Many weeks ago, I promised to review a book by a friend and I failed. It isn’t my fault. My pile of reading is a mountain high, stacked with a mix of the diaries of William Byrd and the latest Margaret Atwood. In addition, I receive literature from readers all the time – and I make an effort to delve into it. Some of it’s very good. Roughly 90 percent is mad. Just today, someone Tweeted to ask if I thought Barack Obama might have authored an “anti-Christ gospels.” I replied, “Probably not. He prefers to use ghostwriters.” 

But I’m pleased that I found time to read Paul Lay’s History Today – And Tomorrow. It’s a fine book that reminds us that history is the “king of disciplines,” for it synchronizes all others and turns disparate studies into a coherent narrative of the human drama. It is good to be reminded of how great we historians are.

Paul makes two points that I think are particularly potent. The first is that history is not a comfortable discipline. A lot of what one sees in popular history is tawdry nostalgia. From the endless History Channel documentaries about being a Spitfire pilot to the insufferable BB2 shows about life in a Georgian household (“Look ma – they made their own cheese!”), history has become something that affirms rather than challenges. Commissioners are terrified of anything that a modern audience will not instantly recognize, so they only produce that which “speaks” to them. That’s why domesticity is such a popular theme, or the history of the last forty years. When did BBC4 last venture into political territory that wasn’t to do with Harold Wilson or Margaret Thatcher? 

Dramatists must be given credit for throwing their nets wider (The Tudors, The Borgias) but even these shows invariably give ancient characters modern sensibilities. Take the dreaded Downton Abbey. At the center of Downton is the lie that the Edwardian household was like a modern extended family: open, warm, democratic. It was not. In fact, African-American slavery was arguably a more intimate type of service than the manorial system. Don’t get me wrong – it was sustained by violence. But most historians of slavery now argue that it was surprisingly geographically unsegregated (it was common, for instance, for slave and free children to play and be nursed together). By contrast, in Edward England social relations were simply impermissible and if any servant spoke to an employer in the way that they do in Downton, they’d have been sacked … or worse. Downton Abbey has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with today. Whenever the English are in trouble, they retreat into nostalgia and reflect upon their present circumstances by looking backwards. They see at history through the dark glass of their own context and conclude, "We are, and we always have been, bloody marvellous."

Instead, history should be honest and ugly. It ought to present the facts “warts and all” and strictly on the terms of the people who lived it. If there is a benefit to doing this, it is to understand that other people in other times are capable of viewing the world differently – and not just because they are ignorant or savage. There is a tendency – I’d call it cruel – to presume that because everyone born before 1940 didn’t think that the Earth circles the Sun or that constant uninhibited sex is a God given right, they were all ignorant peasant scum; worthy only of being a lesson in how stupid talking monkeys can be. That isn’t to say that we should suspend our moral faculties when regarding the past: the folks living there were sometimes scathing in their judgement of it (consider the foundational ethics of Socrates, Thomas Moore, Mary Wollstonecraft, or Sojourner Truth).

But we must sink ourselves into the sanctity and the depravity of history, if only to understand what man, under certain circumstances, is truly capable of. Paul Lay expresses this better than I can in the Huffington Post: “History, at its best, calls everything into question. It offers no comfort, no shelter and no respite, it is a discipline of endless revision and argument. It forces its students to confront the different, the strange, the exotic and the perverse and reveals in full the possibilities of human existence. It is unafraid of casting its cold eye on conflict, both physical and intellectual.”

Second, the study of the past teaches humility. The great sin of modernity is arrogance, and it is sustained by two false propositions – 1) We can make things better and 2) No one has tried this before. 

It is correct that we now have the technological resources to screw things up on a truly industrial scale, but we are far from the first people to attempt to improve man’s lot. History shows that these efforts quickly end in tyranny. Invariably, it begins with an effort to eradicate the past – precisely because it usually offers sound argument against change. The French Revolution had its Year One; the Soviets had their Historical Determinism. Sweet requests for social justice in the New Age then become violent demands for the keys to the kingdom, unlimited by the precious checks and balances that traditional culture had hitherto exerted. Progress made by mobilizing the people has always turned out to be a authoritarian disaster. We can, as individuals, redeem ourselves. But social reform of the type that modern states have invested in is just violently rearranging the furniture.

Nor does everything stay the same. Today in the West we are still living as if history is at an end. Liberal democracy and free markets are here to stay. If we are honest, we look upon the Chinese or Brazilian models of capitalism with contempt (Niall Ferguson looks upon the former with terror). The Islamic world is a land of 14th century barbarians and Africa – epitomized by Joseph Kony’s child army – is irredeemable. The West regards its backyard with as much loathing and incomprehension as it does the Tudors and the Borgias. Our inability to understand other people is made worse by a lack of sympathy for our own history.

And yet, we show the exact same arrogance of the Victorian British who presumed that the sun would never set on their own empire. As Paul Lay reminds us, “[History] has no end, as the benighted Francis Fukuyama discovered when the permanent present ushered in by the fall of the Berlin Wall came crashing down on September 11th, 2001. History opposes hubris and warns of nemesis. It doesn't value events by their outcome; the Whig interpretation of history expired long ago.”

Paul would probably stop there, but I’ll throw in a little postmodernism. The great irony of the West’s attachment to its liberal system is that this system is so fragile that it is arguably already gone, swept away by war, recession, the erosion of the Good Society, and the tyranny of the senses. We are now living and perpetuating a myth, sustained by a deliberate ignorance of the alternatives. “Everything that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

As Dennis Kucinich would say, “Wake up America!” I’ll never forgive Ohio for voting that man out of office.

I’ve always had a romantic attachment to Christian socialism – the idea that if love is so great an idea then why not make it government policy? I don’t write that with any sense of irony. As the state grew in the late 19th century and social problems that were once grim tragedies became curable problems, it was logical to make Christian compassion the cornerstone of government policy. That effort was combined with a dash of Millenarian zeal. We could, with high enough taxes, build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. 

Although the Anglican Church doesn’t have a strict doctrine, Christian Socialism has become its unofficial agenda. Because it is an established church, it has evolved into an unofficial branch of the welfare state. Because people are born into it, it also doesn’t feel the need to evangelize quite as much as its competitors. The result is an organization that exists to serve the community without question or reciprocity. The Church of England is a triumph of love.

Yet there have been consequences. The BBCTV show Rev explores them rather well. It features a well-intentioned vicar whose faith is tested by the sheer awfulness of his congregation. The show covers every stereotype of the Anglican fellow-traveler: an Afro-Caribbean lady who is in love with the priest, a socially awkward deacon who approaches religion with all the mysticism of algebra, people who demand “bells and smells” on their wedding day but literally never attend church any other day of the year, a cadging drug addict etc. The most pitiful and atrocious character is an alcoholic tramp who shows up on the Rev’s doorstep every morning to demand food. Only in season two is he actually baptized a Christian, and that doesn’t stop him head-butting our hero in the Christmas special. When he has sobered up, he says to the Rev, “You’ve got to forgive me. You’re a priest, that’s what you have to do.” Contrition isn’t in evidence, but the Rev forgives him anyway.

Religion is ever present in Rev, but faith rarely puts in an appearance. Tellingly, we never see a sermon. The Rev believes deeply in God, but he doesn’t like to bring it up too often. He isn’t a priest, he’s a social worker. In many ways, he is a living martyr. But then “martyr” actually translates as “witness,” and the whole point of martyrdom is to suffer as a testament to God’s existence. The Rev doesn’t do that: he just suffers. And because he never engages with the appalling immorality of his congregation – he never points out their failings but instead indulges them by “forgiving” them without demanding contrition in return – his suffering feels pointless. In some ways, his charity is selfish because it seems to be all about a dialogue with his own faith, a constant test of will. It feeds the flesh, but it doesn’t save souls.

Rev’s experience is a legacy of Christian Socialism, with its priority on social justice rather than personal salvation. It is also horribly common. A friend called me this morning to tell me about his new life as a deacon in a working-class parish in the southwest of England. Nearly half of the people in his parish live on benefits. Their town was destroyed by the recession of the 1980s, throwing much of the population onto unemployment relief. Long periods of doing nothing sapped their health and they graduated to incapacity benefit. Families were torn apart and most of my friend’s congregation is on a third or even fourth marriage. Seeing all of this, one can understand why everyone there votes Labour.

Yet, my pal senses that he isn’t saving any souls. The congregation is tiny (about 26) and he is basically a social worker to 10 of them. He listens to their complaints but is at pains not to judge. The vicar rarely raises theology in her sermons and some services consist of showing a video. One week they screened a documentary about Margaret Thatcher. It was an exercise in exorcising the ghosts of the 1980s.

My friend is suffering in two regards. First, one might infer that his clerical training was a waste of time. He spent six years studying theology, including learning Greek and Latin. Yet God is almost a taboo subject. When it is raised, it’s as a conduit to a discussion of human problems: God is shorthand for the compassion of friends, Satan for absent fathers. The emphasis is upon how much Jesus loves us – not who is he is, what he died for, or why. There’s a lot of yoga and Eastern religion thrown in for good measure. Faith as therapy.

Second, he is frustrated by the fact that he can’t engage in moral theology. Christian Socialism teaches that sin is either encouraged by, or is a product of, material circumstances. So how can one preach moral behavior to people living in grinding poverty? They have no agency. Yet, my friend is aware that many of the bad things about life in his parish are the product of lifestyle choices. There is nothing to stop anyone getting a job, sticking to one partner, quitting the booze, or picking up a Bible. But he is compelled by the “turn the other cheek” culture of Anglicanism to offer comfort but never criticism. His moral responsibility stops at the point of making a cup of sugary tea. 

We see the problems of Christian Socialism on a macro level with the church’s opposition to the UK government’s program of welfare reform. It is the church’s duty to stand up for poor people and challenge the establishment. But the Anglican hierarchy’s position in favor of social justice doesn’t seem balanced by an articulation of the value of work, personal responsibility, or moral order. Its approach is more suited to the 19th century – an age of robber barons and villainous pit owners. In those days, if you didn’t work – you starved. If you left your husband and had a kid out of wedlock – you starved. If you spent all your money on alcohol – you starved. Back then, poverty was truly a question of material iniquity.

But today, poverty is as much cultural as economic. The Anglican Church, which is a church after all, ought to be well placed to offer moral leadership and a path of redemption. Instead, it is trapped by the romanticism of Christian Socialism. Rather than being an opponent of poverty in every sense, it is its enabler.