Bring out the loss of faith in the poem “Church Going” composed by Philip Larkin.

Question: Bring out the loss of faith in the poem “Church Going” composed by Philip Larkin.

            Answer: ‘Church Going’ is one of his best known poems by Philip Larkin, a post war poet. It depicts the loss of religious faith of the modern. John Press called it, “a study of Man as a creature isolated in a universe from which God seems to have withdrawn.” Actually, with the rapid development of science and technology during the Victorian Age, people’s religious faith had been shaky, as soon as Charles Darwin gave his evolution theory. Afterwards, people could not decide which one of them they should follow. Now in the modern time after the 2^nd World War, religious faith is no more. T. S. Eliot’s and W. B. Yeats’ poetry shows loss of religious faith.

            In the past people’s religious faith was very pure. But now in modern time, a complete opposite scenario is visible. Here in the poem the speaker enters a church and shuts the door of the church noisily. It indicates that the speaker is indifferent and has hardly any respect for the church. Again, here is an irony that he being hatless takes off the cycle-clips. It indicates that instead of showing reverence to it, he acts as if he were mocking it. In addition, in the narrator’s opinion, religion is on a decline. So, when he pronounces ‘here endeth’ loudly, he is not only talking about his sermon ending but also he is talking about religion ending and his donation of Irish sixpence to a church in England heightens the effect of mockery. Therefore, it clearly indicates here that a religious place is not valuable to the modern. So the speaker adds that:

“Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.”

            Afterwards the narrator describes that he does not want to stop for a church because it frustrates him to a great extent, yet he stops unwillingly to discover what the allurement of the place is. The idea reminds us of ‘The Waste Land’ in which churches are seen falling down. For the same reason, he wonders and is alarmed at his thought that:

“When churches fall completely out of use”

            Now, the speaker is doubtful about that superstition like disbelief will die and he also senses that there will be time when disbelief will also go away. However, a church is nothing more than a building to the modern. This is why, now it is not visited often rather occasionally as a routine. They do not feel the urge to visit it rather they go there as a show or for merrymaking on Sundays. Often they do not know why they are going there. Afterwards, the speaker is wondered at the thought that there will be time when there will be hardly anyone who will visit a church as religious faith is ebbing with the passage of time. Being surprised, he adds:

“I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last to seek

This place for what it was;”

            The narrator in stanza five is isolated and meditative. The speaker finds that a church becomes more and more unrecognisable each week as the trees and plants overtake the structure. The buildings’ original purpose has become more and more obscure as well. It implies the gradual loss of faith in God.

            In conclusion, it can be said that Philip Larkin’s ‘Church Going’ shows man’s seeming rootlessness, the predicament of isolation in a hostile and meaningless world but towards the end of the poem, Larkin opines that the ceremonies, the forms of worship, the terminology of religion and philosophy, the objectifications of human ideals, hopes and fears may change but the ideals themselves do not. Actually, we see that the narrator at first shows disrespect to religion but later on he realises that religion will always have a place in the hearts of man, because they need to believe in something greater than themselves and therefore, churches will never fall out of use.