Church Going? Religion and Community

Abstract

Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Church Going’ provides a starting point for questions about the isolation of the self and its speculations about religion and community. Seasonal and ceremonial: Chambers Book of Days from the nineteenth century provides a mass of seasonal and ceremonial information which can be used for writing. Ritual and Religion: Ritual is at the heart of much human activity and religion as dealing with contingency is being rediscovered. How broad religious ideas can be made to be useful to the community, much as traditions in the active sense can be. The book of Job and G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy provide some positive routes towards useful ideas like the wilderness, prayer and sacrifice, as well as visiting churches.