Pre-Christian times

Ancestor worship and nature

Ancient faith was influenced by the natural world and the threat posed by the elements. The
inhabitants of Britain originally worshipped their ancestors, burying them in long barrows and
performing rituals to influence the weather and the harvest. But when Britain's climate changed
radically around 3,000 BC, the ancestor cult came to an end and Britons looked to nature itself to
influence their fortune.

Prehistoric Wessex

William Dalrymple looks at the religious systems which came and went in Britain in the centuries
leading up to the Christian era. Why and how do these traditions still matter to us? And what do
we make of them today?

Fathoming how our earliest ancestors understood the world is something we can only guess at
very tentatively using the clues of archaeology. In Wiltshire, a unique collection of ceremonial
monuments and burial mounds span several periods of pre-history. The earliest of them tell us
that kinship and the support of a clan's ancestors seems to have lain at the centre of the
conception of spirituality in prehistoric Wessex.

Roman Britain and the arrival of Christianity

With the coming of the Romans and their gods, Britain became more multi-faith. The Romans are
instinctively tolerant of other religions, but a problem occurs when a new religion comes along
telling people there's only one god. Christianity is on a collision course with the mighty Roman
empire.

The Anglo-Saxon gods gave us our days of the week. We visit Sutton Hoo, burial ground of the
Anglo-Saxon kings of East Anglia. By the 8th century Islamic influences had travelled as far as
Britain, just 150 years after the death of the Prophet and before the coming of the Vikings in the
9th century. Viking Paganism also gradually gave way to Christianity.
Celts and Anglo-Saxons

Celtic Christianity

The rise of what has come to be known as 'Celtic Christianity' has been one of the religious
phenomena of recent times: go into any of the shops on Holy Island and you will find whole stacks
of merchandise, all covered with little Celtic crosses and the old uncial script.

However, the extent to which there was any very distinct type of Christianity in the Celtic areas of
Britain has become a matter of heated debate. William Dalrymple finds out about the Christianity
brought by the early Irish monks, and what resemblance it bears to the modern practice of 'Celtic
Christians' - and to ask the intriguing question of whether St. Aidan would recognise the strange
goings-on on modern Holy Island.

Anglo-Saxon influences

William Dalrymple looks at how early English Christianity and its understanding of the Divine was
forged through its relationship with the Pagan beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons. It's something we
learn about from archaeology, epic poems like Beowulf, the ecclesiastical history of the Venerable
Bede, and the superby interlaced relief-sculpture produced by the Anglo-Saxons - unique in
Europe, and their great contribution to Christian art.

The Anglo-Saxon tribes from North West Europe arrived in Britain throughout the fifth century,
expelling the Celtic farmers who had lived on the land since time immemorial and renaming the
landscape, towns and rivers in their own tongue. The Anglo-Saxons were sea-faring peoples with
a great composite pantheon of gods. Some of those gods remain with us in the place names of
the countryside - Thurstable and Thundridge in Kent are echoes of the thunder god Thor;
Wandsyke - or Wodensdyke - in Wessex.

Norman Britain

Benedictine revival

When the Normans arrived in England, there were no monasteries at all north of The Wash - not
one single one was left or had been restored in the Anglo-Saxon revival in the 10th century. And
very quickly, once the Normans had got the North more or less quiet, there was a big Benedictine
revival. Benedictines in Durham, Benedictines in York, Benedictines in Whitby.
A number of groups of monks left their old established rather comfortable, rich Benedictine
monasteries, in the 11th century, and decided to lead a much more austere life, much further away
from centres of population. Much the most successful was the Cistercian enterprise, which began
with an Englishman and a Frenchman in Burgundy. It might have failed but for the most
extraordinary man of the 12th century - St Bernard.

Pagans in the cathedral

Christopher Eccleston continues his journey through the spiritual history of Britain and finds a
landscape full of Norman castles and cathedrals. He reveals the Pagan images woven into the
fabric of the Christian church.

Mediaeval Britain

Woman mystics

Julian of Norwich is perhaps the best-known of the mediaeval English mystics: her most famous
saying - "all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well" - was taken
up by T.S Eliot in The Four Quartets, and hence has passed into popular speech. But Julian was
not a loner: she was part of an often-forgotten British phenomenon of mediaval mystics.

In all cultures, mystics have been remarkable for their freedom of expression; in 14th Century
England, mysticism gave voice to a section of mediaeval society that was effectively silenced by
the Church - women. William Dalrymple finds out how it became the vehicle of self-expression for
mediaeval English women, what use they made of it, and how their legacy still inspires people in
their search for the divine today.

The Reformation

Destruction of the sacred

Reaching the 14th century, we begin the bumpy ride through the Reformation. It threatened the
whole structure of the church both theologically and artistically.

We've sanitised the Reformation. We've made it sound as though it was a marital tiff between
Henry the VIII and Katherine of Aragon... And so he changes the church, and then we go 'Ho, ho,
ho - isn't that funny? Y'know the Church of England is founded on adultery,' which is to some
degree true.
What we forget is that what it unleashed over the next 30 years was the most... astonishing
destruction of the sacred in its visible form you've ever seen.

The Reformation and British identity

Perhaps more than at any other moment in the country's religious history since Christianity arrived
in these islands, the Reformation marked an irrevocable break with the past. In many ways, the
modern age started here. For although still far from the largely secular world of today, a process
of detachment - even disenchantment - with traditional religion was set in train, whose results
form the world in which we still live.

William Dalrymple explores the effect the Reformation had on popular conceptions of the Divine,
on our place in the world and in making us the people we are. He asks whether the Reformation
is still central to our national identity, or whether its effects are now being finally unravelled.

Civil War and Restoration

Regicide and turmoil

The execution of Charles I was one of the most traumatic episodes in English history, an act that
was seen as religious by those who supported the Regicide as well as those who opposed it.
William Dalrymple visits the scene of the execution at London's Banqueting House.

The director of English Heritage, Simon Thurley, explains how the concept of the divine right of
kings, expressed in the building's painted ceiling, is shattered by Charles' death. Social and
spiritual anarchy follows - the abolition of the Church of England makes way for a proliferation of
bizarre religious sects and dissenting churches who see in the chaos the signs of the end of the
world or the possibility of building the Kingdom of God on earth.

Puritans and pluralism

We have arrived at the Civil War and a puritanical state under a Calvanist dictator - but despite
the prevalent Christian fundamentalism it was the beginning of a new phase of pluralism.

...what the Puritans did was to introduce pluralism into every single part of Britain, because they
said you don't have to go to just the one parish church to worship – there must be a choice ... I
think that it's that tradition... which is quintessentially British. Which is why when Judaism returned
in the 17th century and when Islam first started coming here in the 18th century, and when
Hinduism and Buddhism first arrived here in the 19th century – nobody batted an eyelid.

Martin Palmer

One person in ten is killed in the Civil War, which leaves deep scars and provides a fertile soil for
new religious groups springing up in the chaos of the mid-1600s.

Boyle's air pump Boyle's air pump

Restoration spirituality

The Restoration period brings with it a flourishing of the New Science. These are the early years
of Royal Society, of Robert Hooke's microscopic drawings and Isaac Newton's famous work, the
Principia. In this episode William Dalrymple gets to grips with one of the earliest pieces of
experimental equipment - Robert Boyle's air pump - and learns about the theological controversy
it caused.

While we tend to think of Newton and Boyle as the founders of modern science, they were also
deeply religious men who saw their search for the natural laws of science as a spiritual quest. In
pursuing their discoveries they were also asking some of the most profound questions of their
age - about the existence of spirits and fairies, the meaning of the philosopher's stone, and about
how God intervenes in the world.

Revolutions and Empire

Messianic visions

Throughout history and particularly at times of political and social upheaval, people have looked
to a deliverer - or Messiah - to right the world's wrongs and inaugurate an era of peace and justice.
The violence and bloodshed of the French Revolution was interpreted by many observers on this
side of the Channel as a sign that the new messianic age was at hand.

In this programme William Dalrymple encounters two very different eighteenth century visionaries
- the artist and poet William Blake and the Devonshire prophetess Joanna Southcott. Both drew
on the apocalyptic image of the woman clothed with the sun and on the millennial longings of
their age to articulate their vision for a new Jerusalem in England.

For William Blake, the Messiah is collective humanity, who - given the commitment and mental
fight - can build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land. For Joanna, the Messiah is the
long-awaited Shiloh to whom she will give birth, notwithstanding the fact that she is sixty four
years old and a virgin.

Emancipation

For many evangelical missionaries in the nineteenth century God was British, and the Empire
provided a divine opportunity for them to convert its colonial subjects to Christianity.

In this programme, William Dalrymple looks at how the evangelical campaign to win freedom for
slaves led in turn to a campaign that seems rather more suspect to modern eyes - the mission to
free the so-called "heathen natives" from the superstitious chains of their native religions. The
belief in this God-given mission is reflected in many of the most famous hymns of the era, sung
to William by Noel Tredennick, organist at All Soul's church, Langham place - From Greenland's
icy mountains, Thy kingdom come, oh God and God is working his purpose out as year succeeds
to year.

Immigration

By the beginning of the 19th century, the impact of the two revolutions - one in France, one in
industry - had turned Britain into a more modern, educated, technologically advanced, urban
society where the old social, political and religious certainties were questioned.

After Catholic emancipation in 1829 and the influx of Irish Catholics into Britain after the Famine
of the 1840s, the nature of English Catholicism changes from a Patrician clique to a proletarian
mass movement - so how does the Church adapt?

A similar trend arises in the Jewish community when the comfortable lives of the Anglicised
'Brotherhood' of British Jews are thrown into disarray by an influx of poor, dispossessed Jews
fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe.
The expansion of Empire brings Muslim, Hindu and Sikh influences from India, Yemen and the Far
East to British shores.

The 20th century sees two World Wars, the dismantling of Empire and decolonisation - all of which
impact on the religious landscape of Britain, ushering in an era of secularisation and a breakdown
of traditional religious authority. But this era also brings larger communities of Muslims, Sikhs,
Hindus and Black Christians from far-flung parts of the Empire to help with the post-war
reconstruction of Britain.

Today, our Sacred Nation incorporates a huge number of belief systems carrying on side by side
in apparent harmony and is more like Roman Britain than at any other time in history.

Victorians to modern Britain

Evolution and spiritualism

Generations of Sunday school children have sung Mrs Alexander's famous hymn, "All things bright
and beautiful." For all its cheerful innocence, it was written at a time of deep anxiety, when the
edifice of Christianity was under threat from evolutionary theory and biblical scholarship. One of
the central questions for the Victorian period concerned the nature of humankind; are we material
or spiritual beings? To the Victorians, who aspired to be angels, the idea that they had apes for
ancestors was horrifyingly crude. Their response to the challenge of evolutionary theory was to
turn to the mystical séance to "prove" the existence of a soul that survives beyond the grave.

In this programme William Dalrymple visits Oxford's natural history museum, scene of the
notorious "monkey" debate between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Scientist Thomas Huxley.
And in London's Science Museum, historian Richard Noakes shows him the instruments developed
by the Victorians to detect spirits.

Superstition, spirituality and eclecticism

The folklorist Edward Lovatt crammed his house full of the amulets and charms he collected from
Londoners in the early part of the twentieth century. Now housed in Southwark's Cuming
museum, they reflect the diversity of folk beliefs and rituals which gave meaning to the lives of
local traders. The same people who wore charms to protect themselves against the evil eye would
also marry in church and attend watchnight services without seeing any contradiction in these
practices.

Today, in spite of the supposedly secular age in which we live, people continue to select those
beliefs and practices which nourish them spiritually. The standard story told of the twentieth
century has been one of a gradual decline of religious faith and practice. Certainly there has been
a dramatic drop in churchgoing. But all the surveys show that the majority of people still believe
in God, and Britain has evolved into a multi-cultural and multi-faith society.