What beer drinking can teach Richard Dawkins and Tom Holland about ‘Cultural Christianity’

The news that Richard Dawkins has declared for “cultural Christianity” has excited many Christians. One wonders why.

Like other cultural Christians such as historian Tom Holland and activist and erstwhile New Atheist Ayaan Ali Hirsi, the professor is warm in his praise of Christian values. He says that Christianity is the best religion, though he is not a believer, adding that there is an important distinction to be drawn between accepting what Christianity tells us about the nature of God and His relationship with humankind, and accepting Christianity as a place holder for values such as tolerance, forgiveness, patience and kindness.

Yet while we can see what he and the others are getting at, it is difficult to quell the thought that Dawkins badly misunderstands the word “culture”. He takes it to mean something along the lines of the arts and customs of – and that are inspired by – Christianity.

Dawkins is saying that by birth and through education he has been brought up to accept many Christian values, many of which he approves. But he does not accept all of those values (the value of piety, for example), nor does he accept the metaphysical underpinnings of those values.

This understanding of the word “cultural” neglects its classical roots – which include the ideas of bestowing attention on, caring for, tending and raising up. Only when this deeper meaning is neglected can we suppose that Christian culture can somehow be separated from belief in God. But isn’t this rather like saying that the culture of beer drinking can be separated from the experience of beer drinking?

How might such an approach to beer drinking work? As cultural beer drinkers, we would have to begin by admitting that beer drinking can cause people to behave very badly. Nonetheless, we might allow that there is much to be said for it on other grounds than it being a means to intoxication. We might approve of the fine art of brewing and be happy to know that some people take pleasure in the taste of beer.

We could applaud the role beer drinking plays in building community by bringing disparate groups of people together to enjoy frothing pints in the warm glow of log fires in country pubs up and down the land.

We could acknowledge that beer drinking can help otherwise shy and retiring types to overcome their reticence and so join good-humoured chat with their fellow human persons. We could recognise that beer might be an excellent accompaniment to different kinds of food – from the humble ploughman/ person’s lunch to the more sophisticated beer-battered fish and chips.

We could allow ourselves to be pleased to know that beer production provides employment to countless tens of thousands of people in many different professions – not just those directly involved in beer production but all those other healthy activities such as growing and harvesting the wheat and hops, or cooperating and providing the materials for the barrels in which the beer is brewed, or in making the bottles and labels, in transporting and wholesaling, in retailing and pint-pulling – and what about those creative types who dream up advertising and marketing campaigns?

The cultural beer drinker has much to applaud.

We could go further. We could imagine cultural beer enthusiasts holding festivals to celebrate the art and custom of beer making and consumption. Local friendly associations might meet weekly to gather outside country pubs in the summer to look on in curiosity, mirthlessly even, at huddled groups of actual beer drinkers mournfully sipping their pints of mild and bitter, careful not to let their tongues loose in case they are overheard offending the cultural beer-drinkers’ modesty while tatter-coated Morris folk add to the charm of the scene quaintly stepping to the accompaniment of fiddle and melodeon.

Come to think of it, we could extend our cultural appreciation to lots of different activities. We could, perhaps, approve and celebrate even quite mundane things like the culture of procreation. All by ourselves, we might watch films of people going through the motions of generation without having to leave the comfort of our armchairs except to reach for the kitchen roll to wipe away our appreciative tears.

Already, there are surely many who appreciate religions other than the one they grew up with. Here we might think of the religion of those peoples indigenous to the Americas who, though given to tearing the still-beating hearts out of those sacrificed to the gods, nevertheless produced many strange and wonderful artefacts, including of course the remarkable pyramids on which these sacrifices were made. After all, one can admire these without necessarily condoning the purposes for which they were constructed.

The great thing about culture as appreciation of different arts and customs is, of course, that we don’t have to sully ourselves with the thing itself. But it’s all hopeless, of course. A culture that is merely admired, is a culture that will quickly die.

Culture demands activity, attention, effort and, ultimately, the giving of self over to it. There is a chance you will throw up at the taste of beer, or that you will become so inebriated that you make a fool of yourself, but something has to be risked.

So let’s hear no more of cultural Christianity. If there is to be Christianity at all, let it be full-throated. Let it be the cathedral-building, crusading kind – not necessarily in the sense of conquering foreign lands but in the sense of taking the cross and being willing to die for it. We don’t need the sympathy of Dawkins and his kind.

Photo: Frenchman Augustin Mary takes a sip of ‘Papst-Bier’ (Papal Beer) after attending Mass during World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, 17 August 2005. (Photo credit THOMAS LOHNES/DDP/AFP via Getty Images.)

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