I enjoy carol services, and I go to Remembrance Sunday mass – but these are the points of Christianity where the secular collides with the religious and can’t be extricated. I have no sympathy with the ‘ethical framework’ of Christianity and by and large, I think it’s a pretty hodgepodge lot which we should get rid of rather than salvage anything.

Of course that’s not to say that I don’t recognize how things like liberation and revolutionary theologies have helped to provide a counter-hegemonic framework for socialism to organize against capitalism. Indeed our own English Revolution demonstrates that – but the change to full capitalism opened the space for a much greater consciousness.

It’s my belief that that is what we should pursue, especially when we consider just how weighted the ideological terrain of religion is in favour of our opponents.

The other thing I was going to say, but forgot, was how the slighlty bum deal that Christianity gets as purveyor of wild and unfulfilled dreams in return for a life of humility and status quo abiding, was brought home to me not too long ago; I told my sister that I sometimes take the kids to church mostly so they can play with thier mates at the back but also because it’s a cultural experience that might benefit them.

‘I don’t know how you can live with yourself’ said the sister. ‘Exposing them to all that hypocritical shite….. Anyway, we’re going to MacDonalds for tea, you want to come?’

Incidentally, the opiate of the people line was not “oh, look how the ruling class drugs the workers with religion” but rather an observation that working people very often use their religious beliefs and practices as a way of easing stress. Churches provide a kind of extended family, and a sense of community something that people desire.

I go to church quite often nowadays and while not ‘touched by faith’, I’m at least prepared to countenance the idea that some of the stuff set out in Christian teachings, if taken in appropriate context and with the intolerant bits-from-another-time stripped out, can provide a useful ethical framework – hard work, commitment to others, setting aside time for reflection if you’ve got it, none of these are bad things in themselves. I think there may be plenty of people like me, who may not articulate it like this but go to church ‘cos they get something secularly quite useful out of it.

Sure, I understand all the ‘opium of the people’ stuff, but I think a modern church with modern values of tolerance but anger at injustice (like those of two of my mates who are also vicars) can overall be a force for good change rather than an opiate.

I also really like some of the hymns.

And of course feel free to add TCF to the blogroll. I’ll take a read over your own site in a while, see what sort of stuff you write. If you write things that would be suitable for this blog, you should feel free to create an account here and we might publish your stuff. Just if you like.

Out of interest, at what point do you think this stops being the case? I mean, I figure beautiful hymns aren’t that different from beautiful carols, and sometimes church sermons are actually interesting or largely true. And plenty of people get married in Churches without being christian. I would tend to see that last as the turning-point because marriage is, according to Christianity, a sacrament, i.e. a really really important religious moment, like baptism.