My older son and I have – at last – had a trim. His was Sicilian. Mine, the day before, English. No more shaggy locks. A great boost for morale. An augury for a better future? What next? Life will be different after the lockdown. How different is not clear.
One thing is clear. Life will be even harder for local papers. Fewer readers and reduced advertisement income are ominous prospects. Bleak, too, is the outlook for national newspapers. The habits of an older generation are not being readily taken up by the young. This erosion of a free press may make life easier for the movers and shakers but it is not likely to serve the best interests of the populace at large.
Like war, a plague accelerates existing trends. We are likely to see more of the increasing centralism of our society in a dislike of post-code anomalies. Together with a move towards egalitarian access to services we shall see a weakening of localism and of dialectal diversity.
As far as commitment to the Christian faith is concerned, we have been here before. The Reformation was an earlier ground-shift. Bishops got married; so did vicars. Scripted worship became vernacular. An educated clergy evolved. (They called it the stupor mundi, the wonder of the world.) Rectories and vicarages came to be architectural gems rather than hovels. (They now sell for millions.) Rectors and vicars rose in status, some doubling as magistrates, others happy to be known as squarsons. A parson could stand on his freehold and provide raw material for Trollope to idolise. Others as well as churchwardens and sextons came to play an increasing role until something resembling democratic participation became the rule.
From the 1830s other changes became evident. Societies – for the Reformation of Manners, for the export of the English brands of Christianity (following the lead of a Baptist) and for the promotion of various pressure-groups (as we should now say) – took control of aspects of the Established Church and other churches that had hitherto been in the hands of bishops and landowners. The Church of the English people came to be characterised by something more than mute deference.
However, as we stand on the brink of a new era there are some hopeful signs – green shoots as pundits like to call them. Old ways have been, against all the odds, rediscovered. Something better than apparently unstoppable prosperity has come to seem desirable. Folk religion if not revealed religion, is alive and kicking. See floral tributes at road accident scenes. This has been accompanied by the discovery that, if it has proved possible to observe if not to attend public worship in the nearest parish church, it is also possible to view if not to take part in worship in other locations. An element of competition is now part of the panorama of Christian worship. Consumer choice has been given a new lease of life.
We are talking about nothing more or less than the survival of the Christian faith. The grace of God will doubtless be more effective than our limited endeavours. That may mean that we shall find ourselves switching our attention from the institutional Church to the Gospel message. If that is indeed the case, then we shall have much to be thankful for. But where is the C.S. Lewis who will speak to this generation?
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We can all associate with these emotions and in present situation, beauty and hair are a luxury.