8THE DECLINE OF RELIGIONFROM WHAT ISEE OF JUNIOR OXFORD AT PRESENT IT would be quite easy to draw opposite conclusions a
8
THE DECLINE OF RELIGION
FROM WHAT I SEE OF JUNIOR OXFORD AT PRESENT IT would be quite easy to draw opposite conclusions about the religious predicament of what we call `the rising generation', though in reality the undergraduate body includes men and women almost as much divided from one another in age, outlook, and experience as they are divided from the dons. Plenty of evidence can be produced to show that religion is in its last decline among them, or that a revival of interest in religion is one of their most noticeable characteristics. And in fact something that may be called `a decline' and something that may be called `a revival' are both going on. It will be perhaps more useful to attempt to understand both than to try our luck at `spotting the winner'.The `decline of religion' so often lamented (or welcomed) is held to be shown by empty chapels. Now it is quite truethat chapels which were full in 1900 are empty in 1946. But this change was not gradual. It occurred at the precise moment when chapel ceased to be compulsory. It was not in fact a decline; it was a precipice. The sixty men who had come because chapel was a little later than 'rollers"
In the second place we must remember that a widespread and lively interest in a subject is precisely what we call a Fashion. And it is the nature of Fashions not to last. The present Christian movement may, or may not, have a long run ahead of it. But sooner or later it must lose the public ear; in a place like Oxford such changes are extraordinarily rapid. Bradley and the other idealists fell in a few terms, the Douglas scheme even more suddenly, the Vorticists overnight.2
(Who now remembers Pogo? Who now reads Childermass?3