Philip larkin’s Agnosticism in “Church Going”

Abstract

‘Church Going’ by Philip Larkin, the romantic recluse is not a religious poem, as it may appear from the title, but a poem about Going to Church. The poem expresses a view that faith and belief in religion must die but that the spirit of tradition represented by the English Church can’t come to an end. Larkin’s agnosticism becomes more understandable if we look at this poem in the National and the International context of the post-world-war years. The poem refers both to the erosion of the Church as an Institution and to the perpetuation of some kind of ritual observance. The poet’s tone is pessimistic and somewhat sceptic about the bleak future of the Church. But he is quite confident of the lasting mystic spiritual significance of the Church, “Serious house on serious earth” for its devotees. Larkin’s dilemma is not whether to believe in God but what to put in God’s place. The loss of religious faith and the fear of death are counteracted by an unshakable faith in individual human potential. So, the poem is both reverent and irreverent that indicate poet’s dual split personality, skepticism, agnosticism.