Ribblehead viaduct brings out the zest in railway buffs. It also sets us thinking about the startling parallels between enthusiasm for the iron horse and commitment to the Christian message. This reached its apotheosis in the generation that produced Eric Treacy, Wilbert Awdry, L.T.C. Rolt and the army of enthusiasts who brought into being a genre of industrial literature that is a transport of delight. It reveals there is much in common between on the one hand those who favour Isaiah and John’s Gospel and on the other those who devour one book after another about Hornblower and Jack Aubrey. I plead guilty to being one of the many who have spent happy hours tasting both.
My immediate reaction to yet another showing of Michael Portillo’s TV rhapsody on Ribblehead was to go looking for information on the single or double track nature of the structure. I expected to find little, wondering what exactly any dispute might be about. Instead, I found myself caught up in new, mysterious vocabulary: spandrel wall integrity, imposed load, backfill height and voussoirs. My readers who, I have no doubt, are much better informed than I am, will doubtless pity my plight. The technical discussion spilled over (as Bill Bryson might have predicted) into a high-lighting of downright spite or contractors’ short-cuts in the early history of the structure. Even the grammar came under scrutiny. The intriguing word ‘slew’ and its usage provoked argument.
Even if some will label the parallel between railway enthusiasts and religious campaigners as a case of the sublime encountering the ridiculous, it is noteworthy that great religious issues within Christianity have turned upon one word, filioque, for instance, or divergent authorities, the Papacy or the Bible, for example. Huge endeavours have been set in motion when thinkers have grappled with what seemed at first to be easy enough issues. They proved to be protracted and intractable. Centuries of assiduous investigation by cloistered theologians and on-the-spot campaigners generated vocabulary, bureaucracy – and intemperance.
In both cases, however, there have been great gains. Engineering and philosophy have benefited from intense inquiry and practical outcomes. Both have produced impressive structures, with viaducts being compared to cathedrals, and names like Brunel and Stephenson becoming as familiar as Augustine and Aquinas.
But what has been called the odium theologicum (religious ill-feeling) has not endeared the Church and its message to well behaved observers. In both cases we must temper our enthusiasm with good humour and common sense. Disagreement, unavoidable as it seems, is a path that beckons for people of faith and people ready for inquiry. We can accept our differences. We can do without the venom. There are wonderful fields for all to graze.
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