Religious Support

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In a way, the professionals involved in the processes described in this chapter so far are the priests of the modern world. In earlier centuries, or even in the earlier decades of the 20th century, people with some of the problems described above would seek the help of a priest or minister of the church. Particularly in the second part of the 20th century, however, the number of people taking part in organized traditional religions diminished considerably, and so this was no longer an option for them.

Of course the priest or minister would not have the range of professional expertise of some of today's advisers. In earlier times, the kind of trauma and emotional problems that are now generally acknowledged as affecting the lives of people were simply not known or not recognized as such. Problems were seen in more simplistic terms, and members of the clergy were expected to be able to deal with these.

Things were often seen in moral or ethical terms, and clergymen were judged to be eminently qualified to deal with such issues. Spiritual issues, such as crises of faith, were obviously also adjudged to be part of their remit, and many more issues than were strictly relevant to the spiritual topic were included under its umbrella. There may well have been objections to this kind of blanket coverage of problems by the clergy, but there was little alternative.

At least in the case of families whose members had tended to stay much in the same place for some time, the relevant clergymen had a background to go on when offering advice. He probably had a very real idea of the weaknesses and strengths of the various family members, and this might well have proved useful when trying to show someone the way forward to a greater contact with his or her inner self. No one exists in a vacuum, and the past often has a very powerful influence on the present and even on the future.

So much for the influence of the clergy on the family, which in time waned dramatically as it became no longer the norm in Britain for people to attend church regularly, whether or not they were members of the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church or any of the others. There are still some people who do not attend church regularly but who still opt to get married, to be buried and to have their children baptised under the auspices of the church-some may even feel a nostalgic desire to attend church at Christmas and Easter.

On the other hand, secular arrangements for the major events in life are becoming more and more common in Britain all the time. More and more people are choosing to be married in registry offices, and efforts are being made to make civil wedding ceremonies more civilized, welcoming and considerably less bleak.

In any case, more and more couples are opting to live together instead of getting married, some for part of the time that they are together, some for all of the time that they are together, even after they have children. The net result is that many couples are relinquishing even the tenuous connection that they had with the church. Even so there are still brides who think that a church is a better backdrop for their wedding photographs than a registry office.

Even people who declared themselves to be agnostics or even atheists in life used to be buried under the auspices of the church. In recent years, it has become common for the burial service to be a cremation service, churchyards and cemeteries being no longer able to cope with the sheer volume of corpses and cremation becoming a more compact acceptable alternative. For a long time the cremation ceremony was still very much a 'service'. Although the ceremony would take place in a crematorium rather than a church, the person who usually officiated at such a ceremony was a minister or priest of the church.

Gradually the secular impression created by the often rather bleak crematorium got people used to dissociating the idea of interment and the church. Frequently the relatives of the person being cremated had to make a lot of enquiries in order to find a minister or priest to officiate, and even then the cleric had a great deal of difficulty finding something complimentary and truthful to say about someone whom he or she had hardly known-if at all.

Many people began to feel that the whole thing was becoming a bit hypocritical and sought to make the whole cremation ceremony more secular. This has become particularly easy to organize if the person who has died was a member of the Humanist Society, as they will provide for someone to officiate at a secular ceremony.

For many, the church baptismal service has long been something that does not reflect the beliefs of those participating. Either godparents or parents, or both, are required to promise to bring the child up according to the dictates of the church and to be responsible for his or her spiritual and moral welfare.

This many of them have done-and never been near a church after the baptismal service or seen to it that the child has. Gradually the secularization of marriage and burial ceremonies has spilled over into baptismal ceremonies. Formerly, there was a general feeling that children were not quite legally registered if they were not baptised in church, there being some confusion between civil registration of the birth, compulsory by law, at the local registry office, and baptism in church. In time more people became aware that the civil registration was enough.

Certainly, by the very late decades of the 20th century, the church had ceased to play a major part in many people's lives. If births, marriages and deaths could be officially recognized without benefit of clergy then many people had little use for the church.

Of course this is by way of being a generalization. Many people, particularly those of an older generation, have gone on attending church regularly, and some others have gone on paying lip-service to the church by using it for family marriages, births and deaths, and perhaps have graced it occasionally at Christmas and Easter.

Another point worth making is that many of the churches have tried valiantly to modernize themselves, indeed have even made themselves trendy, in an effort to attract more people, particularly younger people, back to the church. Alas, in many cases the effort has not been totally successful. Perhaps one could say in all charity that the efforts were a classic case of too little, too late.

What has been missing for some considerable time is the emphasis placed on pastoral care by the clergy in the average community. Many families would feel extremely embarrassed, and even encroached upon, if a member of the clergy called, even if the family was going through a bereavement or other family crisis, and even if its members were still technically members of the church. On the other side of the clerical fence, so to speak, the clergy, although coping with fewer church members, are probably also trying to cope with larger workloads, fewer clerical colleagues and an ageing church membership, which makes more demands on their time, not least in terms of bereavement.

They may have very little time to experience the embarrassment they might encounter if they enter a house of church membership, but not of churchgoers, or even a house of agnostics or atheists that happens to be situated in their parish.

This represents a complete turnaround. There was a time in the relatively recent past when pastoral care was of major importance in the community. If something major went wrong in the life of a member of the family, the local minister or priest was likely to be among the first to be consulted. Thus, if a husband died, or a child was stillborn, or a daughter became pregnant while unmarried, or a son ran away from home, then both spiritual comfort and practical help would be sought from the relevant local cleric. Before the advent of a higher general standard of education and while literacy levels were quite low, the local clergyman was also the person to whom people turned if some kind of official letter had to be written or even read.

The standing of the clergy in the average community has fallen drastically, although the extent of this falling-off has obviously differed from church to church, area to area, and even person to person. With this reduction of importance of church and clergy in the average family's life has come an inevitable decrease in pastoral care. When the family members could no longer turn to the parish minister or priest for help or comfort, then they had to look elsewhere- to psychotherapists, counsellors and self-help groups in fact.

The fact that a great many people have abandoned the church as a source of solace, and even of self-discovery, does not mean that this is true for everyone. There is still a significant number of people in Britain who are staunch members of the church and who regard religion as a spiritual quest and thus a journey of self-discovery.

Furthermore, there are many people who were not brought up in the ways of organized religion but who seek membership of a church to help them find a faith, often in an attempt to help them find themselves, or at least to help them come to terms with themselves. Some of these speak of suddenly seeing the light, as though their lives up to the point of their conversion to religion had been deep in darkness. Such people may be seen as being against the trend, but there are others who, to some extent, might be seen in the same context.

These include people who, in their early years, were brought up to be regular churchgoers and believers in religion but who somehow let such habits and such beliefs lapse, only to find that at the point of some crisis in their lives they felt a need to revert to these and began to attend church regularly, and to consult priests and ministers of religion.

They frequently feel that they have somehow lost themselves along life's way and have a deep conviction that the only way to get back in touch with themselves is through the church. Some of these turn to a church other than the one in which they were brought up. For example, a member of the Church of England might feel that he or she wishes to join the Roman Catholic Church.

Often people who either join the church or revert to regular churchgoing are seeking help, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, with a problem, whether this be an emotional, mental or spiritual one. Whatever the problem, they are probably also seeking to find spiritual enlightenment or fulfilment, and by so doing to extend their knowledge of themselves.

They see their parish minister or priest as a source of help, support and enlightenment, someone to whom they can entrust their deepest thoughts and feelings without fear of these being passed on without consultation. Often by talking these through with the cleric, the problem-ridden people can find their own answers to what is bothering them, while at the same time adding a spiritual dimension to their lives that enriches and extends them.

This is all very well for people who have a religious faith or for people who are working their way towards a religious faith. They have someone trustworthy on hand to whom they can confide their innermost secrets and thoughts, and by so doing they can explore their inner selves. People without religious faith and without a church connection do not have such an outlet. That is why they seek help from other sources, which take on the mantle of a religious confessor and confidant and which can help them on their path to greater self-knowledge. Thus the need for psychotherapists, counsellors and self-help groups.

In our multicultural society it is not uncommon for people to seek solace in one of the eastern religions, although they were not born into one of these. At school many people learn something about other religions as well as Christianity, and some feel drawn to these. The eastern influence on some people's religious feelings was very prominent in the 1960s, when a good many people, particularly young people, went off to India in search of spiritual fulfilment and often in search of a guru, a spiritual teacher, who would bring them such fulfilment.

The guru took the place that a clergyman would once have held in their lives but had the advantage of being considerably more exotic in their eyes. This trend towards eastern religions was increased by the interest of the Beatles, the British pop group that leapt to extraordinary fame in the 1960s. John Lennon in particular was drawn towards the East and influenced other young people.

For many young people, looking towards the East for spiritual satisfaction was an attempt to get in touch with their inner selves, the guru being a guide to show the way. It was also an attempt to give expression to their dissatisfaction with the materialistic way of life of the West, often the way of life of their mid-die-class or upper-class relatives. This dissatisfaction was also displayed by people who embraced the Hippie culture in the 1960s and later by people who embraced the New Age philosophy in the late 1980s and 1990s. These movements are treated in greater detail in the next section.

Of course not everyone who felt drawn towards the religions and philosophies of the East went to India in search of a guru-neither did they all seek out one of the gurus who came to the West. Indeed, many more people than embraced the whole panoply of a religion such as Hinduism or Buddhism simply adopted parts of these. Thus they came to be drawn towards meditation and yoga, and these activities often took the place that Christian prayer would once have done in their lives.

As has been mentioned, many people in the 1960s felt drawn to gurus in the hope that they would give them spiritual leadership and help them to a greater realization of their inner selves. Later in the 20th century there was an increased tendency for people to join religious cults and to look towards the cult leader for the same kind of guidance that some had looked for in gurus in the 1960s, and countless others had looked for in clergymen throughout the centuries. Cult members were often looking for some kind of inner fulfilment or realization and looked to the cult leader to help them in their journey towards this.

Religious cults were more common in the United States than in Britain, but in both countries fears were expressed that members of the cults were being brainwashed, although there is often a danger that someone vulnerable, seeking emotional or spiritual help, will form too great an attachment to the person seeking to provide such help.

There is a very real need in many of us to find spiritual fulfilment, whether or not we would categorize the need as such, and in order to do this we often feel that we have to find ourselves or to reach a clearer understanding of ourselves. This often involves seeking help from someone professionally concerned in some way with this kind of work, and such a person is personally central to the success of the other person's search for self.

Such help has been described in this section, but there is also help to be provided in a less central, more peripheral way, by other people. This kind of help, together with the kind of help that people embarking on a journey of self-discovery might provide for themselves, is described in the next section.