Dear Richard Madeley: ‘Life in our village revolves around the church – but neither of us is religious’
Dear Richard,
Like many people, we moved to the country during Covid. It was idyllic during lockdown, and we have come to love it since, despite the challenges of being back in the office and so on. But one problem that I and, to a worse extent, my husband have is that the whole life of the village revolves around the church. The nursery is in the church hall, various cute country things are done by committees that are organised around the church, and so on. If you go to the pub on a Sunday lunchtime and you haven’t been to church first you get little digs – gentle ones, but it’s as if you can’t really be part of the village unless you go to church.
Neither of us is religious. I am pretty relaxed about it, but my husband doesn’t like to feel a hypocrite and he hates going to services. If I go without him I get the third degree about whether he’s all right, and if we both stay away we’ll discover
a few days later that someone’s doing some great thing and we haven’t been involved or invited.
It is good that these buildings (our church is very beautiful) are used, but in this day and age I don’t think it’s healthy that having (or pretending to have) particular religious beliefs should be the only way to feel part of a community.
What do you think?
— E, Dorset
Dear E,
Your letter certainly takes me back. My father was born in a remote part of Shropshire and I spent much of my childhood on my grandparents’ farm there. The village church – and the vicar – certainly called most of the shots. But that was over half a century ago! Surely those days are gone?
Not in deepest Dorset, it would seem. Actually, E, I almost wonder if you should treasure this social relic, an enduring echo from the past, rather than being irked by it – but then I don’t have to live there, do I? And the puritanical culture of ‘worship with us or be cast out with the damned’ certainly needs challenging, that’s for sure.
But how to do that? Well, I’ve given it some thought and here’s my advice. You should go straight to the top – in other words, to the vicar. No one should face subtle excommunication from their local community because they don’t share a Christian faith; in fact it’s most unchristian to punish someone for having the moral courage to refuse to be a hypocrite.
Assuming they concur with that fundamental tenet, they should be willing to have a word with the village movers and shakers and persuade them to allow the heathens back into the fold.
But tread softly. Religion aside, you and your husband are very much the newcomers here. Villagers can take years to accept ‘outsiders’. I remember my grandparents routinely referring to one arriviste family as ‘that new lot’. I would later learn that they’d moved to the village just after the Great War.
You can find more of Richard Madeley’s advice here or submit your own dilemma below.