Dear Reader, these are troubled times. Most recently I couldnt get the triple word score and found myself stuck on T, A, and only an X to help me across the line. The next round to my utter dismay the only useable tiles on my penultimate game were S, E, and X. It’s all quite clear, there is a diminishment of the other double word score G, O and D. Could it be true that like Tinkerbell, if you dont believe in fairies, they’ll shrivel and die? Here then is some learned commentary from our esteeemed and highly regarded religion correspondents, Tony Emo, and Ira Maine.

From Tony Emo:

‘Nice to see Tones rubbing shoulders with his spiritual kinsfolk in the US of A.

Our most (recently) successful export.

However, I think we need to see this threat of the Funda-Mentals in context. The fact is that throughout the Western World (North America, Western Europe and Oceania) Christianity is on a steady and relentless decline: churches are emptying and even Ireland now has so few priestly vocations that they are importing clergy from the Third World.

Over the past decade or two one notices that the Christian churches have adopted one of two postures. One group, such as the UK Anglicans, is becoming ever-less prescriptive (especially about theological matters) and seeks to be ‘relevant’ by endorsing the social causes of the bien pensant. These churches are seen as wishy-washy and standing for nothing much at all (didn’t a recent Archbishop of Canterbury admit to entertaining atheistic notions?). No wonder their congregations are drifting away.

Losing Faith?

The other, more vocal group of Christians are turning to ever-more rabid positions in opposition to reasonable mainstream values, as can be seen with the Abbott clique, Corey Bernardi, et alii and the Lunar Fundies in the Southern Baptist Caliphate of Mittel-Amerika. As the tide of belief recedes, even in America, the birds left perched on the emerging rocks tend to be the squawking loons! And the more strident and alien their raving dissent, the more the reasonable
middle-of-the-roaders (the young especially) will walk away.

Just so long as the emergence of a Post-Christian West does not signal the arrival of a Pre-Islamic West!

And the reply from Ira Maine;

Dearly beloved,

Charles the Second. Here’s hoping Charles the Third is as merry.

The modern society we have created, where the least fortunate amongst us are provided for by the state, where the best of medicine is available to all, and the halt, the sick and the lame are miraculously made whole again, has brought about a situation where it is no longer necessary to cry out to Jayziz to ease the pain and suffering of being a down trodden peasant. All we’ve got to do now is cry out to Centrelink and our appalling penury is magically swept away.
Our form of religion, with its subtly attendant guilt, surely came about as a last resort, a court of appeal when all other earthly avenues and possibilities had been explored, when people were on their absolute uppers, and when earthly salvation had been found utterly wanting.
Echoing in my mind is that old parish priest of mine who suggested that earthly suffering is a trifle we must bear because the reward for it was an eternity of bliss in Heaven.
Hedonism was the order of the day when Charles the Second came to power. In the years following the accession, England became best known for gambling, whores and Restoration Comedy. The organized religion of the period, the C.of E., being the private club of the aristos, took little or no responsibility whatever for the spiritual well being of the man in the street. The lower orders, the down trodden man in the street, needed God, because he had nothing else.
Out of nowhere came Whitfield and Wesley, who took the peasants by storm with their astonishing open air meetings, directed at the peasants(which no one had done before) and Methodism was born.
Whitfield went off to the US (Georgia) and was instrumental in establishing something called ‘The Great Awakening’. Wesley stayed in England and became a legend.

‘Fanatic, Schmatic, What’s the difference’!!

My point here is that if government is benign and looks after its people, religion will become, for the most part, unnecessary.
Apparently abandoned by the Establishment, Wesley’s peasants said ‘fuck you’ and went wholesale over to Methodism.
As long as we can maintain a comfortable way of life in the West, then religion will continue to recede. The second the lower orders feel they have been abandoned spiritually and economically by governments, religion will very quickly re-establish itself with appallingly disastrous results.
I think that multi-nationals, with their disregard for people and their post industrial drive to automate everything, might easily bring this about. The result will be, as it has been in the past, the rise of fanatics and lunatics like Hitler and Stalin and the re-establishment of demented superstition.
A frightening prospect.

God bless you all!

Stay tuned, for tomorrows scintillating description of thought from our North America, (Paris End) correspondent G.T. Beauregard. The same rumblings that shook the ‘Collosus of Rhodes’, (Cecil himself) are happenning in New Orleans, (pronouced Noo Orleeens). A socio political earthquake? Tsunami? Hurricane? Or just another overcast day with rain and some morning fog.