Holy Smoke: is God an Englishman?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Bijan Omrani joins Damian Thompson to talk about his new book God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England. They discuss the spiritual and cultural debt the country owes to Christianity. The central question of Bijan’s book is ‘does it matter that Christianity is dying in England?’. The faith has historically played a disproportionate role in many areas of English life that we take for granted now – for example, by shaping both charity and the welfare state. Yet this is influence is often ignored as congregations shrink and the UK slides into secularism.
But are there unexpected grounds for hope? The publication of God is an Englishman has coincided with a modest but surprising revival of traditional worship among Millennials and members of Generation Z. Is there, as the book puts it, a ‘weariness of the young' with what secular society is offering them?’ And could we see the eventual flourishing of a smaller but purer English Christianity?
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:30.6 | Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. |
| 0:33.1 | I'm Damien Thompson. |
| 0:42.7 | And today I'm joined by Bijan Omrani, the author of an exciting new book about English Christianity called God is an Englishman, Christianity and the Creation of England. |
| 0:48.7 | It's been much talked about and I'm not surprised because it's a panoramic study of English |
| 0:53.7 | Christianity, especially |
| 0:55.7 | as embodied in the Church of England with its unique liturgical, architectural, and musical |
| 1:01.7 | heritage, but also a history fractured by the Reformation and now threatened by an unprecedented |
| 1:08.9 | fall in church attendance. |
| 1:17.7 | So, Bajan, I wondered if you could look first at what we're in danger of losing. |
| 1:25.5 | I wanted to ask you, do you think there is a distinctive sort of pre-existing English Christian spirituality that transcends but is reflected in the Church of England? |
| 1:30.2 | Or does it make more sense to think of the way Anglicanism and the compromises of establishment |
| 1:37.4 | have moulded that spirituality? |
| 1:40.6 | I know it's going to be a mixture of both, but where do you think the balance lies? |
| 1:44.3 | It is a mixture of both because in some of the things which are very distinctively Anglican, |
| 1:50.6 | I think of our music as Evensong, our liturgy, and some of the great masters of Anglican spirituality. |
| 1:58.7 | I mean, I think of the poet George Herbert, who probably more than anything, |
| 2:03.5 | along with the music of Evensong, brought me finally into the faith. There is something that is owed |
... |
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