Today's Twelfth of July celebrations can't mask a dispiriting time for Protestantism in Ireland and Britain. Orangemen, as ever, will march but in inexorably diminishing numbers. The Church of England is disintegrating because a gay canon has been forced to decline a promotion to bishop. The Church of Ireland is seeking a congregation for a restored cathedral in Co Clare.
These are not developments to be celebrated by Protestant drums. Given the decline of the Catholic Church in the wealthy world, accelerated by child sex abuse scandals, Protestantism might have expected some renewal. Instead, it too faces the prospect of reduced relevance in a secularising world, and the split over Canon Jeffrey John could be ruinous for Anglicanism.
In one sense, John's ousting is a case of colonialism coming home. African bishops were particularly vehement in denouncing him. The Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, leader of 17 million Anglicans, claimed that homosexuality was "lower than the conduct of beasts". Meanwhile, British liberals and gay rights campaigners view the episode as a victory for homophobia. It is.
Long derided as "the Tory party at prayer", the Anglican Church in Britain has more recently been depicted as "the Liberal party at prayer". The appointment of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury appeared to validate that description. Now, however, with evangelicals - British and African - having blocked Jeffrey John, Anglicanism is marching towards Orange illiberalism.
There is, in fairness, a point in assertions which argue that First World Christianity lost its way when it decided to accommodate secular developments. Folk masses, vernacular liturgy and Father Trendies probably did dilute magisterial Catholicism, and Anglicanism's replacement of a theological gospel with a social one has perhaps rendered it fatally wishy-washy and effete. Such arguments contain sense but what were the alternatives? In a time in which science has explained much (but by no means all)of what was hitherto inexplicable, any religion refusing to adapt to new knowledge was going to lose believers anyway.
Without change, religion wouldn't have had a prayer of survival and to suggest otherwise is a plenary indulgence of fantasy. Some believers, of course, resent change and the more fanatical among them seek refuge in fundamentalism. Orangeism, unlike Anglicanism, has always shown a forbidding fundamentalism. But now even the Church of England, which for decades has seemed more concerned with ostensibly tasteful decorum than with theological dogma, appears to be falling to the evangelicals. Thus, as with Catholicism, a fundamentalist lobby is vying for control and alienating those less rabid. The greatest worry for society, however, is that the moral teachings of the Churches are not being replaced by any other moral teachings. Of course, many supposed Christians have been seen to be so unchristian that people have lost faith in the Churches and their teachings.
It's telling that the crises in both the Catholic and Protestant Churches have been hugely exacerbated by matters of sex. In the worst cases rocking Catholicism, the sex has been criminal and genuinely "lower than the behaviour of beasts". Although Jeffrey John has not behaved illegally, he has been treated as a moral criminal. In fact, he is being punished for honesty. Protestants, with their married clergy, traditionally appeared less fraught about sex than Catholics berated by a celibate clergy. Sure, the "randy vicar" has long been a stock character of low-brow British humour and the country's more salacious tabloids, but he is primarily a figure of amusement. A gay bishop, however, has proven to be a figure too far. Even though he's now celibate, Jeffrey John, a 50-year-old who had a 25-year relationship with another clergyman, has been humiliated. His mortification won't help the cerebral Rowan Williams either. Brought to power by Anglican liberals, Williams too has been humiliated and the evangelicals will be emboldened by thwarting his agenda.
Perhaps Anglicanism has long been dead in England anyway. Since the mid-19th century and the flowering of Darwinism and Marxism - and later, psychology - religion there has been steadily declining. Now, in the 21st century, the Church of England, though it retains the greatest number of nominal adherents, is not even the most practised faith in Britain.
Still, the fundamentalist drums will boom out across the North today. Flutes will play The Sash but the underlying tune cannot really be triumphalist. It will be a lament for a world which is marching into history. Catholics, of course, will not be saddened by the decline of Orangeism, but the Roman Church too is now more vibrant in the developing world than in Europe.
In Kilfenora, Co Clare, the pre-Reformation St Fachtnan's Cathedral, almost fully restored at a cost of more than €1 million, cannot find a sufficiently large Church of Ireland congregation to make it viable. "The church is opening in the autumn but I would question does anybody want it?" asked local Church of Ireland clergyman, Rev Bob Hanna. It's a telling question to ponder as the Twelfth bonfires smoulder and the booming Lambeg drums mark, not a triumphant, but a dismal year for Protestantism in particular and Christianity in general.