THE REBIRTH OF RELIGION

If you had said to me when I was 20 that religion would form a bigger part of public life in 2010 than it did in 1980, then I would have been sceptical, to say the least. I was a chorister when I was at prep school, and the trend away from anything spiritual except for baptism, marriage, death and Christmas seemed unstoppable. Yet here we are in the second decade of the 21st century, and religion seems to be everywhere.

I don't just mean in the headlines; the supposed justification for suicide bombs by Islamist fanatics, the muscular Christianity used by Tony Blair to support his decisions, Hindu pogroms in India, the expectancy of the second coming by American evangelists. It is seeping into daily life as well. One of the very first cases decided by the U.K.'s new Supreme Court (heard by a panel of 9 judges instead of the usual 5) was about the admissions policy of a Jewish school, which in turn depended on which children were, or were not, recognised as Jewish. That we are still debating such questions today, and are being forced to debate such questions, is surprising.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw in Europe terrible wars and bloodshed over differences in a religion that virtually everybody purported to share. There then followed more than three centuries of a gradual decline in the importance of religion and a corresponding increase in scientific enquiry and tolerance of others. That decline appears to have halted abruptly. Whatever one's faith, the consequences are both uncertain and worrying.

Walter Blotscher