Comment?

From National Review Online:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_07_31_corner-archive.asp#071552

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... the Church of England itself that is to blame for Britain losing its historic faith. By abdicating its role as moral shepherd in favor of a "modern" political role from the 70s on (in order to fill those pews, it thought, that were never particularly full in the first place), the Church left a vacuum. Other churches were not able to fill this because the Church was so interwoven with English life that they could not replicate the role it played, which was as much social as religious. So the 70% of British people who say they believe in God (a consistent figure through polls and the census) are left without adequate instruction in what that should mean in day-to-day life. There is a vast market there that the Church could tap, if it was willing. Sadly, it is not. Peter Hitchens, Christopher's conservative brother, is especially good on this in his masterpiece The Abolition of Britain, where he also points out what the "abolition of hell" means:

Almost all Anglican churches now seem to be for enthusiasts only. Few but the most determined dare enter, and many of these churches take the form of a club, unintentionally exclusive, utterly unconnected with the world outside, by tradition, language or anything else. Many young children entirely deprived of a tradition passed on without thinking by twenty previous generations have no idea at all of what goes on in churches...Children at a primary school in the Isle of Wight were spoken to sharply by their teachers in 1996, after they had mocked and jeered at a passing funeral. Nobody had told them that death demanded respect. And in a world where blinds are not drawn down, and there are no hats to doff as the hearse goes by, how were they supposed to learn and what does it matter anyway?

He summarizes:

Our religion, such as it is, has abandoned the only territory where it could not be challenged - the saving of souls, and given up troubling our individual consciences. Instead, it has joined in the nationalization of the human conscience, so that a man's moral worth is now measured by the level of taxation he is willing to support, rather than by his faith or even his good works. Other tests - opposition to apartheid or General Pinochet - are valued more highly than personal adherence to the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. An adulterer, with the correct view on Nelson Mandela, is preferable to a Mother Teresa who fails to criticize the currently unfashionable regimes of the world.

As the King James Bible put it, Jesus wept.

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From your vantage point, would you say that's a fair assessment?