Bad Faith: Religion as Certainty
Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
When hot for certainties in this our life!’
George MeredithThat Sunday in September ostensibly began for me like many
others since I had been a curate at St Cuthbert’s Church,
Billingham. I arose early. Few people were about. To my back
was the huge chemical works that employed the parish ioners
and poisoned the air. In front of me was a scene from the
country. I could see the row of cottages, uneven with age,
including the one I lived in. At the end was the handsome vic-
arage with its own drive. And then there was the Saxon church
itself, so old that some of its stones had been moved to the
British Museum on account of their Celtic inscriptions.
I walked in through the vestry door. The vicar had already
arrived. I made my way down the north aisle to the bell rope
in the tower. Its thick walls were a little damp, the source of
a moist smell that somehow linked the present with the past.
I rang the Angelus, the call to prayer that had once stopped
labourers in their fi elds, and was now, at least, keeping the
rumour of God alive.
After morning prayer, we prepared the vestments, the altar,
the sacred vessels and our stalls. St Cuthbert’s was what is called
Anglo-Catholic: it was inspired by the famous sermon of Bishop
Frank Weston of Zanzibar who closed the Anglo-Catholic
Congress of 1923 with the following stirring words: ‘You have
got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have begun to get
your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges
where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and
look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed