Still from a promo trailer for Shifty.
Because it came out when I was on holiday, I’ve underpromoted this interview I did on behalf of the Church Times with the BBC documentary-maker Adam Curtis (Bitter Lake, HyperNormalisation, SHIFTY, etc.) but it’s probably the most high profile piece of journalism I’ve done. In it, I talk to Adam about the current mood of stagnation and hopelessness, why Thatcher was a prisoner of forces out of her control more than she was a trend-setter, and what Beijing and Washington have in common.
“We have to imagine something beyond all this”, he told me, “Politics used to share a sense of transcendence with religion. We did once believe in something, but the belief that arose in the ’80s of individual self-fulfilment as the central goal of society has failed. The politicians have lost control, and we have a lot of individuals who feel very alone. The only vision of the future is fear.”
Despite his many detractors on the Left, Curtis remains an old-fashioned progressive with revolutionary sympathies, who regrets that “Western society has been through a period of failed revolutions which had an optimistic view of human nature; so you’re going to get this pessimistic counter-revolutionary view.”
He believes that a route out of the current cultural and political impasse might be a series of revolutions that fail but nonetheless open up new avenues of thought, in the manner that those of 1848 did. He doesn’t think Christianity will be among those avenues of thought—but then he remains an old-fashioned progressive.
Click here to read the whole thing. (7 minute read)
I also wrote a piece for Unherd in response to reports in the Daily Telegraph that up to a third of UK churches could close by the end of the decade—well, surveys can be interpreted in different ways, and I think that is highly unlikely. But the decline in religious practice has led to many churches closing, especially in Scotland and Wales.
Click here to read it all. (2½ minute read)
