Church Going, Going...Not Gone

Now, this is odd.

There are literary works that really define the cultural or religious tone of an age, to the point that few historians would think of discussing that era without invoking them. Just try looking for a work on the 19th-century crisis of faith and doubt without somebody bringing in Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” usually repeatedly (that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,” and so on). Today, plenty of scholars and theorists are writing obsessively about themes of secularization, religious decline and the Nones, but for whatever reason, they virtually never cite the most important English poem on the topic, Philip Larkin’s “Church Going” (1955). The title, of course, includes a dual meaning: It is about going to church, but also the church going, or vanishing. Like all great poems, it repays frequent rereading. The points it makes about religious decline are shrewd and really deserve notice in all our discussions on those secularizing themes.