As a real live intelligent conservative, Roger Scruton supports the establishment of the church. That is, from a social and political point of view he sees great benefit in church-establishment for the country as a cohesive and visionary institution. The existence of a prominent established religion helps to maintain the social bond, he argues.This only functions well insofaras the Church 'attends to the consoling myths which have drawn people to it'. As the church falls prey to secular causes - as he puts it, becoming 'a sanctimonious addendum to Gay Power' - then its authority is lost. That is: it must be true to its own mission and identity - alien though it may seem - if it is to maintain its position at the heart of the nations political authority. Society needs the church, he argues, in order to bring order and sense to the great passing moments of birth, marriage and death. Secularisation brings only confusion, 'a thousand irrelevant creeds'. Established religion also serves to protect the nation from the violence of fanaticism, and from the 'Manichean idiocy' so prevalent in California.
Scruton offers a great temptation to the church then, from the point of view of society. Society needs the church to perform a function that society is unable to do on its own. Will the church perform this role? The great danger would be for the church to imagine itself as the chaplain of social cohesion, just as it is a great danger for the church to imagine itself as persistently taking a revolutionary attitude to society and the state.
5 comments:
I've worked on Scruton's books back here, and they meet almost constant derision in my circles... I wonder if he's too British for them?
To pick up on your post, 'Society needs the church to perform a function that society is unable to do on its own...' Am I right in understanding the point as being:
Society needs the church, but only insofar as it plays it's role offering what the society itself cannot. And yet as part of that society, it is constantly prey to becoming simply an addendum to it? It must stand both inside and outside of the society at the same time. ie. There is necessarily something of a paradox involved when talking about the church in the world.
Yes, you have grasped what I am trying to say!
Scruton would be not popular with the literay theory crowd. He would be treated with the usual derision that left-leaning academics use for right-leaning thinkers. But, he can dish it out too! He has no truck with Derrida and Foucault, that's for sure. And yes, he is very British. I can vouch for the philosophical rigour of his thought however.
Well, you've inspired me to sit down and read some of his stuff.
It's a fascinating thing, working in publishing (and I suspect it's similar in politics) - one has to constantly fight against the oh-so-common practice of automatically discounting someone's work, simply on the basis that all of one's colleagues do. It's a weird business...
Oh wow. Well, I am not a fully signed up Scrutonian or anything. He is a Kantian, by and large.
Wasn't thinking you were. It's an exercise in thinking generously....
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