by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Church of England trades the sacred for spectacle as its pews empty.
On September 1, St. Paul’s Cathedral announced a four-year agreement with Fabric, a London nightclub, to stage concerts in the cathedral. Fabric is a rave venue that lost its license in 2016 after two people died of drug overdoses on its premises. The concerts will take place in the cathedral’s main nave , under Christopher Wren’s dome and above the crypt where Nelson and Wellington are buried. The first event is scheduled for October 29. The cathedral’s director of visitor engagement has said she hopes the Fabric collaboration will allow people to “discover and engage with this historic building in new and exciting ways.”
Her language is revealing. Those in charge of St. Paul’s treat it as a“historic” building—an “iconic space,” a landmark—in other words, a venue. That St. Paul’s is a sacred space—that it is a cathedral, a holy place of worship—comes second.
St. Paul’s has made the same Faustian bargain that so many Christian institutions, and Christians themselves, have made with secular culture. Across the West, Christian churches bend over backwards to accommodate secular interests and preferences. They modernize to “stay relevant” and soften their moral and spiritual commitments to curry favor with the broader culture. The pews have been emptying for decades—so why not fill them with partygoers? Christianity, we are told, simply needs to become more “accessible”. Secular society, meanwhile, happily embraces what it likes about Christianity— its art, architecture, music, and moral language—while scorning the spiritual and theological foundations that produced them.