Book review: All in the Mind (Ludovic Kennedy)

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Ludovic Kennedy

ALL IN THE MIND

A farewell to God
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Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a
[6]Creative Commons License.
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Writing as he was in the last year of the twentieth century, Ludovic
Kennedy still felt it necessary to begin his book with a semi-apology
for attacking religion. This in itself is a measure of the change that
has occurred in public attitudes in recent years. He himself realized
that he might be overtaken by events: "what I had originally intended
as a radical scenario may now be thought to be old hat."

After some speculations about bow religion may have originated in
prehistoric times Kennedy takes us to "Judaeo-Christian mythologies",
with a summary of early Christian history, including the Arian
controversy. He has little time either for Jesus or for what Christians
have made of him. But it is when he goes on to describe the wholesale
killing that occurred later, in the name of God, that we meet his
strongest denunciation of religion. Most of this will be familiar to
anyone with a degree of historical awareness, though I had not
previously encountered the horrific story which occurred as late as
1766 in the northern French town of Abbeville. The young Chevalier de
la Barre failed to doff his cap to a passing religious procession,
because it was raining. He was sentenced for blasphemy to have his
hands amputated, his tongue torn out, and then to be burned alive.

We then move, with relief, to the coming of the Enlightenment. Atheists
began to declare themselves more openly, though at first only very
cautiously, for obvious reasons. But Kennedy sees an accelerating trend
towards rationality after the publication of Darwin's theory in the
mid-nineteenth century. This, I think, is a considerable simplification
of a complex story -- many of those who helped to prepare the way for
Darwin, after all, were churchmen, as Michael Ruse has pointed out.

A measure of how much things today have changed comes from the account
Kennedy gives of the furore which erupted in 1954, when Margaret
Knight, a psychologist, gave two talks on the BBC entitled Morals
without Religion. The broadcasts were greeted with fury and horror by
most of the press although the Church of England Newspaper thought she
ought to be listened to and so did Donald Soper, a well-known Methodist
preacher. Dr Knight followed up her broadcasts with a little book and
many readers wrote to her to thank her for speaking out. Not long
afterwards Bishop John Robinson's book Honest to God appeared and
caused a sensation by implying that a God "out there" was no longer
credible. Like Margaret Knight's book, Honest to God seems to be all
but forgotten today.

I think that Kennedy was right to fear that his book would soon be
rendered old hat by subsequent developments. (There is very little
about Islam.) All the points he makes have been made again and again by
others in recent years. But one can understand why, as he says, writing
it did him good, and it is worth reading if only to see how far we have
come in just a few years.
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%T All In The Mind
%S A farewell to God
%A Ludovic Kennedy
%I Hodder and Stoughton
%C London
%D 1999
%G ISBN 0-340-68063-6
%P xvii + 302pp
%K religion
%O illustrated
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