Moderately extreme.

There is no such thing as moderate religious belief unless it is of a form so airy, tenuous and ill-defined as to be essentially meaningless.  We atheists have allowed ourselves to be conned into simply accepting the notion that the more common forms of religious belief can be “moderate” because we, quite rightly, agree with the suggestion that most believers do not indulge in murder, bombings, terrorism and so on. Those things are undeniably extreme. Our mistake has been to let this blind us to the fact that the other stuff is too. Most religious belief lies on a spectrum of extremism that has bombings, murder and terrorism at one end and just-plain-batshit-crazy at the other. Just-plain-batshit-crazy is not moderate. This is what we have been fooled into forgetting.

In 1971 I was twelve years old and still very much a Christian. I was a member of a fairly standard C of E church; head chorister in the really rather decent choir and newly, proudly, confirmed. Our congregation was, I suppose, an example of “moderate” Christianity. Most C of E churches back then were. Britain had not yet had any significant influx of bonkers Baptists, mad Mormons or loony Evangelicals. We had certainly not seen much in the way of Muslims. Those crazy condom-dodging Catholics were about as extreme as Christianity got, in those days.

I have in front of me the copy of the 1967 Holy Communion service I was given on the occasion of my confirmation by the Bishop of Lincoln on the 13^th December 1970. Here are some extracts.




From “Introducing the Christian Faith”

First and foremost, if you are going to train for the Christian life of the world today, you will need faith to recognize that God is God, and that you are his… Increasing fullness of truth and the limitless nature of the universe all point towards the infinity and perfection of God.

From “Introduction: My desire to come to Holy Communion”

Holy Father, I most earnestly desire

to come to this wonderful sacrament

and to enter into the presence of thy dear Son.

I want to join the whole Church

In offering this holy sacrifice of his love and faith and hope,

That thou mayest be worshipped and glorified.

I want to receive the life of thy Son

and to be marked with his character.

Help me to be recollected and unselfconscious,

that thy purpose of love may be completely fulfilled.

From “The Thanksgiving”

Let thy holy Word come upon this bread, that the bread may become the Body of the Word, and upon the cup that it may become the Blood of the Truth. And make all who communicate to receive a medicine of life for the healing of every sickness and for the strengthening of all advancement of virtue, not for condemnation, O God of Truth, and not for censure and reproach. For we have invoked thee, the Uncreated, through the Only-Begotten in Holy Spirit.

The Creed

I believe in one God the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

and of all things visible and invisible:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only-begotten Son of God,

begotten of his Father before all worlds,

God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God,

begotten, not made,

being of one substance with the Father,

by whom all things were made:

who for us men, and for our salvation

came down from heaven,

and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,

and was made man,

and was crucified for us also under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered and was buried,

and the third day he rose again

according to the scriptures,

and ascended into heaven,

and sitteth on the right hand of the Father.

And he shall come again with glory

to judge both the quick and the dead:

whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost,

the Lord, the Giver of life,

who proceedeth from the Father and the Son,

who with the Father and the Son together

is worshipped and glorified,

who spake by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
And I look for the Resurrection of the dead,
and the Life of the world to come. Amen.

From “The Preparation of the People”.

We do not presume to come to this thy table,

O merciful Lord,

trusting in our own righteousness,

but in thy manifold and great mercies.

We are not worthy so much as to gather up

the crumbs under thy table.

But thou art the same Lord,

whose nature it is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,

so to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ,

and to drink his Blood,

that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

And we were the “moderate” ones! I could post many more extracts in this vein, but I think you get the idea. This is what went on at our “moderate” Christian church: this embarrassing, pitiful chanting of magic words, the more potent of which were capitalised to give them extra power. This shameless and shameful farrago of groveling self-abasement and pleading; this contemptible, wretched, sniveling sycophancy. All for an invisible being. And then we would sing drab little songs to it. We’d get on our knees to it. We’d importune it with needy little prayers. We’d make respectful symbolic gestures every time we passed in front of its cruciform fetish on the altar. I put it to you that there is nothing in the least bit “moderate” about this sort of behavior. This is the behavior of the primitive and the lunatic - or at very best, the hopelessly inattentive. In this day and age it appears about as moderate as doing a rain dance and seriously thinking it will make a difference to the weather.

But that was forty years ago, Jack! It’s not like that now! Except yeah, it really is. I often appall myself by listening to the morning service on Radio 4. I did so again this morning. Sorry, accommodationists, it’s still just like this, except there are fewer thees, thys and thous. They still plead and grovel. They still drone out whiny hymns. They still do the kinky submissive’s we-are-not-worthy routine. They are still pathetically preoccupied with the afterlife, with “being with you in eternity, dear Lord”. They still bang on about how unworthy they are, and beg for forgiveness for their sins, that they might not be marred in the presence of their dear Lord’s perfection. They are still, in short, behaving in a manner that is, by any normal standards, absolutely bloody barking nuts.

“Moderate” Islam is certainly no better. They do the same contemptible groveling and begging. They stick their faces to the floor and their arses in the air, and pray. They chant nonsense. They attach a startlingly unreasonable importance to an old book that any objective reader can see really does not deserve it, and they do so for no good reason at all.  Same with “moderate” Jews.  Hindus. The whole sorry lot. These people are unreasonable. Their beliefs and actions are unreasonable. The embrace of unreason is not moderation.

Here is the only religious belief that deserves to be called moderate: "Hey, I think there's some sort of power behind all this that we haven't really figured out yet. I have no idea what form that power takes and so it makes no sense whatsoever to act as though we ought to respond to it in any particular way, and I accept that this is just a feeling I have rather than an evidence-supported theory. That's all."

Anything beyond that is mad delusion, and not moderate at all. Again, we have allowed ourselves to become persuaded and diverted by this bogus idea of the religious "moderate". It's a good tactic by the religious; I'll give them that, but I've had enough of it and I’m calling it out. There is essentially no moderate religious belief. We are dealing with the aforementioned spectrum that runs from "mad" to "violently and dangerously mad". We need to wake up to this fact and stop meekly accepting the idea that the people who behave in a shockingly irrational manner are somehow "moderate" just because they don’t go around killing, kidnapping or torturing people. They're not. They're in thrall to really, really whacked-out ideas, and deserve to be treated accordingly, not with the unwarranted respect they so earnestly crave.