Customer Reviews

God's Funeral: A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western Civilization

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One of my reasons for reviewing this book is to correct some false impressions ... First of all this is not a book about the period of the Enlightenment, and secondly it does not discuss "centuries" of thought. A.N. Wilson's task is to depict the decline in faith among intellectuals (and the working class poor to some extent) in Victorian England - the period essentially between 1837 and 1901.

Some authors lecture to you from a distant rostrum; Mr. Wilson sits down with you in your living room, and talks to you in an informed and witty manner. While it might help to have a modicum of knowledge of history and philosophy to get the most out of this book, it's not really necessary. He might drop a phrase on you like "rotten borough" (a voting district under the control of a few individuals) without explaining it, but that's a minor problem. I did encounter one small annoyance, and that was ANW's tendency to occasionally tease you with little tidbits of information. In one of his many, interesting mini-biographies he might say, "And then there was the incident of such and such, but as that story is so well known I won't bother repeating it here." But I want it repeated here; I am not acquainted with the story.

As I stated above, ANW has quite a sense of wit. It's not often that you read a book on such a topic, and find yourself chuckling frequently. Let me give an example. Most authors would have told you that Benno Erdmann was a leading proponent of Hegelian philosophy after Georg Hegel's death. Wilson expresses the thought thusly, "Erdmann was Hegel's representative on earth."

Mr. Wilson is at his best in telling us about the religious and philosophical beliefs of Carlyle, Ruskin, Cardinal Newman, George Eliot, the nincompoop Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hardy and many others including a chapter on our best known American philosopher, William James. Many British intellectuals no longer believed in God, but did believe in the social utility of religion, i.e. God, or no God, religious teachings help keep society from falling apart. Of course 19th century Englishmen were still nervous about the prospect of a French-like revolution occurring on their home turf. Others felt that the beliefs and rituals of religion were so moving that if there isn't a God there really should be someone like Him out there.

If you think that learning history is a matter of diligently plowing through obfuscatory prose, then you will experience this book as a guilty pleasure.

In this book, A.N. Wilson, already a success as a novelist and as a biographer sets out to investigate the demise of the relevance of God as Institution. Through examining the works and lives of figures both major (Hume, Nietzche, Darwin, Carlyle, Goethe) and minor (Sherman and Irving) he sets to pinpoint the demise of 'God' as a relevent and important institution.

Obviously, any close minded fundementalist of any stripe is going to see ghosts in this book of what it is NOT. Wilson presents neither a case for belief or non-belief, just an investigation into why people did or didn't themselves. He is sympathetic to both sides though it is obvious, to use the terms of the German philosophers which (necessarily) he investigates, his world is one of Being rather than Becoming (i.e. it is illogical to think that somehow Man has transcended the needs for God in some kind o f end-of-history fashion....

And in doing this, he created a remarkable, erudite, easily readible book that does a commendible job of examinining its subject. He is a widely read and thoughtful man and clever enough to put together a book that is a joy to read. People into the history of ideas would obviously profit from reading this book; die-hard non-believers will dislike the fondness he has for the middle of the roaders like Hardy and Carlyle.

It is a great book and entirely worth your money. Buy it with my reccomendation.

The title is a bit misleading, as Wilson really writes (wonderfully and with wit, by the way) about the complexities and tensions of doubt and belief or knowledge and faith during, mainly, the 19th century (with repercussions in the 20th and 21st, of course). While a great number of thinkers and writers are discussed in this book, Wilson brings them, their personalities, and their ideas alive with a few deft brushstrokes (penstrokes?); the talent of the novelist is obviously at work here, to great effect. Incredibly insightful, thought-provoking, entertaining, and moving.

I found God's Funeral to be interesting and well-researched. I finished in only a couple days. I think that Wilson got both atheistic and theistic viewpoints represented well, which in itself is an accomplishment when writing about such a devisive subject.

I was excited upon first viewing this book. It appeared to be a historic account of the inexorable chain of events that, over time, have caused people in the West to lose belief in a supernatural power. The writing is magisterial, always authoritative, scrupulously researched - but there are problems.

The opening remains the best: Thomas Hardy's poem and his angst and inner turmoil at the discovery that his faith had feet of clay. This, for him, was a cause of deep sorrow rather than anger or hatred. The discussions of the English Enlightenment should be renamed "Lives of Intellectuals" for it is their yearnings and doubts and conjectures that he presents. It is almost as if these were the sole inhabitants of the nation and their story mimics the nation as a whole.

Wilson makes broad general statements, many of which are almost laughable..."by this time everyone had dismissed belief" or "the Utilitarians were the ones responsible for social reform". Or he was contradictory, first claiming that science caused people to lose belief in religion then commenting on the "general English ignorance of Science." As a matter of fact, at no time did the majority of Westerners lose their faith. Social reformers came from many areas but in particular the church with its drive to eliminate slavery throughout the world, and its efforts for animal and childrens rights.

One problem he alludes to repeatedly is "When faith has been discarded, what takes its place?" For this, there is no answer. One philosopher said,"One replaces God only with another god." We do not live in a Star Trek-like society, rigorously secular, humanity solemnly marching toward the goals of scientific understanding and peaceful exploration. In the case of Europe it appears that the alternative to God was politics, starting liberal, turning increasingly radical and coming to the twin scourges of mankind in the modern age - fascism and communism. The State replaced God. Marxism is offered throughout the book as some sort of refuge for the weary but it established its own gods (Lenin, Marx, Engels). Besides, the track record of totalitarianism in terms of sheer butchery makes Christian sins pale in comparison.

He concludes that those from the "Enlightenment" would be surprised as the resilience of religion in modern society. But it is a religion totally unlike that of last century. Most educated Westerners accept evolution, the physical beginning of the universe, the age of the Earth and the origins of religion in myth. More importantly, few accept Noah's Ark, Adam & Eve, miracles, the virgin birth, angels or numerous other things that we have more or less quietly discarded. Our faith, one could say, is in faith.

In another of Wilson's books, The Victorians, he writes, "It is difficult for me to conceive of any more agreeable way of life than that of the Victorian country parson. If I had to choose my ideal span of life, I should choose to have been born in the 1830s, the son of a parson with the genetic inheritance of strong teeth." This book is, in many ways, best read as if Wilson had indeed been granted his wish, along with an erudition and wit far beyond that of the run-of-the-mill parson's son. I purchased and read this book, with much enjoyment, not because I was particularly interested in rehashing the religious and non-religious life of intellectuals in the Victorian era, but because Wilson wrote it. And nobody writes with such a mixture of the cosy and puckish as Wilson. He's indeed a particularly charming writer.

All the same, the reader is best forewarned that s/he needs to have read many books in order to grasp this one. Indeed, the book is best described as for the very well-read about the very well-read. I really don't see much of a point of bothering with this book if you haven't read SOMETHING by each of the intellectuals under the chapter headings. For example, you don't need to have read the obscure Thomas Hardy poem whence the book takes its name, but I don't think you're quite ready if you haven't read Jude the Obscure.

There are several reasons for this caveat. I'm not merely being snobbish. For instance, if one has read neither Kant nor Hume, it's an inevitability that one will conclude that Hume was cynical and that Kant was a kind, sincere genius. This is because Wilson cherry picks his facts about the two, as he does about all the other intellectuals described herein. He describes Hume as cynical because he advises an otherwise penniless young man to take a position in the church despite his disbelief. He does NOT tell you that Hume had gone through much travail himself because of his skepticism - seeing the best friend of his youth hanged for blasphemy because he voiced the opinion that "Christianity is nonsense." and being himself denied a post at the University of Edinburgh because of his views. As for Kant, he advises the reader to read him in the original in order to get the full flavour of his philosophy. As someone who HAS read Kant in the original (admittedly, under duress, as required reading as an undergraduate), I am fully convinced that any reader who takes him up on this challenge will find Kant's convoluted, obfuscatory prose as life-threatening to literary taste, and perhaps to sanity if one perseveres. More to the point, one will likely miss the point that what Wilson is doing in this chapter is cocking his nose at the Oxbridge establishment, who (rightly, I think) revere Hume and dismiss Kant.

But, that being said, this is an interesting and fun read. Wilson makes much of how those Victorian intellectuals, like Hardy, who wanted to believe but couldn't and were sure that "God's Funeral" had taken place would react if they could be transported to our time and find religion still flourishing. An equally interesting question is how some of the church fathers, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint Anselm would react to people who believed without the logical "proofs" of God's existence that both of these men spent much of their lives making - as they thought - airtight. They would be dismayed by the modern believer's attitude that all that is required is faith and that there need be no logical proof.

All this is by the way, I suppose. Wilson quotes Dostoevsky at the beginning of the book from The Diary of a Writer, "...I am firmly convinced that the majority of suicides in toto, directly or indirectly, are committed as a result of one and the same spiritual illness - the absence in the souls of these men of the sublime idea of existence."---This summarises what Wilson is dealing with in this book. He writes, "Human beings are natural adorers." If adoration of God is removed by Hume or Darwin or Marx, then what can one do? What or whom can one love in the same manner, with the same awe? As Wilson writes towards the end, quite correctly, "It becomes a matter of life, and how individuals wish to lead it, and whether temperament or experience makes this `deep' kind of life something which appeals to them."

As stated at the outset here, this book is for and about the well-read, but it is also about people who lead "deep" lives in the sense quoted above. I imagine one would get some rather odd looks if one ventured to ask most people, even "religious" persons, about the presence of the sublime in their existence. Wilson finally comes down in the last chapter in favour of "Modernist" (that is to say, non-Literalist) Roman Catholicism. But he's a bit more selective than that, as the last page makes clear, as practiced "among the intelligent church-going population."

I wonder how many pass Wilson's test.

No idea stood beyond the reach of some intellectual niche in Victorian England. Behind the common conception of conformity and prudishness was a spectacular diversity of mind and inclination, willing to follow any idea to its logical conclusions. A.N. Wilson does a marvelous job of bringing it all to life in a sober and compelling way, showing that the individuals at the intellectual heart of 19th century England slowly slipped out of the medieval cloak of theism as the full consequences of Darwinian theory and the scientific revolution became evident. I read this right after "Age of Reason" and before "Calling Bernadette's Bluff." My mind has been humming with gratitude ever since.

At the time I read this book, I was unable to understand the importance of the Enlightenment Period. This book is not only a historical piece but also one of philosophy and religion. I recommend it to anyone interested in agnosticism and atheism (even Christianity); however, I strongly suggest familiarizing yourself with the works of Nietzsche, Kant, Hardy, Marx, Freud, etc. before jumping into this one.

This book takes a serious look into the complaints of atheists and agnostics over the centuries. Wilson has an elegant writing style and provides illustrations from the past and present. He also incorporates numerous views from those who believe in God and those who do not. Delightful reading for atheist or believer or those who check undecided when asked about their belief in God.