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I come from three generations
of Anglican clergy.

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Half a century ago, my father
was parish priest here in Suffolk.

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He was a good and faithful priest,
much loved by his congregation.

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My family lived in a huge Georgian
rectory just up the hill from here.

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When my father retired,
the Church sold the house.

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Now the parson lives
in another village

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and there has been a woman priest
in charge, and that would have
surprised my father 50 years ago.

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His was still the
Church of Christendom

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which had endured since the time of
the Emperor Constantine the Great.

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But even as a boy,
I could see that the sort of church
and society he served was dying.

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Now I'd describe myself not so much
as a Christian, but as a
candid friend of Christianity.

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My own life story makes me a symbol
of something distinctive about
Western Christianity - a scepticism,

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a tendency to doubt, which has
transformed Western culture
and transformed Christianity.

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Where did that change come from?

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In our final programme we try to
understand recent Christian history
and where it goes next.

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For 2,000 years the Christian answer
to the big questions of existence

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was faith in God
as revealed in Jesus Christ.

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That made sense of life and death.

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It taught right from wrong.

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But the recent history of
Christianity has been described

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as a sea of faith ebbing away
before the relentless advance

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of science, reason and progress.

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It's actually
a much more surprising story.

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The tide of faith, perversely,
flows back in,

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for Christianity has
a remarkable resilience.

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In crisis, it's rediscovered deep
and enduring truths about itself.

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And that may even be
a clue to its future.

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I've lived in Oxford since 1995,
Fellow of St Cross College and
professor in the theology faculty.

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'Our local pub is
the Eagle and Child,

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'which can actually claim a bit part
in Christian history, and not just
because I drink here.

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'Around the time I was growing up
in Suffolk,

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'this was the regular haunt of
writers CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien
and their friends.

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'Devout Christians though they were,
these writers were asking
questions about their faith.'

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Thank you very much.

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'When CS Lewis published
a collection of essays
on Christian themes

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'he gave it the title,
God In The Dock.

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'That's a good description of
the way in which Western culture

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'has increasingly
put the Christian God on trial.'

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Of course, doubt is
a fundamental part of religion -

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the Bible's full of it.

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The Old Testament is shot through
with doubt,

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though in its stories
doubters tend to feel God's wrath,

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like Adam and Eve when they doubted
that it was a really bad idea

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to eat from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil.

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But something odd
happened in Western Europe.

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Doubt has chipped away at
the very fabric of Christianity,
Catholic and Protestant,

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at times threatening
to dynamite its foundations.

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We can trace this scepticism
back to the period known
as the Enlightenment,

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when western Europeans began
posing questions about the power of
monarchs, the power of clergy,

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above all, the power of God.

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Conventional wisdom
has us believe that

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the Enlightenment began with the
French philosophes in the elegant
salons of 18th-century Paris.

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But I'll show you that it was
in Amsterdam 100 years earlier
that God was first put in the dock.

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In the 17th century, Amsterdam
boasted an economic and social
tolerance unequalled in Europe.

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This was a proud and cosmopolitan
boomtown,

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a paradise for traders,
but also a marketplace for ideas.

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A place where people sought refuge
from religious
and political persecution.

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A brilliant young philosopher
who lived in the city was to change
the rules of Western religion.

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Baruch Spinoza
belonged to a well-established
refugee community here.

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They were Sephardic Jews
who had been expelled from

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Spain and Portugal after
the fall of Muslim Granada in 1492.

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This was their synagogue,
once at the heart of a thriving,
tolerated Jewish Quarter.

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You get a sense of the excitement
that these people must have felt,

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that suddenly they could build,
just like a mainstream community.

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Here they are, free at last.

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Coming from England, this
building is pleasingly familiar.

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It's just like one of the parish
churches which Sir Christopher Wren
was building in London

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at the same time in the 1670s.
You've got all the elements.

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You've got the galleries,
the dark woodwork, the whitewash,

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those great, clear windows
with the light streaming in.

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And yet, of course, it's also Dutch.

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A lovely touch, I think,
is on the floor.

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Sand, to deaden the sound
as people shuffle in.

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For many Jews, coming to Amsterdam
meant rediscovering the riches of

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their tradition, building
a beautiful synagogue like this.

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But other refugees
remembered their sufferings.

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They remembered
the Spanish Inquisition.

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For them, all religion became
tainted by the same crazy dogmatism
which had fuelled the Inquisition.

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Baruch Spinoza felt like

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that, and he went so far
as to question faith itself.

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He did not believe in God
as a supernatural, divine being.

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Nor did he believe in
the immortality of the soul,
or the existence of miracles.

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Yet Spinoza's God hadn't
disappeared from the world entirely.

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For Spinoza,
God and nature were one.

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The philosopher was a gentle,
courteous, austere figure

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who made his living
grinding lenses for spectacles.

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But to his enemies
he was an evil monster.

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In 1656 his relations with
the Amsterdam Jewish community
reached breaking point.

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He refused an offer of
1,000 florins to keep quiet.

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At the age of 24 he was expelled
from the Amsterdam synagogue
without possibility of return.

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This is actually the order for his
expulsion, "Contra Baruch Espinoza."

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"Against Baruch Spinoza."

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At the time,
Jews and Christians alike thought
his views blasphemous and heretical.

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But that didn't stop him writing,
even though his chances of
getting published were slim.

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In fact his most startling work only
appeared after his death in 1677.

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This book is the first edition in
Dutch of the writings of Spinoza.

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Very brave Dutch publisher
to publish this as early as 1677.

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But still not brave enough
to put Spinoza's full name
on the title page.

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It's too controversial,
so just BDS - Baruch de Spinoza.

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I see Baruch Spinoza
as the original doubter,

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the man who first dared to break
with the past and question
whether God was the answer.

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This was the beginning of that
special phenomenon of the Western
Enlightenment, an open scepticism

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as to whether there can be
definitive truths in sacred books.

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In his lifetime Spinoza was treated
as a dangerous eccentric.

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A contemporary of his in England
also raised fundamental doubts
about the nature of God...

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..but he is celebrated
as a national hero.

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His enquiries were in a field which
they called natural philosophy.

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It's what we call science.

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Up until the 17th century,
if you were really clever
you had studied theology.

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Now, natural philosophers looked at
heaven and earth and explained them,

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not through the Bible,
but through observation.

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They set up their own
college of research in London

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which became The Royal Society,
and its most illustrious
President was Sir Isaac Newton.

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There's a famous tale about
Newton's breakthrough in physics.

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He's said to have been hit
on the head by an apple,

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and the apple led him to question
the common understanding of God
and the universe.

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Here is the first real biography of
Newton, written by William Stukeley,

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and there's that splendid story
about the apple and gravity.

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That's right. There are actually
various versions of this story,

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one of which involves a leaf falling
from a tree, but I think an apple,

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because of its biblical associations,

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might well have appealed to
Newton more as a good story.

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I see, so he's moulding
a scientific discovery
in the pattern of a biblical story?

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That's right and of course, he's also
moulding a Newton mythology.

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Newton is celebrated as
a hero of science, but in no way
was he an enemy of religion.

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Like Spinoza,
he radically rethought it.

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He took the Bible very seriously,
but on his own terms.

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He spent as much energy
brooding on the prophecies

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of the Last Days in
the Book of Revelation as he did on
the nature of gravity.

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And he insisted
that the universe was run

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by laws laid down by the Creator God

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who had then made the decision to
leave the world to its own devices.

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Newton's God was becoming
different from the God of the Bible.

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For one thing, his God was rational,
like a natural philosopher,
and perhaps for the time being,

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just as shut away in his study or
laboratory, whatever he might
do at the end of time.

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There were plenty of people,
including churchmen in rational,

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practical Protestant England,
who thought that what Isaac Newton
said made sense.

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Perhaps that's because,
unlike Spinoza, he kept some of
his wilder ideas to himself.

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But in Catholic France,
the same thoughts had
a very different impact.

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Here it wasn't just
God who was put in the dock.

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It was also the Catholic Church.

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In the coffee houses of
18th-century Paris, you could meet
a new kind of philosopher.

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These were men of the world -
journalists, playwrights and critics

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- and they were united in
their hatred of the prejudice
and fanaticism

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which
they saw all around them in the
in the sacred monarchy of France.

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Their king was
an absolute monarch who insisted

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that his power came from God
and expected the Church to agree.

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Since the reign of Louis XIV,
a particularly intolerant version of
Roman Catholicism had triumphed.

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With that background,
the philosophes emphasised
ever more fiercely

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the need for religious toleration,
freedom of thought and equality.

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Take the best-known name of them
all, Voltaire -

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the pen-name of Francois Marie
Arouet, a French notary's son
who just couldn't stop writing.

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I'm told that he came here
to Le Procope every day

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and drank 40 cups of a coffee
and chocolate mixture.

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Amazing he lived to a ripe old age.

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When he did die in 1778, aged 84,

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he was denied a Christian burial.

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Today, Voltaire's remains are
laid to rest here in this mausoleum.

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The Pantheon. No better symbol of
what the Enlightenment might mean.

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Because this started life
as a very expensive church,
built by a French King, Louis XV.

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Now God has been banished
and the place is a huge holding pen

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for the most illustrious corpses
in the French Republic.

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Voltaire is one of the most famous
of the dead in the Pantheon crypt.

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Revered as one of the
leading prophets of doubt...

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he'd waged war
against the Catholic Church with
brilliant wit and savage irony.

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He hated
what he saw as its authoritarianism,
superstition and dogmatic rigidity.

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00:15:16,450 --> 00:15:21,810
But beyond that, he also
attacked the idea of a just God.

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At first, Voltaire subscribed to the
idea of a benevolent creator God,

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a referee who makes decisions
about human morality and justice.

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00:15:30,770 --> 00:15:38,650
And even in his 70s, he said,
"If God did not exist, it
would be necessary to invent him."

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That does suggest that we need God,
but it's still pretty cynical.

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However, in his own mind,
Voltaire had already condemned God,

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his sentence provoked
by a horrifying natural disaster

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00:16:01,010 --> 00:16:05,010
which chose the most
incongruous moment to strike.

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It happened in Lisbon in 1755.
A massive earthquake

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caught the whole city in church
on a high festival,

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candles blazing in every corner.

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Churches and people were crushed
or burned and soon the whole city
was in ruins and on fire.

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When survivors struggled
to safety on the waterfront,

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a massive tsunami
rushed towards them.

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00:16:32,130 --> 00:16:34,370
Thousands were drowned.

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00:16:36,650 --> 00:16:39,450
Where was a loving God
in this monstrous accident?

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Voltaire was appalled by those
who believed the earthquake to be

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00:16:54,730 --> 00:16:57,410
part of God's divine plan
in a perfect world.

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00:16:59,650 --> 00:17:04,490
His response was a scathing
satirical novel, Candide.

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00:17:07,170 --> 00:17:10,490
Candide is an innocent fool -
that's what his name means.

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00:17:10,490 --> 00:17:15,170
His tutor is the pointlessly
optimistic Dr Pangloss,

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00:17:15,170 --> 00:17:18,850
whose catchphrase is,
"All is for the best

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00:17:18,850 --> 00:17:22,090
"in the best of all possible
worlds."

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00:17:22,090 --> 00:17:27,730
The story ends
with Candide realising
just how wrong Pangloss is.

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00:17:35,810 --> 00:17:40,410
Voltaire is the extreme example of a
mood which seems to me to represent

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00:17:40,410 --> 00:17:45,650
the most special, unusual thing
about Enlightenment culture.

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00:17:45,650 --> 00:17:48,490
It constantly stands back
from itself,

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00:17:48,490 --> 00:17:54,450
scrutinising, comparing, examining
objectively from every angle.

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00:17:54,450 --> 00:17:57,090
No belief is exempt.

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00:17:57,090 --> 00:18:00,090
Every assumption
carries a health warning.

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00:18:01,690 --> 00:18:07,090
There are many good things about
this. It can produce a sanity,
a healthy scepticism,

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00:18:07,090 --> 00:18:13,970
and it produces a self-confidence
which has made Western civilisation
one of the most dynamic in history.

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Ah, formidable. C'est moi.

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00:18:22,730 --> 00:18:26,090
But as Voltaire himself
forcefully suggested,

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00:18:26,090 --> 00:18:30,450
it's never a good idea to be too
optimistic about human beings.

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00:18:30,450 --> 00:18:34,290
His scepticism,
in the wrong hands, was twisted

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00:18:34,290 --> 00:18:39,010
and used to annihilate God and
the whole of Catholic Christianity.

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00:18:45,010 --> 00:18:51,330
France celebrates the most iconic
moment in its history on 14th July.

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00:18:51,330 --> 00:18:58,890
On that day, in 1789, the storming
of the Bastille heralded the
beginning of the French Revolution.

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00:18:58,890 --> 00:19:04,010
All over Europe,
there was enthusiasm
at the news of revolution.

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00:19:04,010 --> 00:19:07,090
"Bliss was it
in that dawn to be alive,"

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00:19:07,090 --> 00:19:10,690
was how William Wordsworth
remembered it,
looking back on his youth.

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00:19:12,370 --> 00:19:18,130
You could be forgiven, in 1789,
for thinking that the ideals of the
Enlightenment had been realised.

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00:19:20,090 --> 00:19:24,210
Liberty, equality and brotherhood
were within reach.

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00:19:32,330 --> 00:19:35,650
But standing in the way
were deeply entrenched

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00:19:35,650 --> 00:19:39,450
social and political privileges
embodied in the French monarchy

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00:19:39,450 --> 00:19:44,730
and those that had supported it
for the past 1,500 years -

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00:19:44,730 --> 00:19:49,090
the aristocracy, of course,
but also the Catholic Church.

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00:20:04,530 --> 00:20:07,410
While the Church had been
only an object of ridicule

216
00:20:07,410 --> 00:20:09,210
for the "philosophes",

217
00:20:09,210 --> 00:20:16,730
revolutionaries now had the power
actually to strip the Church
hierarchy of its land and wealth.

218
00:20:16,730 --> 00:20:19,010
At first, many lower clergy,

219
00:20:19,010 --> 00:20:21,810
who'd been excluded from
such wealth and privilege,

220
00:20:21,810 --> 00:20:26,530
enthusiastically backed
the revolution in reforming
a system with obvious faults.

221
00:20:26,530 --> 00:20:31,410
But relations soon soured
when the revolutionaries began
confiscating centuries-worth

222
00:20:31,410 --> 00:20:37,210
of Church properties and interfering
in Church government far more than
the Bourbon monarchy had ever done.

223
00:20:44,170 --> 00:20:48,890
What began as an end to privilege
quickly degenerated.

224
00:20:52,130 --> 00:20:55,410
The evolution began
to show its dark side.

225
00:20:57,010 --> 00:21:00,650
The snickering scepticism
of the French "philosophes"

226
00:21:00,650 --> 00:21:04,530
was seized upon by the
revolutionaries and radicalised

227
00:21:04,530 --> 00:21:10,650
against the Church with a scale
and speed which was horrifying.

228
00:21:10,650 --> 00:21:17,170
These are the remains
of more than 100 priests
murdered on 2nd September, 1792.

229
00:21:17,170 --> 00:21:23,210
They were hacked down or shot
in the grounds of this
Carmelite convent in Paris.

230
00:21:23,210 --> 00:21:29,090
The September massacres spread,
and over the next few years,
thousands of Catholics were killed

231
00:21:29,090 --> 00:21:32,090
resisting the revolution
in the name of their faith.

232
00:21:38,290 --> 00:21:42,330
The revolution tried to destroy
Christianity.

233
00:21:42,330 --> 00:21:49,810
Before 1789, there were no fewer
than 40,000 French parishes
celebrating the Mass.

234
00:21:49,810 --> 00:21:55,250
By 1794, only 150 were left.

235
00:21:57,450 --> 00:22:02,570
The French army seized Rome and
imprisoned the Pope, Pius VI.

236
00:22:06,410 --> 00:22:12,930
The revolutionaries even came up
with a substitute ideal, one they
hoped would inspire people to die

237
00:22:12,930 --> 00:22:19,610
for the revolution in the way that
those priests had died for Christ.

238
00:22:19,610 --> 00:22:23,170
This new cause was liberty,
equality and fraternity.

239
00:22:23,170 --> 00:22:28,290
And it made up its own new religion,
a pick-and-mix from ancient
Greece and Rome.

240
00:22:28,290 --> 00:22:32,850
On a stage in Notre Dame, an actress
posed as the Goddess of Reason.

241
00:22:32,850 --> 00:22:37,290
She didn't last long. So much
for the victory of rationality.

242
00:22:41,570 --> 00:22:47,650
The French Revolution
just could not wipe out the hold
which Christianity had over people.

243
00:22:53,130 --> 00:23:00,210
In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte
took over the French Republic
in a coup d'etat.

244
00:23:00,210 --> 00:23:05,610
And at the centre of his
blueprint for the future
was a fresh deal with Catholicism.

245
00:23:05,610 --> 00:23:11,770
Napoleon had grasped a truth
about the Church which had
escaped the revolutionaries.

246
00:23:11,770 --> 00:23:16,010
It was not just a plaything
for cynical kings and noblemen.

247
00:23:16,010 --> 00:23:20,210
It gave meaning to the lives
of the poor and helpless.

248
00:23:20,210 --> 00:23:23,730
For the Catholic Church, the
19th century became a great age

249
00:23:23,730 --> 00:23:27,410
of devotional intensity,
even expansion.

250
00:23:45,090 --> 00:23:48,970
This cathedral in Boulogne was
totally destroyed in the Revolution.

251
00:23:48,970 --> 00:23:51,370
Now they slowly rebuilt it
in the baroque style,

252
00:23:51,370 --> 00:23:52,810
and they intended its dome

253
00:23:52,810 --> 00:23:56,130
to be the tallest in the world
after St Peter's in Rome.

254
00:24:04,650 --> 00:24:10,370
And while church domes got higher,
so did the claims of the papacy.

255
00:24:10,370 --> 00:24:16,050
In 1814, the Pope had been
swept back in triumph to Rome.

256
00:24:16,050 --> 00:24:22,330
The great powers of Europe had seen
that Catholicism revealed a power
greater than theirs.

257
00:24:31,410 --> 00:24:39,010
In spite of the Enlightenment and
Revolution, the Catholic Church
had re-emerged stronger than ever.

258
00:24:39,010 --> 00:24:43,570
These are the Benedictine monks
of St Wandrille in Normandy.

259
00:24:43,570 --> 00:24:46,610
Late in the 19th century, they
came back home to their monastery,

260
00:24:46,610 --> 00:24:52,490
desecrated during the Revolution,
the church destroyed.

261
00:24:54,050 --> 00:24:58,050
But here they are, living the same
life as medieval monks before them.

262
00:25:00,730 --> 00:25:04,730
Except now they worship
in a converted barn.

263
00:25:04,730 --> 00:25:07,810
Do you feel this is a victory
over the French Revolution?

264
00:25:07,810 --> 00:25:13,810
I don't know if we should be talking
about victories over the French
Revolution, but I think it's that...

265
00:25:13,810 --> 00:25:19,690
we've sort of managed
to get over a trauma

266
00:25:19,690 --> 00:25:23,290
that affected the Church
as much as the State.

267
00:25:23,290 --> 00:25:31,810
And modern France is internally
divided, and I think every Frenchman
in a way is internally divided,

268
00:25:31,810 --> 00:25:34,050
even though they
don't all realise it.

269
00:25:36,090 --> 00:25:41,850
And what we've managed to get
is a way of living with our past.

270
00:25:41,850 --> 00:25:44,370
So a happy ending?

271
00:25:44,370 --> 00:25:46,210
Almost. Almost?

272
00:25:46,210 --> 00:25:48,250
Because, of course,

273
00:25:48,250 --> 00:25:52,210
there's never a really definitive
happy ending in this life.

274
00:25:53,930 --> 00:25:55,530
MONKS CHANT

275
00:26:09,050 --> 00:26:16,930
That surprising revival of monastic
life showed that Catholicism
wasn't just about power and wealth.

276
00:26:16,930 --> 00:26:21,930
It was also about spiritual growth
through humility and prayer.

277
00:26:24,810 --> 00:26:29,130
Perhaps easy for monks and nuns
in their stillness to see this.

278
00:26:29,130 --> 00:26:31,010
But there was still a danger

279
00:26:31,010 --> 00:26:36,970
that the Christian Church might
accept its new triumph too easily.

280
00:26:36,970 --> 00:26:43,570
Because the questions which Spinoza,
Newton and Voltaire had raised
had not gone away.

281
00:26:43,570 --> 00:26:46,650
Catholics and Protestants alike
could not avoid hearing

282
00:26:46,650 --> 00:26:52,850
the insistent voices of puzzlement
and conscientious doubt

283
00:26:52,850 --> 00:26:59,650
and these now focused more and more
on the very basis of
Christian faith, the Bible.

284
00:27:07,290 --> 00:27:11,810
This is the little medieval town
of Tubingen in Germany.

285
00:27:11,810 --> 00:27:15,450
Theologians at the famous
Protestant Seminary here

286
00:27:15,450 --> 00:27:15,650
set out to show the enlightened
world that Christianity was true.

287
00:27:15,770 --> 00:27:20,530
set out to show the enlightened
world that Christianity was true.

288
00:27:22,690 --> 00:27:25,050
They were analytical.
They were sceptical.

289
00:27:25,050 --> 00:27:30,490
And in 1835, the work of
one young man in particular,

290
00:27:30,490 --> 00:27:35,210
David Friedrich Strauss, turned
the eyes of all Europe to Tubingen.

291
00:27:39,770 --> 00:27:46,370
Here, in what was once
the University Library,
Strauss wrote an audacious book,

292
00:27:46,370 --> 00:27:50,850
a biography entitled The Life
Of Jesus Critically Examined.

293
00:27:52,410 --> 00:27:55,010
What he wanted to do was to prove
that Jesus really had lived and

294
00:27:55,010 --> 00:28:01,330
preached, but his Jesus was not
the only begotten Son of God,
was not more than a man.

295
00:28:04,090 --> 00:28:08,610
And the Bible became
a human creation
like the plays of Shakespeare.

296
00:28:08,610 --> 00:28:13,330
Its truths were the truths
of Hamlet or King Lear.

297
00:28:13,330 --> 00:28:16,530
That is truth,
but it is not historical truth.

298
00:28:22,770 --> 00:28:29,330
Strauss robbed Jesus of his divinity
and denied the Bible its authority.

299
00:28:29,330 --> 00:28:35,370
It was a book among many books,
and the New Testament narratives

300
00:28:35,370 --> 00:28:38,530
were essentially works
of theological symbolism.

301
00:28:40,090 --> 00:28:44,730
Without intending to, Strauss had
struck at the heart of Christianity.

302
00:28:44,730 --> 00:28:48,170
Strauss's ideas wrecked his career.

303
00:28:48,170 --> 00:28:53,050
He was sacked from his lectureship
here in Tubingen just a few weeks
after his book was published.

304
00:28:53,050 --> 00:28:55,810
And when he was proposed
as Professor of Theology

305
00:28:55,810 --> 00:29:01,210
in the University of Zurich,
there were riots in the streets
and they couldn't appoint him.

306
00:29:01,210 --> 00:29:06,370
We shouldn't feel too sorry
for him because he did get his
professorial salary for life.

307
00:29:06,370 --> 00:29:10,770
But by the end, he'd lost any
sense of the truth of Christianity

308
00:29:10,770 --> 00:29:14,690
and he found the idea
of an afterlife meaningless.

309
00:29:16,370 --> 00:29:22,970
I find Strauss one of the most
compelling voices among those who
question traditional Christianity,

310
00:29:22,970 --> 00:29:29,490
because I, too, am a professor
and I deal with hundreds
of books every year.

311
00:29:29,490 --> 00:29:32,730
If the truth of God is based on a
book, and you start viewing

312
00:29:32,730 --> 00:29:37,690
that book like any other,
then truth is in trouble.

313
00:29:37,690 --> 00:29:42,850
I, too, need to be persuaded
that the Bible is different.

314
00:29:42,850 --> 00:29:48,450
And that's the main reason
why I can only be a candid friend
of Christianity.

315
00:29:57,530 --> 00:30:03,450
In less than two centuries,
the truths of the Western Christian
Church had been put on trial.

316
00:30:03,450 --> 00:30:09,050
Newton challenged the idea of
a God who intervenes in the world,

317
00:30:09,050 --> 00:30:12,530
Voltaire the idea of a just God,

318
00:30:12,530 --> 00:30:16,730
revolutionaries questioned the
authority of the Catholic Church,

319
00:30:16,730 --> 00:30:20,210
Strauss that of the Bible.

320
00:30:20,210 --> 00:30:27,970
Later, Charles Darwin found
evidence in the fossil record
to confirm those doubts.

321
00:30:27,970 --> 00:30:31,410
And yet Christianity didn't crumple.

322
00:30:35,250 --> 00:30:39,010
The ideals of the
Enlightenment had gradually become

323
00:30:39,010 --> 00:30:45,930
the creed of respectable
top-hatted historians, scientists
and politicians, even bishops,

324
00:30:45,930 --> 00:30:51,410
part of a cheerful Victorian belief
in the steady march of progress.

325
00:30:51,410 --> 00:30:55,410
And the Church still seemed
to occupy the moral high ground.

326
00:30:55,410 --> 00:30:59,490
It could still lay claim
to one truth -

327
00:30:59,490 --> 00:31:02,650
knowing right from wrong.

328
00:31:04,250 --> 00:31:09,210
Mind you, in one half
of the Western Church,
there was a last-ditch effort

329
00:31:09,210 --> 00:31:12,410
to resist the questions
of the Enlightenment.

330
00:31:14,050 --> 00:31:21,770
The Catholic Church felt
threatened by academic challenges
to the authority of the Bible.

331
00:31:21,770 --> 00:31:26,370
And its reaction was just to say no.

332
00:31:28,490 --> 00:31:35,850
In 1907, Pope Pius X denounced
what he saw as a conspiracy
to overthrow Church teaching,

333
00:31:37,410 --> 00:31:41,890
and he branded it "Modernism".

334
00:31:41,890 --> 00:31:48,210
Catholics unfortunate enough to be
seen as a Modernist found themselves
treated as enemies of the faith.

335
00:31:53,210 --> 00:31:58,050
The viciousness of the official
campaign against Modernism
cast a long shadow across

336
00:31:58,050 --> 00:32:00,930
much Catholic assessment
of new directions in doctrine.

337
00:32:00,930 --> 00:32:07,690
The Catholic Church felt embattled,
and the 20th century gave it
plenty more reasons for that,

338
00:32:07,690 --> 00:32:15,530
for Pius X had missed the real,
far more terrifying Modernism -
the modernism of war.

339
00:32:37,810 --> 00:32:41,410
The events of the 20th century
upstaged the French Revolution

340
00:32:41,410 --> 00:32:48,450
and unforeseen horrors unfolded
which would transform society,
politics and Christianity itself.

341
00:32:53,650 --> 00:32:59,090
The murder of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
on a Sarajevo street in June, 1914

342
00:32:59,090 --> 00:33:04,930
dragged the empires of Europe
into the first true World War.

343
00:33:14,770 --> 00:33:17,130
The visceral experience
of the Great War

344
00:33:17,130 --> 00:33:22,810
began to undercut the one remaining
unquestioned truth of Christianity -

345
00:33:22,810 --> 00:33:26,130
its claim to moral integrity.

346
00:33:32,130 --> 00:33:37,410
Men who'd been here
had seen horrors that their families
back home simply couldn't imagine.

347
00:33:54,130 --> 00:33:58,410
It's green and quiet now.
There's so much that's missing -

348
00:33:58,410 --> 00:34:01,290
the mud, rats, the noise,
the booming,

349
00:34:01,290 --> 00:34:07,290
above all the human fear
and the sense of futility at going
again and again over this ground.

350
00:34:07,290 --> 00:34:08,770
That's all gone.

351
00:34:12,410 --> 00:34:16,650
This little book is called
"Going To The Front:

352
00:34:16,650 --> 00:34:19,850
"The Soldier's Daily Remembrancer",

353
00:34:19,850 --> 00:34:23,530
and it was issued by the Open Air
Mission of London to all soldiers.

354
00:34:23,530 --> 00:34:31,130
And what it does is to try
and associate Christianity,
Jesus, with the English cause.

355
00:34:31,130 --> 00:34:34,570
For instance,
what about this for a hymn?

356
00:34:34,570 --> 00:34:37,770
"Yield not to temptation,
for yielding is sin

357
00:34:37,770 --> 00:34:40,890
"Each victory will help you
some other to win

358
00:34:40,890 --> 00:34:44,330
"Fight manfully onward,
dark passion subdue

359
00:34:44,330 --> 00:34:47,650
"Look ever to Jesus.
He'll carry you through."

360
00:34:52,010 --> 00:34:57,690
It makes for chilling reading,
particularly here in a place

361
00:34:57,690 --> 00:35:01,690
where Christians were urged on
to kill other Christians

362
00:35:01,690 --> 00:35:04,970
equally reassured
that God was on THEIR side.

363
00:35:04,970 --> 00:35:11,010
It was hardly the first time
that God had been used
as a divine recruiting officer,

364
00:35:11,010 --> 00:35:14,730
but it was the first
global slaughter in His name.

365
00:35:14,730 --> 00:35:18,770
Ten million dead in five years.

366
00:35:22,090 --> 00:35:27,570
We've come here to Etaples,
because this is the biggest British
Empire war cemetery in France.

367
00:35:27,570 --> 00:35:30,890
You've got people from India,
Australia, Canada, Africa here.

368
00:35:30,890 --> 00:35:34,290
There are also some Germans,
and I notice that they're relegated

369
00:35:34,290 --> 00:35:39,410
to the edge of the cemetery
along with the native troops
of the British Empire.

370
00:35:39,410 --> 00:35:43,330
This is a World War and it's death
on an industrial scale,

371
00:35:43,330 --> 00:35:45,170
and not just death in the trenches,

372
00:35:45,170 --> 00:35:50,890
because most people buried here
actually died in hospital,
slowly, from their wounds.

373
00:36:05,690 --> 00:36:09,770
This is a wayside crucifix
very near the front line.

374
00:36:09,770 --> 00:36:13,890
All crucifixes show the wounds
of Christ on the cross,
but this has extra wounds,

375
00:36:13,890 --> 00:36:17,130
bullet holes, great gashes
in Christ's body.

376
00:36:17,130 --> 00:36:22,330
The First World War damaged
Christ's body in a wider sense.

377
00:36:22,330 --> 00:36:27,050
Colonial troops were brought
into a European bloodbath
which had no concern for them.

378
00:36:27,050 --> 00:36:32,210
And for many,
the moral credibility of Western
Christianity was gone for ever.

379
00:36:32,210 --> 00:36:37,530
And in Europe, a generation
lost its ideals, lost its optimism.

380
00:36:44,530 --> 00:36:48,610
But Christianity was now
confronted by a terrible challenge

381
00:36:48,610 --> 00:36:53,290
which, like the French Revolution,
threatened to destroy it entirely.

382
00:36:53,290 --> 00:36:58,930
It also blinded many Christians
to even worse moral temptation.

383
00:37:06,730 --> 00:37:13,570
The threat came from another
child of the Enlightenment,
"scientific socialism".

384
00:37:13,570 --> 00:37:17,730
In their Communist Manifesto,
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

385
00:37:17,730 --> 00:37:22,050
wrote that freedom was only possible
if religion was abolished.

386
00:37:24,050 --> 00:37:29,170
It was in 1917 that scientific
socialism was put into action.

387
00:37:31,450 --> 00:37:36,450
When the Bolsheviks seized
control of the Russian Revolution
and bent it to their will,

388
00:37:36,450 --> 00:37:41,250
they came to see the Church
as the enemy, just as the French
Revolutionaries had once done.

389
00:37:41,250 --> 00:37:46,090
And Russian communism had
far more time to behave
bestially to Christians

390
00:37:46,090 --> 00:37:49,530
than the brief decade
of the 1790s in France.

391
00:37:51,290 --> 00:37:55,530
In those years between the wars,
many Christians who feared the
spread of communism

392
00:37:55,530 --> 00:37:59,450
were inclined to look
sympathetically on
any anti-communist group.

393
00:38:00,330 --> 00:38:07,330
European Christianity was drawn into
a fatal alignment with forces which
had little time for the God of love.

394
00:38:11,410 --> 00:38:19,010
First came the papacy's deal with
Benito Mussolini, finding a place
for the Church in his Fascist Italy.

395
00:38:23,610 --> 00:38:27,730
Then with Spain's brutal
Nationalist leader General Franco,

396
00:38:27,730 --> 00:38:31,210
who could present himself as the
champion of the Catholic Church

397
00:38:31,210 --> 00:38:36,650
as his Republican enemies burned
churches and murdered priests.

398
00:38:37,850 --> 00:38:40,090
GUNSHOT

399
00:38:40,090 --> 00:38:44,130
But neither of these links with
right-wing power was as damaging

400
00:38:44,130 --> 00:38:48,890
as Christianity's entanglement with
Adolf Hitler's gospel of hatred,

401
00:38:48,890 --> 00:38:53,290
his project for an Aryan future,
National Socialism.

402
00:38:53,290 --> 00:38:57,090
It became the defining evil
of the 20th century.

403
00:39:02,090 --> 00:39:08,930
The Martin Luther Memorial Church,
in a quiet Berlin suburb,
has an uncomfortable history.

404
00:39:10,450 --> 00:39:14,610
It was planned in the 1920s by
conservative German nationalists

405
00:39:14,610 --> 00:39:19,530
to celebrate the German identity,
the legacy of Luther.

406
00:39:19,530 --> 00:39:22,570
But by the time it was actually
built in the 1930s,

407
00:39:22,570 --> 00:39:25,730
it had been hijacked by the Nazis
for their own propaganda purposes.

408
00:39:25,730 --> 00:39:29,050
So the organ was first
played at a Nuremberg Rally.

409
00:39:34,010 --> 00:39:38,410
To begin with,
Hitler wanted to bring together
the Protestant state churches,

410
00:39:38,410 --> 00:39:45,210
nearly all Lutheran,
into a single national church
based on Nazi principles.

411
00:39:45,210 --> 00:39:49,610
To get his way, he appointed
Ludwig Muller as the Reich's bishop.

412
00:39:52,490 --> 00:39:56,690
Muller was the leader of a small
group who called themselves
the German Christians.

413
00:39:56,690 --> 00:40:01,690
They purged Christianity of its
Jewish roots more radically than any
other Christian group in history.

414
00:40:01,690 --> 00:40:04,770
They said that Jesus Christ
could not have been a Jew.

415
00:40:04,770 --> 00:40:11,490
Few versions of Christianity
have openly scorned virtues
like compassion or humility,

416
00:40:11,490 --> 00:40:12,570
but they did.

417
00:40:12,570 --> 00:40:16,970
They actually called themselves
the Storm Troopers of Jesus Christ.

418
00:40:20,050 --> 00:40:23,410
All the swastikas which
decorated the church are gone,

419
00:40:23,410 --> 00:40:27,450
chiselled out of the stone-carving
and whitewashed off the ceiling.

420
00:40:27,450 --> 00:40:34,410
Yet there's enough left
to act as a reproach to Christian
collaboration with Nazism.

421
00:40:38,610 --> 00:40:43,330
But we should never forget that
there WAS Christian resistance.

422
00:40:43,330 --> 00:40:47,970
And for one fleeting,
heartening moment it came
from the papacy itself -

423
00:40:50,810 --> 00:40:58,050
a pastoral letter by Pope Pius XI
read from thousands of
pulpits on Palm Sunday 1937.

424
00:40:58,050 --> 00:41:03,010
It denounced Hitler for betraying
his assurances to the Church

425
00:41:03,010 --> 00:41:08,050
and condemned the idea
of a Christianity that
tore up its Jewish roots.

426
00:41:09,650 --> 00:41:13,010
But there was little else.

427
00:41:14,090 --> 00:41:17,490
And it was largely left to
individual Christians in Germany

428
00:41:17,490 --> 00:41:20,530
to stand up against the Nazi regime.

429
00:41:21,610 --> 00:41:29,090
I went to meet a pastor who
joined the new Confessing Church
set up to oppose the Nazis.

430
00:41:29,090 --> 00:41:33,610
He reminded me how difficult it was
to stand up to the regime.

431
00:41:35,650 --> 00:41:39,050
Conscientious objection
was not possible.

432
00:41:39,050 --> 00:41:45,890
We had one man refuse military
service and got executed.

433
00:41:45,890 --> 00:41:53,730
So I tried to preserve a
pastoral existence as a soldier.

434
00:41:53,730 --> 00:41:58,890
So what made you able to see
through this nonsense when so many
others could not see through it?

435
00:41:58,890 --> 00:42:06,610
Hitler was betraying people
in speaking in a pious way.

436
00:42:06,610 --> 00:42:14,090
He said, "The providence has
given me the task to liberate you,"

437
00:42:14,090 --> 00:42:19,850
and many who called
themselves Christians were also,

438
00:42:19,850 --> 00:42:22,730
politically at least, Nazis.

439
00:42:22,730 --> 00:42:28,410
They were just drunk by their
idolatry and by the
personality of Hitler.

440
00:42:28,410 --> 00:42:32,570
It was a secular worship,
and this was really...

441
00:42:34,130 --> 00:42:36,130
..difficult to...

442
00:42:40,170 --> 00:42:41,490
..undermine.

443
00:42:41,490 --> 00:42:44,050
But it must have been
obvious how dangerous it was

444
00:42:44,050 --> 00:42:46,930
right from the start to be
a member of the Confessing Church.

445
00:42:46,930 --> 00:42:51,730
No, you mustn't read
the history from the end.

446
00:42:52,810 --> 00:42:57,690
We did not imagine
what would be in store.

447
00:43:11,570 --> 00:43:13,490
RECORDING OF HITLER

448
00:43:43,890 --> 00:43:50,810
While the world ripped itself apart,
one of the greatest crimes against
humanity was being carried out

449
00:43:50,810 --> 00:43:54,610
with ruthless efficiency
across Europe.

450
00:43:54,610 --> 00:43:59,970
It would leave the moral
authority of the Christian Church
yet further compromised

451
00:43:59,970 --> 00:44:06,090
and expose a deep flaw
in Christianity's historic
relationship with the Jews.

452
00:44:09,450 --> 00:44:13,050
This is Auschwitz-Birkenau
in Poland,

453
00:44:13,050 --> 00:44:16,810
the largest of Hitler's
extermination camps.

454
00:44:18,810 --> 00:44:24,250
It's a cemetery of one and a half
million people without graves -

455
00:44:24,250 --> 00:44:29,410
Poles, Romanies,
homosexuals, disabled,

456
00:44:29,410 --> 00:44:32,970
but overwhelmingly Jews.

457
00:44:32,970 --> 00:44:38,770
Seven out of every ten Jews in
Europe perished in camps like this.

458
00:44:38,770 --> 00:44:43,810
It was a crime the Christian
Churches failed to resist.

459
00:44:45,530 --> 00:44:48,930
Average life expectancy in
the camp for the men was about

460
00:44:48,930 --> 00:44:53,130
five, six months,
for women about three, four months.

461
00:44:57,090 --> 00:44:59,890
Well, it's a grim place.

462
00:44:59,890 --> 00:45:03,010
Tell me how many people
would be in here.

463
00:45:03,010 --> 00:45:06,250
The SS planned that
about 700 prisoners

464
00:45:06,250 --> 00:45:09,490
will stay in one barrack
like this. Ooh.

465
00:45:15,410 --> 00:45:20,050
If there were too many for
the bunks, the prisoners
simply stayed on the floor. Yeah.

466
00:45:36,330 --> 00:45:39,290
This place is an offence
against the Christian gospel.

467
00:45:39,290 --> 00:45:45,330
I mean, it's an offence at an
obvious level - it offends against
mercy, pity, truth and love.

468
00:45:45,330 --> 00:45:48,250
But on a more profound
Christian level it offends

469
00:45:48,250 --> 00:45:54,010
against the fact that Christianity
is a story about a person, a person
who is both human and divine.

470
00:45:54,010 --> 00:45:59,850
This place was designed to rob
human beings of their personality,
to make them less than human.

471
00:46:01,450 --> 00:46:04,610
It will not do to say that
the Nazis were anti-Christian.

472
00:46:04,610 --> 00:46:10,250
It won't even do to say that Jews
died for racial reasons,
not because of their religion.

473
00:46:10,250 --> 00:46:14,850
The Nazis were able to do
their evil, destructive work
because they were so good

474
00:46:14,850 --> 00:46:18,090
at playing on myths, the myths
which lurk in people's minds.

475
00:46:18,090 --> 00:46:23,450
And this myth was that the Jews
were the killers of Christ, the
enemies of Christian civilisation.

476
00:46:23,450 --> 00:46:30,130
In that sense, Christianity
is implicated, fatally,
in the murder of the Jews.

477
00:46:39,170 --> 00:46:46,570
It's hard for me, as heir to a
thoughtful, tolerant Christianity
in England, to face up to this.

478
00:46:46,570 --> 00:46:49,610
I know that many Christians
will disagree with me

479
00:46:49,610 --> 00:46:55,890
and find this conclusion offensive,
but here I stand, I can do no other.

480
00:47:06,090 --> 00:47:10,410
In the years after the war, I was
a little boy growing up in Suffolk.

481
00:47:10,410 --> 00:47:13,770
I knew little of the
challenges facing Christianity.

482
00:47:15,410 --> 00:47:21,370
In the 1950s, church attendance
actually increased in a chastened,
frightened Europe.

483
00:47:24,130 --> 00:47:26,970
But that mood passed.

484
00:47:30,370 --> 00:47:36,330
The horrors of the first half
of the 20th century had raised
the old question Voltaire had posed

485
00:47:36,330 --> 00:47:39,530
in response to
the Lisbon earthquake.

486
00:47:39,530 --> 00:47:43,490
In Auschwitz,
where was a loving God?

487
00:47:45,090 --> 00:47:49,730
Europe was sickened by any system
which made absolute claims to truth,

488
00:47:51,210 --> 00:47:54,490
communism, fascism, Christianity.

489
00:47:56,730 --> 00:48:00,490
So it was hardly surprising that
in the second half of the century

490
00:48:00,490 --> 00:48:05,970
an unprecedented,
almost frivolous, mood
confronted European Christianity -

491
00:48:08,210 --> 00:48:10,850
religious indifference,

492
00:48:10,850 --> 00:48:13,410
apathy.

493
00:48:13,410 --> 00:48:18,450
Social changes brought about
a more relaxed attitude
to sex and marriage,

494
00:48:18,450 --> 00:48:25,130
movement between social
classes and more individual choice.

495
00:48:25,130 --> 00:48:30,050
In the face of that, fewer people
chose to spend Sunday in church.

496
00:48:32,410 --> 00:48:37,770
So what sort of Christianity
could survive such an
ebbing-away of Christendom?

497
00:48:50,530 --> 00:48:54,570
On the edge of Trafalgar Square
stands an Anglican parish church.

498
00:48:54,570 --> 00:48:58,570
It tells me a lot about what's
happened to Christianity
in the last few decades.

499
00:49:00,850 --> 00:49:05,530
On the face of it,
St Martin-in-the-Fields
is a church of the establishment -

500
00:49:05,530 --> 00:49:11,290
the parish church for the
Royal Family, the Admiralty
and Ten Downing Street.

501
00:49:11,290 --> 00:49:15,210
But that's not why
it's internationally renowned.

502
00:49:15,210 --> 00:49:21,810
St Martin's has broken new ground in
exploring what it might mean to be a
church in a secular, sceptical age.

503
00:49:21,810 --> 00:49:25,530
Historically, it's never
shied away from the controversy.

504
00:49:25,530 --> 00:49:28,250
So, between the two world wars,
it was pacifism.

505
00:49:28,250 --> 00:49:32,250
Amnesty International
was thought up in one of these pews.

506
00:49:34,690 --> 00:49:39,770
Since the war, St Martin's
has run its own social
care unit for the homeless,

507
00:49:39,770 --> 00:49:45,490
and Shelter, the charity for
the homeless, was founded
from its basement.

508
00:49:45,490 --> 00:49:50,370
It is, in fact,
a church which has taken its
own lead on the moral questions

509
00:49:50,370 --> 00:49:53,650
which shaped the last half-century.

510
00:49:53,650 --> 00:49:56,930
There's no question we're part
of the British establishment,

511
00:49:56,930 --> 00:50:00,410
and we're quite good at being
subversive and undermining it, too.

512
00:50:00,410 --> 00:50:03,810
We're next door to
South Africa House,

513
00:50:03,810 --> 00:50:05,690
and from the late 1950s onwards,

514
00:50:05,690 --> 00:50:08,650
the anti-apartheid vigil
outside South Africa House

515
00:50:08,650 --> 00:50:10,770
was supported from here,

516
00:50:10,770 --> 00:50:16,210
and it's difficult to remember
how controversial that used to be.

517
00:50:16,210 --> 00:50:22,890
But if we think back to Mrs Thatcher
talking of Nelson Mandela as a
terrorist, even in the 1980s,

518
00:50:22,890 --> 00:50:25,130
we begin to get the feel for that.

519
00:50:25,130 --> 00:50:28,890
What we hope is that we have
the courage to break new ground

520
00:50:28,890 --> 00:50:32,170
and that what mistakes we make
are made in the right direction.

521
00:50:34,410 --> 00:50:38,930
I think the biggest test facing the
Church in the last half century

522
00:50:38,930 --> 00:50:43,530
has been the revolution
in understanding gender,
sex and sexuality.

523
00:50:43,530 --> 00:50:49,050
It's the issue which really has
crystallised the three centuries
of debate since Spinoza.

524
00:50:49,050 --> 00:50:53,130
How do we humans
make moral decisions?

525
00:50:53,130 --> 00:50:56,730
Where do we find the
authority to make them?

526
00:50:56,730 --> 00:50:59,450
It's something which I've
thought about a good deal,

527
00:50:59,450 --> 00:51:03,330
being a gay man in the middle of
the Church's struggles about sex.

528
00:51:03,330 --> 00:51:05,410
What is it about
gender and sexuality?

529
00:51:05,410 --> 00:51:09,690
What is it about this issue
which has created so much
anger and conflict?

530
00:51:09,690 --> 00:51:15,890
I think you'd have to say that this
is being worked out, not just
in the Church, but in the world.

531
00:51:15,890 --> 00:51:19,210
And the length of debate
that that's taken

532
00:51:19,210 --> 00:51:24,210
from the decriminalising of
homosexuality, the equalising
of the age of consent.

533
00:51:24,210 --> 00:51:28,850
There's been a process which,
actually, the Church has not
been comfortable with.

534
00:51:28,850 --> 00:51:35,450
And the difficulty for us is,
I think, the scriptures
don't say anything

535
00:51:35,450 --> 00:51:41,090
about faithful, same-sex
relationships and, therefore,

536
00:51:41,090 --> 00:51:45,370
what's condemned in scripture
isn't what we're dealing with now.

537
00:51:45,370 --> 00:51:50,530
You're actually saying something
quite shocking - the Bible doesn't
have an answer to a major question.

538
00:51:50,530 --> 00:51:52,450
I think the Bible
does have an answer.

539
00:51:52,450 --> 00:51:55,130
That's not the same thing at all.

540
00:51:55,130 --> 00:51:58,770
I think the Bible's answer is that
what matters between human beings

541
00:51:58,770 --> 00:52:04,610
is loving, faithful,
honest relationships.

542
00:52:11,490 --> 00:52:16,330
St Martin-in-the-Fields is just
one example of how Protestant
Christians in the West

543
00:52:16,330 --> 00:52:22,130
have tried to rebuild Christian
morality with realism and humility.

544
00:52:22,130 --> 00:52:24,970
Of course, theirs is
not the only answer.

545
00:52:24,970 --> 00:52:28,330
Other churches in central London
are packed out because they proclaim

546
00:52:28,330 --> 00:52:35,370
an evangelical version of Protestant
faith, affirming old truths.

547
00:52:35,370 --> 00:52:40,730
And then there is the other
half of the Western Church -
the Church of the Pope in Rome.

548
00:52:56,610 --> 00:52:58,890
The big Catholic event
of the 20th century

549
00:52:58,890 --> 00:53:02,690
was the Second Vatican Council,
which Pope John XXIII,

550
00:53:02,690 --> 00:53:07,530
summoned to Rome
quite unexpectedly in 1962.

551
00:53:07,530 --> 00:53:12,210
Vatican II turned worship from Latin
into the languages of the people.

552
00:53:12,210 --> 00:53:15,490
It reached out to Protestant
and Orthodox fellow Christians,

553
00:53:15,490 --> 00:53:20,410
but it also apologised to
Jews for nearly two millennia
of Christian anti-Semitism.

554
00:53:22,770 --> 00:53:27,010
And in a break from the past,
Vatican II suggested that the Church

555
00:53:27,010 --> 00:53:29,770
might not have all
the answers, after all.

556
00:53:33,210 --> 00:53:38,410
30 years ago, it seemed to set
the future for Roman Catholicism,

557
00:53:38,410 --> 00:53:42,290
a spiral of change,
an experiment in faith.

558
00:53:46,610 --> 00:53:52,090
But in 1978, a Polish bishop
became Pope John Paul II.

559
00:53:52,090 --> 00:53:57,530
At Vatican II,
he had consistently voted against
all the major decisions.

560
00:54:00,890 --> 00:54:06,170
Ever since, there's been a
struggle going on for the soul
of the Catholic Church.

561
00:54:06,170 --> 00:54:09,450
The instinct of the papacy has
been to issue commands from the top,

562
00:54:09,450 --> 00:54:12,770
to reaffirm old certainties
in a changing world.

563
00:54:12,770 --> 00:54:16,370
Catholics, as much as Protestants,
are divided about the questions

564
00:54:16,370 --> 00:54:20,570
which Spinoza first
asked three centuries ago.

565
00:54:32,050 --> 00:54:38,210
In this series, I've chronicled
the history of a faith which began
with a little-known Jewish sect

566
00:54:38,210 --> 00:54:42,290
and exploded into the
biggest religion in the world.

567
00:54:44,930 --> 00:54:49,130
The history of Christianity
has been the never-ending rebirth

568
00:54:49,130 --> 00:54:53,850
of a meeting with Jesus Christ,
the resurrected Son of God.

569
00:54:56,890 --> 00:55:00,730
For some, like the Oriental and
Orthodox Churches,

570
00:55:00,730 --> 00:55:05,850
the meeting has been
through ritual, tradition or
the inner life of the mystic.

571
00:55:07,450 --> 00:55:10,970
For Western Catholics,
through obedience to the Church.

572
00:55:12,570 --> 00:55:15,770
For the Protestant Churches,
through the Bible.

573
00:55:18,210 --> 00:55:21,970
And it's the variety
which is so remarkable
in Christianity's journey.

574
00:55:21,970 --> 00:55:26,970
It's reached into every continent
and adapted to new cultures.

575
00:55:26,970 --> 00:55:30,210
That's the hallmark
of a world religion.

576
00:55:35,050 --> 00:55:39,650
So where is Christianity going in
the 21st century? What's its future?

577
00:55:39,650 --> 00:55:41,970
Well, it depends where you look.

578
00:55:46,050 --> 00:55:49,330
In my journeys around Asia,
Africa and Latin America,

579
00:55:49,330 --> 00:55:53,530
I've been struck by the sheer
exuberance of Christian life.

580
00:55:56,210 --> 00:56:00,170
The Pentecostals, in particular,
I think may surprise us.

581
00:56:00,170 --> 00:56:05,650
And in fact, they may surprise
themselves by what they find in
their own Christian adventure.

582
00:56:10,330 --> 00:56:14,850
Outside Europe,
numbers of Christians are
rising at a phenomenal pace,

583
00:56:14,850 --> 00:56:18,410
but in the West, they are falling.

584
00:56:23,970 --> 00:56:29,130
So what of the Church here,
in the Christian continent
which first discovered doubt?

585
00:56:29,130 --> 00:56:33,170
Has the Church served its
purpose here on the River Thames?

586
00:56:33,170 --> 00:56:37,130
Well, when I was young, the Thames
in London was a dead river -

587
00:56:37,130 --> 00:56:41,730
no fish, the docks closed
and mouldering, no life.

588
00:56:41,730 --> 00:56:43,690
And look at it now.

589
00:56:46,210 --> 00:56:48,890
If the history of the Church
teaches us anything,

590
00:56:48,890 --> 00:56:55,170
it's that it has an exceptional
knack for reinventing itself
in the face of fresh dangers.

591
00:56:55,170 --> 00:56:59,010
The modern world has
plenty to throw at the Church -

592
00:56:59,010 --> 00:57:03,450
scepticism, freedom, choice.

593
00:57:03,450 --> 00:57:09,970
But modernity can't escape the
oldest questions at the heart of
the messy business of being human -

594
00:57:09,970 --> 00:57:16,810
questions of right and wrong,
purpose and meaning.

595
00:57:16,810 --> 00:57:21,690
A wise old Dominican friar
once reminded me of the words
of St Thomas Aquinas.

596
00:57:21,690 --> 00:57:25,210
"God is not the answer,
he is the question."

597
00:57:25,210 --> 00:57:30,530
And as long as the Church goes on
trying to ask the question,
it will never die.

598
00:57:39,530 --> 00:57:42,970
Remember that Christianity
is a very young religion.

599
00:57:42,970 --> 00:57:49,410
It spans a mere 2,000 years out of
150,000 years of human history.

600
00:57:49,410 --> 00:57:53,610
It would be very surprising
if it had already revealed
all its secrets.

601
00:57:53,610 --> 00:57:57,610
We'll wait and see, and that's
just what Christians have been doing

602
00:57:57,610 --> 00:58:04,050
ever since they gathered as the sky
turned black in Jerusalem, at the
foot of the cross on Golgotha.

603
00:58:16,370 --> 00:58:20,450
Why not take part in
the Open University's online survey,

604
00:58:20,450 --> 00:58:28,130
"What does it mean to
be a Christian today?" at...

605
00:58:28,130 --> 00:58:29,890
And follow the links.

606
00:58:47,090 --> 00:58:51,090
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

607
00:58:51,090 --> 00:58:54,970
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk