Your Top Ten Britons: On Robbie and Rowan

Martyn Percy (Editorial, Modern Believing, Volume 44:1, January 2003)

In the autumn of 2002, BBC television commissioned a survey to find the top 100 Britons, as voted for by the British people themselves. Such lists tend to be fairly controversial. There are always the usual moans and wails about the dominance of contemporary popular culture, which invariably shapes the imagination and choices of the voter. Will anyone really know who Robbie Williams is in 100 years' time? It seems unlikely. But that is the nature of such lists - the inclusions are often as puzzling as the omissions.

It did not take long for some voices in the media to spot that there were few significant religious figures in the top 100. Did this, they mused, have something to say about the increasing secularity of Britons? Whilst William Tyndale made it to number 27 in the list, Wesley to number 50, and Thomas More finished outside the top 50, there were no places for Thomas a Becket, Thomas Cranmer or William Temple. (For More and Becket, their immortalisation in popular plays must have helped their ranking. So we await Wesley: The Musical and The Life of Thomas Cranmer, starring Russell Crowe: 'at my command, unleash Prayer Books', etc.). Indeed, theologians and church leaders seemed to be conspicuous by their absence, confirming the rather bleak prognosis that religion makes little impact on the lives of your average tele-voter ('digital viewers can now press their red button . . .').

But all is not what it seems. The only business person to make it into the top 100 was Richard Branson. But one could not deduce from this that capitalism and commerce have only a marginal impact on people's lives. And then there are problems with the categories themselves. What do we mean by 'great'? 'Great' for whom or what, exactly? And how, for example, do we keep Isambard Kingdom Brunel so firmly out of the business category, and so securely locked into engineering and invention? Did his creations have no commercial significance? Clearly they did.

Similarly, keeping religion out of the top ten Britons is not so easy as it looks. True, there were no great bishops or archbishops, and no obvious religious martyrs. But in the top ten we find two people who would comfortably qualify for the title 'theologian'. I speak, of course, about Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell, both of whom, in their different ways, attempted a form of political and social settlement that was driven by serious and well-thought through theological convictions. Of the two, Elizabeth's is the one that has flavoured society more successfully. But Cromwell's challenge to the 'divine right' of monarchs is also a substantial feat, and has bequeathed a legacy to the shaping of democracy that has long outlived a brief English penchant for Puritanism.

To add to these reflections, we can also point out that Charles Darwin changed the way religion was viewed. Indeed, the origins of the MCU must partly be in debt to the Origin of Species. But we must not forget that behind Darwin was a small army of supportive clergy who, for a century or more, had collected fossils, written on geology, and had welcomed the liberation that his evolutionary theory brought. Somewhat differently, and in a more contemporary vein, the popular reactions to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, show that there is a continual public appetite for the spiritual. The mass outpourings of public grief - even if short-lived - have caused secularisation theorists to redraw their mental maps of (so-called) secular Britain. It would seem that keeping religion out of the top ten Britons is not very easy.

In previous editorials, I have remarked upon how difficult it is to assert that the alleged decline of religion in Britain can be linked to and measured by falling church attendance. I have argued that less formal religious observance ('believing without belonging', etc.) does not mean people are themselves becoming less spiritually-inquiring. Indeed, so far as we can tell, public interest in religion remains fairly vibrant, even if it is unschooled, uncoordinated and somewhat fickle. (No different to previous centuries, then.)

But this optimistic outlook must be checked by some realism. I note, for example, that Guy Fawkes finished amongst the top 50 Britons. But would anyone seriously argue that the ongoing popularity of fireworks and Bonfire Night bore testimony to significant and widespread anti-Catholic sentiment? Apart from Ulster, I think not. For most celebrants twizzling their sparklers on November 5th, the true meaning of the event is at best opaque. Similarly, I suspect that the amount of comfort the Church can draw from the huge number of nativity plays staged at schools up and down the land during the Christmas period must be tempered by some realism. A good story does not necessarily carry the hope of a spiritual awakening; glowing embers still constitute a dying fire.

So I suspect that the contentious list of the 'top 100' Britons needs to be treated with a little more seriousness by the churches. The absence of theologians and church leaders should make us pause and reflect, for if they are not known in public life, they can have little influence on the massed populations who dwell within the many-tented cities of popular culture. The trouble is that when the Church tries to enter this sphere, it looks about as convincing as a politician 'enjoying' a day out with constituents doing 'ordinary' things, usually in the run-up to an election. Despite the apparent enthusiasm, there is an air of discomfort and mismatch.

Of course, I have no immediate solution for the Church at this point. But one could reasonably point out that what unites the vast majority of the top ten Britons (at least the ones who were voted for, anyway) is a small range of qualities. One is the gift of inspiring leadership - when the chips are down, this is the person you want at the helm. Another is the capacity to be engaging - the people's person. Another is wisdom (whether scientific or poetic) - the gift of being able to see the world differently, and to be able to so rearrange people's mental landscape and imagination that 'common sense' gives way to a far better intelligent prescience.

This month sees the baton of responsibility for leading the Church of England and the world-wide Anglican Communion pass from George Carey to Rowan Williams. To be sure, Dr Carey, during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury, did a commendable job in holding together a Communion that was becoming polarised by increasingly fissiparous competing convictions. But the skin and ligaments that bind the bones of Anglicanism together are aching under considerable strain. Some will be quick to claim that the wounds are all self-inflicted - women priests, the Act of Synod, and gay clergy - frequently feature in the almost ritualistic orgy of blame-apportioning from all sides. One would almost think that 'Yes, but you started it!' was a quote from scripture instead of an oft-heard cry emanating from a trivial playground spat. These are troubled times, indeed. And in such times, what is required is inspiring leadership, engagement and wisdom. It must be the hope and the prayer of the MCU (and of many other bodies besides), that Dr Williams will be able to help raise the Church from its present self-absorption on issues that bring it no credit or affection in the public arena. The rather intense, desperate and divisive civil war that the Church of England now finds itself in is not something that can be 'managed' or even refereed - by anyone or any body, including the General Synod, the Archbishops' Council, or, come to that, the Lambeth Conference. The time for sitting on the fence, and trying to 'manage' disputes is well past. The time for deep dialogue on serious and contentious issues that divide, and leading the Church through and beyond its disagreements, has surely arrived. What is needed now, more than ever, are bishops, theologians, thinkers and doers, who will help lead the polity of Anglicanism out of its present penury, and into a more confident state of being.

Of course, there are plenty of signs that the wisdom and the leadership for this has always existed, backed as it is with much prayer, courage and support from many places. So let us hope and pray that in the days ahead, Dr Williams will be ably supported and enabled in his ministry as Archbishop of Canterbury. As I said, I doubt that anyone will remember who Robbie Williams is in 100 years' time. But will anyone remember Rowan Williams? There must be a hope that generations will look back on his primacy as one of progress, probity and prescience. An era in which the Church of England recovered its confidence as a national Church, and offered a credible public theology in an age that is all too easily dominated by 'popular' culture and shallow political gestures. Let us hope. Let us pray.

Modern Believing, MCU, October Vol. 44, No. 1, January 2003