Jacob Williams

That Enoch Powell was a genius is apparent to anyone who cares to examine his life for longer than it takes to pronounce the meaningless epithet “racist”. That he was the last true statesman in British politics, and perhaps the last this country will ever produce, is also eminently arguable. Almost the youngest person ever to be appointed a full professor at a Western university (second only to Friedrich Nietzsche), able to rise to the rank of brigadier in the British Army within six years of enlisting as a private,…

The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withd rawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. When Matthew Arnold penned these words in 1851, many were the people listening to what seemed to be the “long, withdrawing roar” of God retreating from the world. And many, like him, were those who mourned this retreat, whether or not they were able…

This is a two-part series on the decline of Christianity in Britain, written by Jacob Williams. Christian Britain is our land of lost content. We may see it shining plain in our national memory, but never again will we walk its highways. The years since the 2011 Census have seen a spate of articles claiming that the long-term decline of the Christian faith in Britain has reached a tipping point, and questioning whether we are still “a Christian country”, in whatever sense we still were one in the dying days of the last…