Man walks into a column, no.7: Church

I find Christianity absolutely fascinating. Not in a patronising ‘look at those poor deluded fools and their strange beliefs’ kind of way, but because, to me, the whole thing seems so exotic, complex, oscillating, old, violent, important, influential, impassioned, bizarre. And as with anything so deep-rooted and wide-ranging, the history of the Christian peoples holds a great deal that resonates with our troubled times.

Christianity pervades every corner of art, literature, cinema, politics, life, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been both mystified and intrigued by the arcane people, events and ideas that populate the religion’s history. Augustine of Hippo. The Nicene Creed. Antioch and Tarsus. Heresy, apologists, gnosticism. What do these things mean?

Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity triumphantly succeeds in bringing the swirling, shifting story of Christian worship to life. It’s a vast, scholarly book, but completely gripping. Frequently funny – he has a lot of material to work with, let’s face it, these fellas have done some odd stuff – he manages to chart the interdependencies and sheer happenstance that explain Christianity’s evolution in a way that makes it comprehensible, if not always understandable.

In one chapter MacCulloch explains how, in the early centuries of Christianity, once communities of Christians had begun to grow to a size such that they could no longer be dismissed as just another marginal cult, they did little to endear themselves to their non-believing neighbours.

This was not because they lived austere lifestyles which made a painful contrast to a world of debauchery and luxury around them; [...] Nor was it because they indulged in much public proclamation of systematic soliciting of converts, in the manner of modern Evangelicals. [...] What really offended was the opposite: Christian secretiveness and obstinate separation into their own world.

They did this because they were convinced of the falsity of the other religions that were all around them, and were worried about their own faith being ‘polluted’ by others’ beliefs and observances. One of the particularly noticeable manifestations of separation was refusal to use public baths, which as MacCulloch rather coyly puts it may have meant that ‘Christians smelled less sweet than their non-Christian neighbours’. But, paradoxically, this insularity was one of the things that helped maintain a steady stream of converts: a kind of ‘maybe they’re keeping whatever they have to themselves because it’s so good’ effect, you might say.

The other factor that made Christianity so successful in attracting new adherents was the way they looked after their own, including the poor. As strange as this may seem today, one of the most important aspects of this community caring was providing a decent burial service for everyone – MacCulloch points out that this was a really big deal in the ancient world. And in the early days a bishop got no more pomp or privilege than a pauper when it came to being laid to rest.

Which brings us back to the world we live in today. The church is mentioned less frequently than social enterprises, mutuals and charities as an agent of the Big Society (although of course many charities are backed by organised religion). However religious individual politicians may be there’s still – usually – a right and proper aversion to mixing god and politics.

But with state funding falling away by the minute, and the church still the owner of valuable assets, it’s not hard to imagine that its role in supporting those left behind by the spending cuts will grow. On the one hand this may not be a bad thing: better to be the recipient of kind Christian charity than out on the streets. It would not be a good thing, however, if this version of the Big Society brought with it an increase in insularity, with small communities (whether religious or not, actually) looking after their own at the expense of linking with others.

Any thoughts, comments, sacrificial offerings gratefully received on Twitter @philblogs.

Man walks into a column, no.6: Machiavelli

Jonathan Powell’s The New Machiavelli (sub-titled How To Wield Power In The Modern World) offers fascinating insights into the mind of a once-powerful man, but that man is Powell himself, not Machiavelli.

Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, says in the preface that the book ‘is an attempt to test whether Machiavelli’s maxims still hold in the world of modern politics’. But it turns out that this is just a handy excuse (or ‘washing line’, to use Peter Mandelson’s term for the over-arching theme of a speech) for the second and third objectives: drawing lessons on leadership based on Powell’s experience in Number 10, and recounting anecdotes to illustrate what life at the top was really like.

JP is being a bit disingenuous when he says this is ‘not another memoir of the Blair years’, because that’s exactly what it is. I’m no Machiavelli scholar, but the breadth of the Italian apparatchik’s theorising allows Powell to find enough quotes to bolster his argument, most of the time anyway – towards the end it feels like Powell just gives up, and the chapters on ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Europe’ in particular are almost all anecdote, no Prince.

Still, I guess most people will read The New Machiavelli for the behind-the-scenes stuff – I know I did – and there’s certainly fun to be had. We hear how during the 2005 election campaign Powell assumed that Tony’s faltering delivery of a speech on immigration was due to a bust teleprompter, when it was actually the PM not looking at the camera on purpose, thus ensuring that the media didn’t report on the most politically sensitive bits of the speech. Or, when Blair was in hospital for a heart operation, we learn that Prince Charles sent a get-well card and box of Duchy of Cornwall fudge, signed from ‘Dr Wales’, which the security service thought was a suspicious package and proceeded to blow up, fudge and all.

What lets this book down, however, is the bloody-mindedness of Powell’s determination to defend the record of the Blair governments. I’ll leave aside the rightness or wrongness of the arguments he puts forward for specific decisions; the fact of the matter is that after only a short time the one-sidedness of the account really grates.

A big part of this defence is a hagiographical approach to Blair himself. Powell is convinced that Tony was a Truly Great Leader, and that the only things holding him back were Gordon Brown, an inexperienced and inept bunch of ministers, and the lying media. Whatever you may think of Blair, the complete and utter lack of balance is really distracting.

The stuff about Gordon is frequently hilarious (unintentionally and not) for the depth of hatred – there’s no other word – that it reveals. So on page 37 we have this entirely typical example:

Gordon’s influence on those around him was at times extraordinary. After a few years working with him his aides became changed people. Ed Balls, who had been a pleasant young man as a Financial Times leader writer, was transformed by his connection with Gordon. He reminds me of Quintus Fabius in [Machiavelli’s] The Discourses, who came under the influence of the tyrant Appius: ‘though an excellent fellow, [he] was after a while blinded by a little ambition and, under the evil influence of Appius, changed his good habits for bad and became like him’.

Blair, on the other hand, can do no wrong: consistently strategic, conciliatory, reforming, self-deprecating, visionary. His only failing, it seems, was being too much of a nice guy and not sacking people soon enough. I was talking to a colleague about this, who said that a friend of theirs also worked in Number 10 for a time under Blair, and that they (the friend) felt exactly the same way and would not hear even a modestly critical word against the ex-PM. The power of charisma, I guess: Machiavelli would’ve been proud.

“Dad, who was Nick Clegg?”

Today’s tuition fees vote will make for an interesting bit of history in 20 years’ time.

Before I say why, here are a few (probably unpopular) thoughts on the issue of tuition fees:

• I agree in both principle and practice with tuition fees. A university education is a choice, and something to be valued by the individual who makes that choice. Once the principle of fees had been established by the Labour government the politics of funding higher education was always going to be about where the cap on fees was, not whether there were fees.
• I don’t happen to think of any education in the utilitarian way politicians seem to think of it – utlitarian as demonstrated by the fact it’s the responsibility of the Business Secretary and not the Education Secretary. Thus, if a higher education is valuable in its own right (whilst also having an economic benefit to the individual and the economy), it should be paid for (at least in majority part) by the individual.
• Admitting the possibility of fees means a market will, and probably should, develop. Yes, this effectively makes it a US-type model, but I’m comfortable with that. A University Fund for young ‘uns in a family is a good idea.
• A graduate tax is a nonsense because an individual would never stop paying it and their repayments could be more than the cost of the fees. It has elements of progressiveness in it, but it’s also a disincentive on social mobility.

Watching the Lib Dems struggle on the topic of university tuition fees has, I’ll be honest, brought me some pleasure. Their position was and is a nonsense, as follows:

• Their position on tuition fees was pretty much the most distinctive and best-known domestic policy they had. They’ve traded that at the fist sniff of power; either that, or they knew their policy was a nonsense but had worked on the basis they would never need to implement it. (This is partly supported by the idea Nick Clegg privately urged his colleagues to drop the position.)
• I don’t know that anyone had anticipated Clegg’s “New Politics” being the explicit reneging of a personal and party pledge to oppose not just a rise in tuition fees, but the removal of tuition fees.
• Clegg has tried to defend the move by saying previously 1 in 7 people went to university and now it’s 1 in 3. What is that if not a huge rise in opportunity for people from a wider range of backgrounds?
• That government ministers even considered not voting for their own policy (even if they end up doing so) tells you what an incredibly ridiculous position the Lib Dems got themselves in.

All things considered – and even taking into account the short memories and fickle nature of the British voting public – the tuition fees debacle as applied to the Lib Dems makes me think they may never in a generation or two be thought of as any sort of credible, governing force at a national level.

When the future comes and I potentially drop my one-year-old as 18-year-old off at university, I’ll think back to today and mention to him the peculiar time when a small party called the Liberal Democrats, led by a pub-quiz question politician called Nick Clegg, abandoned their policy and principles because they happened to have a bit of power.

“Dad, who was Nick Clegg?”

Today’s tuition fees vote will make for an interesting bit of history in 20 years’ time.

Before I say why, here are a few (probably unpopular) thoughts on the issue of tuition fees:

• I agree in both principle and practice with tuition fees. A university education is a choice, and something to be valued by the individual who makes that choice. Once the principle of fees had been established by the Labour government the politics of funding higher education was always going to be about where the cap on fees was, not whether there were fees.
• I don’t happen to think of any education in the utilitarian way politicians seem to think of it – utlitarian as demonstrated by the fact it’s the responsibility of the Business Secretary and not the Education Secretary. Thus, if a higher education is valuable in its own right (whilst also having an economic benefit to the individual and the economy), it should be paid for (at least in majority part) by the individual.
• Admitting the possibility of fees means a market will, and probably should, develop. Yes, this effectively makes it a US-type model, but I’m comfortable with that. A University Fund for young ‘uns in a family is a good idea.
• A graduate tax is a nonsense because an individual would never stop paying it and their repayments could be more than the cost of the fees. It has elements of progressiveness in it, but it’s also a disincentive on social mobility.

Watching the Lib Dems struggle on the topic of university tuition fees has, I’ll be honest, brought me some pleasure. Their position was and is a nonsense, as follows:

• Their position on tuition fees was pretty much the most distinctive and best-known domestic policy they had. They’ve traded that at the fist sniff of power; either that, or they knew their policy was a nonsense but had worked on the basis they would never need to implement it. (This is partly supported by the idea Nick Clegg privately urged his colleagues to drop the position.)
• I don’t know that anyone had anticipated Clegg’s “New Politics” being the explicit reneging of a personal and party pledge to oppose not just a rise in tuition fees, but the removal of tuition fees.
• Clegg has tried to defend the move by saying previously 1 in 7 people went to university and now it’s 1 in 3. What is that if not a huge rise in opportunity for people from a wider range of backgrounds?
• That government ministers even considered not voting for their own policy (even if they end up doing so) tells you what an incredibly ridiculous position the Lib Dems got themselves in.

All things considered – and even taking into account the short memories and fickle nature of the British voting public – the tuition fees debacle as applied to the Lib Dems makes me think they may never in a generation or two be thought of as any sort of credible, governing force at a national level.

When the future comes and I potentially drop my one-year-old as 18-year-old off at university, I’ll think back to today and mention to him the peculiar time when a small party called the Liberal Democrats, led by a pub-quiz question politician called Nick Clegg, abandoned their policy and principles because they happened to have a bit of power.

Churchill: nuts bad for the brain

I figure you know the famous stuff well, which is why I’m concentrating on the miscellanea (plus if I wasn’t as ‘disciplined’ as this, I’d be blogging the entire book, page by page). This week, I loved Churchill’s verdict on diets, in a letter to the Minister of Food:

I am glad you do not set too much store by the reports of the Scientific Committee. Almost all of the food faddists I have ever known, nut-eaters and the like, have died young after a long period of senile decay. The British soldier is far more likely to be right than the scientists. All he cares about is beef. [...] The way to lose the war is to try to force the British public into a diet of milk, oatmeal, potatoes, etc, washed down on gala occasions with a little lime juice.

And this, not from WSC himself but from Arthur Balfour in 1909, deployed by Jenkins to illustrate the point that Churchill – who in late 1938 was in serious danger of being ousted by his constituency party association, which disapproved of his (Churchill’s) Commons rebuking of Chamberlain for the then PM’s appeasement of Hitler in Munich – was not alone in finding political activists frustrating:

I have the greatest respect for the Conservative party conference, but I would no more consult it on a matter of high policy than I would my valet.

I have about a quarter of the book remaining. If you can’t wait to hear more, find me on Twitter @philblogs. For the rest of you: I expect Rich to be back in the saddle any minute now!