At first glance the title of this book might seem a touch chauvinistic, but once you begin reading it you begin to see what the author is getting at.
Bijam Omrani is a classicist and ancient historian who taught at Eton College and Westminster School and now is a research fellow at Exeter University. He is also a church warden in a rural Church of England parish. That parochial context very much shapes the book. For it is like one of those old churches one comes across in countless villages and towns across the country that embody a vast amount of history and religion going back to Anglo-Saxon times.
In the first section of 12 chapters Omrani looks at what various aspects of English life owe to Christianity. So, he shows how Christianity has shaped law, education, government, landscape, singing, art and architecture, literature, and much more.
In the second section the author looks at what Christianity can still offer an increasingly secular culture, and what will be lost if Christianity disappears. Here he deals with issues like our approach to death, identity, spirituality, moral values, and so on. The book rewards careful and reflective reading in order to appreciate just how much Christianity is woven into the warp and woof of English life, past and present.
Omrani restricts himself to England simply because it is a big enough subject and he knows it best, and because the story in Scotland, Wales and Ireland is so very different. He writes very much as an Anglican and a sort of high church one at that. One of the weaknesses of the book is lack of understanding of evangelical Anglicanism and even more of Nonconformity. The latter is mentioned from time to time, and some Nonconformists such as John Bunyan and Isaac Watts make an appearance, but not many others. But for a beautifully written, stimulating and almost elegiac account of the deep impact of Christianity on our country I warmly recommend this book.
GOD IS AN ENGLISHMAN: Christianity and the Creation of England By Bijan Omrani. Forum. 394 pages. £25. ISBN 978 1 800 753 068
