Thanks to Eddie Arthur for pointing me to something I missed, a report in the Independent on a new survey of Bible literacy. For those of you who can get it, there’s a very good news report on iPlayer from the BBC Sunday Programme (the package begins at 33 minutes). The survey unsurprisingly reveals a very significant degree of ignorance around, as do the recorded interviews (see below) on the BBC programme. The remarks of Dee Dyas of the University of York Christianity and Culture project are well worth the price of admission.
Eddie thinks that this ignorance is less apathy than an increasing hostility. While there are certainly some very aggressively hostile critics about, I’m more inclined to see this as a mix of the internet’s power to magnify the sound of the furious (some of them on all sides quite frankly unbalanced) together with the growing social acceptability of criticism of Christianity. (Paired of course, with the web’s growing social acceptability of sheer rudeness.)
I am not persuaded. I see this ignorance as a long time in the making (which was some of the point of this post) and in part the result of the church turning its back to readily on the life of both the mind and the arts. We need, I think, a new elitism which prizes and cultivates the best without devaluing or despising the less able.
However, since I have been saying for years that the church (and the Church of England in particular) constantly underestimates the gulf in understanding between its activists (lay and ordained) and everyone else, I’m glad to have some more hard evidence to help me drive that point home, even if it’s evidence of something really rather depressing.
And, for those of you who can’t get iPlayer, here are some quotations to help you see what I’m talking about. (You’ll laugh, you’ll cry).
The Good Samaritan – he helped a lady at the well, didn’t he
[On the Joseph story] There’s a bit about Egypt in there somewhere.
[A class of art history students visiting the National Gallery, and seeing a large number of Madonna and child pictures] Why does the baby always have to be a boy?
I never realised Jesus was crucified on Good Friday – isn’t that a coincidence?
Comments on this entry are closed.