St Martin shares his cloak with a beggar,
in a painting by the Flemish artist Pieter
Coecke van Aelst. Charity is fundamental
to the Christian message — but the same
is true of all religions, and most secular
theories of social obligationfrozen out. It seemed to offer a direct con-
nection to God which was too varied and
personal to be encompassed by a single
organised and homogeneous faith.
More significantly for the development
of the modern mind, empirical science was
viewed with hostility as another alternative
route to truth, especially when — as with
cosmology or anthropology — it touched
on the myths of creation which almost all
religions have claimed as their own. Gali-
leo, Bruno and Darwin all discovered
this to their cost. These attitudes survived
the break-up of the universal church in the
16th century. But they have not survived
the decline of religion itself, which has been
one of the most notable developments of
the western mind since the 19th century.
The ‘western mind’ is too large a conceptfor any one thing to have ‘made’ it. But on
any view, a rejection of revealed authority
and a belief in empirical enquiry are a fun-
damental part of the ‘western mind’ as it
has developed since the 17th century. It isdifficult to accept that Christianity has con-
tributed anything to that. It may even have
hindered it.
What Christianity has always contribut-
ed is something equally important but more
limited: a framework of moral values which
is fundamental to our ability to live togeth-
er as social animals. But in this, Christianityis not unique. All religions that are not just
inward-looking sects have this character-
istic in common. And the moral framework
is generally very similar in all of them. The
same is true of most purely secular theories
of social obligation.
Voltaire once told the Prince of Prus-
sia that ‘if God did not exist, it would be
necessary to invent him’. What he meant
by this was that without a religious under-
pinning, no moral code could retain its
power over the human mind, and human
societies would disintegrate. The experi-
ence of the increasingly agnostic 20th cen-
tury has undermined this view. It would
probably be truer to say that the western
mind made Christianity, rather than the
other way round. And the western mind is
in the process of discarding it, now that its
practical utility as a foundation of social
existence is no longer so obvious.
Religious feeling will not die, even in
an age of belligerent secularism. It is too
basic a part of human instinct. But religion
is in the process of reverting to the worship
of nature and of humankind itself, notions
surprisingly close to the religions of the
ancient world that Christianity supplanted.
Should we rejoice? I think that Tom
Holland would say not, and I am inclined
to agree. Christianity may be founded on
myth, but it is a beautiful and uplifting
myth which expresses some fundamental
truths about ourselves. It has also given rise
to some of the noblest literary and artistic
expressions of the human mind. The myths
which seem likely to replace it will not
necessarily be as benign. Even Christian-
ity’s organisational framework, its build-
ings, its hierarchies and its ministers, which
many regard as its most expendable fea-
tures, represent a form of human sociabili-
ty more attractive than the atomistic social
models offered by more personal styles of
religious practice.The western mind is in the process of
discarding Christianity, now that its
practical utility is no longer obviousBRIDGEMAN IMAGES