An interesting interview with Melanie Phillips on The World Turned Upside Down. Although an agnostic, she understands something that eludes the new atheists: our civilisation is build upon Christianity and Judaism; remove them and you lose the civilisation.

You don’t have to be a religious believer to understand that if religion — more specifically, the Hebrew Bible and the Christianity that built upon it — underpins Western civilization and the codes of right and wrong — putting others above yourself, freedom and equality, and belief in reason — that form the bedrock of that civilization, then eroding or destroying that religion will erode or destroy those virtues and the civilization they distinguish…

The real problem in Britain is not Islam but the vacuum in British culture which Islam is opportunistically attempting to fill. That vacuum has been caused by the retreat and surrender of the Christian church under the tide of secularism and aggressive atheism. This has opened the door not to an age of reason but to an epidemic of paganism — environmentalism, or worship of the earth, is the most conspicuous example, but there’s lots of other absurd stuff, too, such as seances, crystals, astrology, and the like.

And I fear that, along with other mainline churches, the Anglican Church – having helped create the spiritual vacuum in the first place – has not only thrown its hand in with paganism, but is vigorously promoting it. All in its increasingly futile attempt to remain relevant.