For Giles Coren Christianity is The Punch Line.

Alan Coren was a great journalist whose columns were snortingly funny, and whose editorship of the satirical Punch magazine was its high point.  I still remember reading his article about the creation account of Genesis written from the perspective of an engineer in which Adam’s first comment to God when presented with Eve is “She’s fantastic, apart from the odd structural flaw.”

His son Giles is also a great writer. Not quite as funny perhaps, but still on the podium in The Times. Given the shrivelled, snivelling uber-irony of the recent decades that passes for humour, Giles’ ability to cut through the cant and make us belly-laugh with self-deprecating humour is refreshing.  He clearly got that from his father.

What he didn’t get from his father was a return to the Jewish faith. Whereas Alan was slightly embarrassed about his Jewish heritage and dampened it down until later years, that ship had sailed for Giles.

In fact he says as much in his recent column in The Times, in which, wonder of wonders, Giles Coren announces that he’s decided to head down the Christianity line.  He didn’t return to the faith of his youth, he moved to the gospel fulfilment of the faith of his youth.

How many public figures, especially of the literary, comedic and intellectual ilk are doing that these days? Take a ticket and line up.  Aayan Hirsi Ali, her husband Niall Ferguson, Russell Brand, Tom Holland (well almost, he’s still got an issue with that pesky resurrection).

But if anything is signalling a return of the spiritual tide it’s coming from those of whom the average scornful atheist cannot say “They just haven’t read enough.”

I’m intrigued by Giles’ announcement and the reasons behind it. Here’s what he says about the role of Christianity following the ubiquitous Church of England schooling he endured:

In later life it didn’t come up. Atheism is the assumed default position of every modern urban adult. Although lately, many atheists think we want to hear their irrefutable arguments against belief and witty putdowns of the faithful, but I just wonder, “Why do you bother? To whom are you talking? Who do you think is not already an atheist?” I think possibly these people grew up very close to religion and believe it is important to be endlessly forsaking it. But that isn’t the case with me. My childhood was godless, and there was room for improvement.

A godless childhood. Kinda rejects the notion that he is actually returning to anything. But perhaps he was. As Glenn Scrivener observes, the Christian gospel and its framework is the air we breathe in the West. And Coren was no exception.  It turns out that the faith he didn’t believe in and that he didn’t practice was the Christian faith, despite his Jewish roots

Which is where the Church of England comes in. That’s my language in that prayer book, my tradition, my education, my country, my poetry. And there is a building for it, usually a pretty one, on every street corner, opposite the pub, and any Englishman or woman can go in (to either) and take succour.  That is why, when Esther and I walked into St Bride’s in Fleet Street 15 years ago next month, the canon married us without a quibble. It’s what an established church is for. I wouldn’t have felt properly married anywhere else. And when, some years later, my son, brought up like me into no tradition at all, said he wanted to go to church, I said OK, and we walked up the road to our local one the following Sunday and went in. And we’ve been going ever since.

How interesting is that!  His son wanted to go to church. The confident atheist of the past few generations has always assumed that their framework is so compelling that the generation they raise will just take the baton and hand it on. Before too long all those churches will be empty.

But it turns out that peoples’ hearts and souls were far emptier than the churches. And so the trickle back began. Giles’ son – who. no doubt has led a fairly comfortable life with no need for a god or some god-like hope to cling to in the afterlife for succour – wants to go to church.  And Giles just can’t stop going himself.

The whole atheist structure is being turned upside down. The younger generations – and particularly younger generations of men with zero Christian background – are finding themselves turning up at church, possibly after six months of YouTubing it.

And more often than not they are turning up at churches that aren’t all hip and urban and cool (well hip and urban and cool to insiders desperately wanting people to turn up and realise how hip and urban and cool they are), but to ancient forms of the faith.

Now I am not naive. I read Coren’s account and I wonder whether the ash on his forehead at Lent is anything more than a personal quest and whether the church he attends is faithful to the gospel once and for all delivered to the saints. But gee, who could have seen this coming just a few years ago.

I still remember the bitter, twisted words of the bitter, twisted Australian journalist Peter Fitzsimmons in The Sydney Morning Herald, who lauded the COVID pandemic for it’s ability to shut down churches since, in his words, only old people were religious these days. The pandemic, he thought, would be just another nail in its coffin. Once the coffee shops and sports stadia reopened, the churches would be just about hanging up the “For Sale” signs.  Phew! Finally!

How’s that working out for ya Pete?!

Turns out that the pandemic was a mini-apocalypse. It revealed stuff about what we are truly like and where we are putting our hopes and a lot of people – especially a lot of intellectual people and a lot of younger people – did not like what it revealed about them and about the culture they inhabited.

Now, to be honest, I do not think that Giles is quite there yet, but he’s certainly like the blind man that Jesus healed slowly rather than in an instant. What was it? He saw men like trees walking!  Giles sees Christianity that way. So far:

… I do not not believe. I am not without faith. It’s weird, because Judaism does not require faith, only observance. Christianity is the other way round (right?) So I observe, like a Jew, the Christian service. And I have a sense that God is there — in the tradition, the words, the 2,000 years of conviction, the imagination of all the people who came before me — that I don’t get, I’m sorry, in a synagogue. Or, like, Pizza Express. Sam on the other hand is filled with the Holy Spirit like a Baptist. When it comes time to kneel, he prostrates himself entirely. Which is why, in time, I have no doubt he will be baptised and confirmed into whatever church this is. As may I, eventually, perhaps, so that I can take Communion, which is the only time I feel a bit left out. Kitty will probably not. I don’t know about my wife. I don’t even know how she votes. Or what she sees in Queer Eye.

He’s finding his way around this thing. Groping as sight returns. And some keen observations in there that can only come from someone seeing this thing for the first time. As a long term Christian I am always intrigued by how a “noob” feels and sees the water I have been swimming in for 50 years.

Except of course for the comment about Sam. A Baptist? I think he means a Pentecostal. I grew up Baptist before attending a Pentecostal church for several years in my late teens (obligatory I know), and the only time I ever felt like prostrating myself in the former was when the preacher said “And ninthly…”

And note too that his wife is not Christian yet.  That’s going to become increasingly common for folk in their mid-years who are converted. It’s not like they grew up in youth group together. I have recently met such a man, a well-thought-out, successful, good man who has just fallen in love with Jesus and his gospel in toto, while his wife remains an unbeliever. It was encouraging seeing his love for his wife and his desire for her salvation.

But churches are going to have to come to terms with unequally yoking post-the-event. Mind you, there’s a word here for us in that too, as that’s exactly how the early church was formed. Remember these words?:

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives. (1Peter3:1)

Now before you have paroxysms over the “S” word, Peter’s point is clearly, “Don’t nag them!”  It would seem that behaviour is going to be the key for a spouse, not words – which cuts against so much of the rest of the gospel force in the New Testament. How will Giles’ wife know if he is truly converted?  By an increasingly love and service and sacrifice for her that mirrors the actions of Jesus.

So go Giles, go you good thing!  And this Easter Sunday may you be another person of Jewish heritage who rushes home from a resurrection encounter with the risen Lord.