An American in Paris . . . and Britain VIII: The Strange Event at Stonehenge and the Sarum Rite
Why does anyone want to revive paganism?
Stonehenge is a good reminder that early English culture was, well, primitive. Compare Stonehenge to the Roman baths in Bath. 
It is easy to see that the pre-Roman pagans were less sophisticated than the Roman pagans and that even in the midst of a much more difficult military situation Christianity was able to build on that heritage.
Christianity took a Britain the Roman pagans could not keep and turned it into the Britain of Shakespeare, Dickens, constitutional government, science, and some of the engineering wonders of the world.
In an open competition of ideas, in which pagans killed Christians, Christianity won. It was able to work with the philosophy of Greeks like Plato where Druid forms of paganism could not. Christianity could cross cultural barriers, but paganism tended to be local and individualistic. Pagans produced no figure at the level of Augustine . . . either one since Christianity produced Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Augustine of Canterbury.
Christianity was good for England. It added no new problems, cured many old ones, and was capable of change under pressure. Christians wanted to help the poor and felt guilty when they did not. Christians believed in universal literacy in Britain and eventually achieved it. The religion of the Cross loved peace, just wars, and ended private feuds. Christianity took music, art, and literature to new levels. It was Christian Britain that produced Chaucer and it was Christian Britain that founded Oxford and Cambridge.
In old Sarum, (near modern Salisbury) one finds traces of a Christianity older than Roman control.
The next time an Italian Catholic friend sneers about antiquity, point out that there was a Sarum Christianity that developed its own English liturgy, the basis of the Prayer Book, that marvel of English speech, that did not need Roman help to thrive. British Christianity was part of the global Christendom, not cultural slave to the curia. Christianity set the British imagination free. . . it did not put it in serfdom to the Bishop of Rome.
A strength of traditional Christianity is that it develops local and culturally sensitive variations of liturgy. The means can change as long as the message remains.
English Christianity was long a friend to science, but in a way that mixed the truths and usefulness of science with those of the humanities.
This included placing the best useful scientific instruments right in the Church.
Cathedrals had the best time pieces which were sophisticated scientific instruments in the period. I long for the day when the best computer, network, and scientific equipment in town are found in the Church. That same day should find the Church demanding that there is more to people, stars, and the Earth than can be found be looking at the sum of their parts. We should demand that scientists cannot be well educated if they are not good people. . . and being a good person requires training in the humanities not just the craft of science.
You can be a good man without knowing about any particular craft, but not if you are ignorant of poetry.
People should come to the church for knowledge, beauty, and truth.
Jesus Christ is Lord. He rules every facet of reality and only the Church can present and empower humankind to service in every area of human work. The Church is not the state, the family, or the school. . . and she has a long tradition of recognizing the freedom needed in each of these areas from pastoral rule. . . but the Church can comfort or confront the king, gentle the father, and inspire the educator. It is the Church that can link the multitude of areas of human thought into a university.
The Church was the center of social life, sometimes of market life, and always of the educational life of the community. The cathedrals were not always quiet places (as they are today), but bustled with life. Worship was holy and God-centered, but the weekday life was integrated into the work of the cathedral as well.
A very strange thing happened to me at Stonehenge. I suddenly realized that there was nothing there. It was empty in a way the Cathedral of Salisbury could never be. I anticipated feeling the Shadow at Stonehenge, but centuries of Christian British people have killed it.
They said that some modern Druids meet there now, but this is not fearful. They are living on the cultural heritage of Christian Britain. Sometimes my faith has wavered and I have wondered and even suggested that Britain is post-Christian, but it came to me at Stonehenge: A few clownish pseudo-Druids with no connection to real pagan Britain meeting at Halloween cannot revive paganism. There is not Britain without Christianity and to try to rend the Faith from the fabric of British life would leave nothing there.
Britain may die, though I doubt it, or be conquered by Islam as Byzantium was, but Britain will always be culturally Christian. When Saint Paul’s Cathedral is a mosque as Hagia Sophia of Constantinople became a mosque, then Britain will be dead as Byzantium died. And the glorious memory of Christian Britain will haunt the imagination of the world as the bravery of the Byzantines in the great city in the last siege still moves our minds.
But I do not believe Britain will die, because revival is always possible. Islam has not had to compete in the open market of ideas and if I had to bet, I would bet that Christian missionaries to British Muslims can out think and out debate Moslem missionaries to British Christians.
The poor secularists, doomed by their impotence, can only watch the real battle for Britain.
The strange thing about Stonehenge is that the Cross has purged it of terror. The strange thing about Sarum and Salisbury is that the Christian faith remains despite rumors to the contrary.
The strange thing about Jesus is that he does not make you come to Him. . . the Prince of Peace never forces a living soul to bow the knee, but the Love that Moves the Heavens and the Stars is so delightful, true, and good that we come just as we are to Him.
Don’t you just love Jesus Christ?