Daniel Johnson<\/a><\/p>\n 25 March, 2013<\/p>\n Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch has written a noisy book about silence. The Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford, whose earlier books Reformation and A History of Christianity<\/em> (later a BBC television series) generated their fair share of controversy, likes nothing better than to provoke his audience. At a recent Oxford colloquium, for example, his obiter dicta<\/em> included the claim that the nation state was a very recent phenomenon, \u201conly 150 years old\u201d, and a rather unsuccessful one at that. (The professor later conceded that the English nation state, now well over a thousand years old, might be an exception.) <\/p>\n Silence: A Christian History<\/em> (Allen Lane, \u00a320) began as the 2006 Gifford Lectures. Professor MacCulloch pays tribute to William James, one of many distinguished former Gifford lecturers; James\u2019s 1901-02 series, published as The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature<\/em> became \u201cone of the foundational attempts to describe the nature of mysticism\u201d\u2014 and much else besides. We may be fairly sure that the pioneer of experimental psychology, founder of pragmatism and brother of Henry James did not, however, envisage a Gifford lecturer turning his own sexual experiences to advantage in the study of religion. Yet this is just what Professor MacCulloch proceeds to do. <\/p>\n \u201cAll through my historical career,\u201d he writes, \u201cI have been keenly aware of the importance of silence in human affairs, for a good biographical reason: from an early age, I was conscious of being gay, and that proved to be a great blessing for a young historian.\u201d Growing up in the 1960s, young Diarmaid \u201cwas lucky to be able to face up to this challenge\u201d, became \u201cattuned to listening to silence and to finding within it the keys to understanding many situations, far beyond anything to do with sexuality\u201d. Moreover, \u201cas a gay child and teenager, I also effortlessly developed the historian\u2019s other essential quality, a sense of distance: an observer status in the rituals constructed for a heterosexual society in a world which in reality was not quite like that.\u201d <\/p>\n Apart from casting the author in a heroic role, this paean to \u201cgay sociability\u201d has a larger purpose: to indict \u201cconservative religion\u201d for its silence on sexuality, specifically on homosexuality. The silence of the hierarchy is mere \u201cevasion and wilful avoidance of truths\u201d. Perhaps mindful, however, of his own exalted position at Oxford University, one of the oldest Christian foundations in Europe, Professor MacCulloch promises to take \u201cseriously the Christian assertion of divinity\u201d (though he evidently does not share it) and to treat its history \u201cwith appropriate sympathy\u201d.<\/p>\n The reader must judge whether the author lives up to this promise. In his final chapter, Professor MacCulloch sums up his thesis thus: \u201cMany modern Western-based Churches would dearly love not to speak about homosexuality at all, but they end up talking about little else.\u201d That, certainly, is the view of the media elite, exemplified by the BBC\u2019s John Humphrys, who in a pre-conclave interview brusquely informed his octogenarian interlocutor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O\u2019Connor, that the words \u201cpaedophile\u201d and \u201cpriest\u201d had become \u201cvirtually synonymous\u201d. Professor MacCulloch lends academic respectability to such simplifications when he caricatures conservative popes such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI as \u201cdefending a sandcastle against the tide\u201d. <\/p>\n Finally, he speculates that we are witnessing a \u201cnew \u2018Axial Age\u2019 in the understanding of religion and religious\u00a0authority\u201d. The reference here is to the philosophy of Karl Jaspers, who saw the period from 800 BC to 200 BC as decisive for the emergence of the great world religions. The collapse of clerical authority in the wake of scandal prompts him to suggest that what he calls \u201cthe divine wild-track\u201d is much to be preferred to the \u201cmood music\u201d of the New Testament, which is \u201cjust plain wrong: on homosexuality, anti-Semitism and slavery\u201d.<\/p>\n Professor MacCulloch is, in other words, not merely putting Jaspers straight \u2014 the old boy was out by nearly three millennia \u2014 but calling for a new morality, a new Scripture and a new religion. Is this, he wonders aloud, \u201cprofessional hubris\u201d? Well, with an Oxford chair, a knighthood and television contracts to his name, it is hardly professional nemesis. Sir Diarmaid the confessor may not quite qualify as one of the \u201cwhistleblowers\u201d he holds up for admiration, but he knows how to blow his own trumpet. His many fans will hail Silence<\/em> as vintage MacCulloch, giving grand inquisitors a taste of their own medicine. The uncharitable may wish to echo Attlee\u2019s message to Harold Laski, another academic who exceeded his authority: \u201cA period of silence on your part would be welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n Diarmaid MacCulloch’s new book on the Christian Church is entitled Silence but it might’ve been better if he’d just kept quiet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/files_u28_CP-Johnson.jpg\" "\\"Feature")
<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
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A mental balm<\/a>
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Tristram Shandy and the consolations of comedy<\/a><\/p>\nWhat to read next<\/h6>\n
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\nA mental balm<\/a>
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\nTristram Shandy and the consolations of comedy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"