and predicted an imminent nuclear war.

Nonetheless, in its own refracted way postmodernism eloquently testifies to the cultural consequences that flow from deindustrialisation, the defeat of the working class and the turn to finance capital in the advanced countries, the associated decline in social cohesion and solidarity, and therefore the general climate of instability and uncertainty that characterises the age.

Bourgeois society, unlike feudalism, is not dominated by organised religion. But nowadays it is increasingly coloured by religion and the desperate search for spiritual meaning. Postmodernism is for free-floating intellectuals. Others seek out certainty in a reinvented pre-modern version of religion. Fundamentalism - Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish - is on the march. As the state retreats from providing social provision in the name of the market, religion, the family and traditional values fill the vacuum. Nonetheless, the establishment likes to patronise and promote a few outspoken atheists: Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling, Christopher Hitchins and Jonathan Miller come to mind. Such people are condescendingly welcomed as adding a dash of controversy to the ‘national conversation’. But they have never had much in the way of political purchase.

Moreover, the fact of the matter is that, while over the last 200 years bourgeois rationalists have considered the eclipse of religion as an inevitable by-product of science, education and the growth of the productive forces, such an approach must nowadays be considered intellectually bankrupt. By their own volition, masses of people clutch at the fantastic. The real world repels, horrifies and disgusts. The conservative sociologist, Peter Berger, even talks of the desecularisation of the world - an idea that presumes, of course, that the world was once upon a time secular. Leave that point aside - there can be no doubt that the world is as “furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more than ever”.48

Official bourgeois society makes great play of taking religious representatives and their pronouncements seriously. When it comes to controversial ethical, political and social dilemmas, organised religion is granted a quite undeserved elevated role. Priests, rabbis, imams and their holy lieutenants are sought out by ministers and media editors alike. Members of the religious elite sit on government quangos and commissions and are regularly asked to give their opinions in the press and on the radio and TV on issues as diverse as abortion, the Ukraine war and assisted dying - as if they were experts. What is irrational is thereby made to appear as rational and authoritative. Added to which, one pseudo-science after another is promoted - today it is genes that supposedly explain male aggression, female underachievement in business, and youth crime. Life is drained of all its complexity and becomes little more than a means of transmitting genes down the ages.

Real scientific progress continues under a declining capitalism, but is visibly narrowed down and held back by the overriding need to save the system rather than advance human self-awareness. It is, therefore, thoroughly perverted. Eg, the military-industrial complex, directly and indirectly, absorbs a huge slice of government spending and the ingenuity of countless scientists, technicians and engineers. All wasted in developing not the means of production, but the means of destruction.

Officially the bourgeoisie becomes ever more a pro-religious class. And it is not only a matter of outward display - a way of bamboozling an atomised population. As capitalism continues to drive humanity to the brink with the threat of nuclear war and runaway global warming, bourgeois cynicism morphs into bourgeois credulity.

Contemporary meaning is extracted from the oracular puzzles and elusive mists of ancient texts. Faith increasingly replaces reason. God forgives them their past transgressions. God tells them to become ever richer, for, without filthy lucre, how could they establish those charitable foundations and support those good causes. God gives them consolation here on earth and promises redemption in the afterlife.

With this in mind let me quote Nikolai Bukharin and Evgeny Preobrazhensky in their 1919 ABC of communism: “… if the bourgeoisie begins to believe in god and the heavenly life, this merely means it has realised that its life here below is drawing to a close!”49

Doubtless, this still rings true. But nowhere is the working class organised into a party ready to take over from the historically exhausted bourgeoisie. So, at least for the moment, there is no alternative. Such is our modern-day tragedy.

This article is an edited extract from Jack Conrad’s Fantastic reality: Marxism and the politics of religion. The book can be purchased or downloaded from: communistparty.co.uk/resources/library/jack-conrad

  1. See A Graystone Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the cult of the Iwerne camps London 2021.↩︎

  2. John i,7.↩︎

  3. www.iicsa.org.uk/final-report.html.↩︎

  4. N Walter Blasphemy ancient and modern London 1990, p46.↩︎

  5. GB Holyoake English secularism: a confession of belief Chicago 1896, p35.↩︎

  6. For his own account of the trial, see GB Holyoake The history of the last trial by jury for atheism in England London 1850.↩︎

  7. Epicurus was the main subject of Marx’s doctoral dissertation, ‘Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of nature’ - see K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 1, Moscow 1975, pp25-76.↩︎

  8. www.newadvent.org/cathen/13676a.htm.↩︎

  9. D Bonhoeffer The cost of discipleship London 2006, p3.↩︎

  10. C Taylor A secular age Stanford CA 2007, p542.↩︎

  11. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_state.↩︎

  12. Information on pseudo-secularism taken from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-secularism.↩︎

  13. germanhistorydocs.org/en/a-new-germany-1990-2023/reflections-on-the-demand-for-a-german-lead-culture-leitkultur-november-4-2000.↩︎

  14. newmatilda.com/2024/04/29/indias-divinely-guided-secularism-the-rise-and-rise-of-hindutva.↩︎

  15. C Bhatt Hindu nationalism Oxford 2001, p179.↩︎

  16. P Aron We hold these truths … and other words that made America Plymouth MA 2009, p97.↩︎

  17. religionnews.com/2020/10/23/exclusive-trump-confirmed-a-presbyterian-now-identifies-as-non-denominational-christian.↩︎

  18. www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm.↩︎

  19. JCD Clark, ‘Conservatism before conservatism’ in M Alision and DL Edwards (eds) Christianity and conservatism London 1990, p163.↩︎

  20. Ibid p124.↩︎

  21. W Bagehot The English constitution London 1974, p4.↩︎

  22. Lord Campion (ed) Sir Erskine May’s treaties on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of parliament London 1950, p9.↩︎

  23. www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/church-commissioners-reports-strong-financial-returns-2021-133.↩︎

  24. M Hampson Last rites London 2006, p5.↩︎

  25. ‘Gerrymandering, exclusions and the farce of three- minute democracy’ Weekly Worker November 4 2004: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/551/gerrymandering-exclusions-and-the-farce-of-three-m.↩︎

  26. Socialist Worker November 20 2004.↩︎

  27. Socialist Outlook spring 2005.↩︎

  28. ‘SSP conference: Nationalism holds sway’ Weekly Worker March 31 2004: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/522/ssp-conference-nationalism-holds-sway.↩︎

  29. ‘Gerrymandering, exclusions and the farce of three- minute democracy’ Weekly Worker November 4 2004: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/551/gerrymandering-exclusions-and-the-farce-of-three-m.↩︎

  30. RS21’s Archie Woodrow, Letters Weekly Worker October 24 2024.↩︎

  31. K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 6, New York NY 1976, p493.↩︎

  32. VI Lenin CW Vol 1, Moscow 1977, p292.↩︎

  33. International Socialism No100, autumn 2003, p31.↩︎

  34. R Dawkins The God delusion London 2006, pp383-85.↩︎

  35. www.gov.uk/government/news/hate-preachers-and-extremists-banned-from-the-uk.↩︎

  36. See AR Hoxah Communism, atheism and the Orthodox Church in Albania: cooperation, survival and suppression Abingdon 2022.↩︎

  37. This has even seen local government bans on Muslim women wearing the burkini on beaches and at swimming pools - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkini.↩︎

  38. ‘The genuine article’ Weekly Worker November 25 2004: weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/554/the-genuine-article (my emphasis).↩︎

  39. Quoted in G Rudé Robespierre London 1975, p123.↩︎

  40. Ibid p202.↩︎

  41. Ibid p48.↩︎

  42. A Cobban A history of modern France Vol 2, Harmondsworth 1972, p82. It should be pointed out that Cobban was not only a conservative: despite being George Rudé’s PhD supervisor, he reportedly blocked his advancement in academia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Rudé).↩︎

  43. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Sacrilege_Act.↩︎

  44. S Bernstein Auguste Blanqui and the art of insurrection London 1971, p273.↩︎

  45. Quoted in ibid.↩︎

  46. Particle cosmology builds a picture of the universe prior to this at temperature regimes that still lie within known physics. For example, high-energy particle accelerators at Cern and Fermilab allow scientists to test models for physical processes which would occur 0.00000000001 of a second after the big bang. Quantum cosmology tries to describe processes at 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a second. Given that we as yet do not have a fully self-consistent theory of quantum gravity, “this area of cosmology is more speculative” (web.archive.org/web/20090925041038/https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bb_history.html).↩︎

  47. A title taken from John Milton’s Paradise lost book two: “Unless the almighty maker them ordain/His dark materials to create more worlds”.↩︎

  48. P Berger (ed) The desecularisation of the world: resurgent religion and world politics Grand Rapids MI 1999, p2.↩︎

  49. N Bukharin and E Preobrazhensky The ABC of communism Harmondsworth 1969, p304.↩︎