The Gospel and the South

Abstract

""Kent, sir? Everybody knows Kent" says Jingle in ~'The Pickwick Papers", "apples, cherries, hops and women." We are still blessed with those commodities in abundance, but in other respects Kent has changed a good deal since Dickens' day. There are industries such as coa12mining, the papercurious programmed creatures called "commuters " (misnamed "computers" in a famous BBC radio . broadcast howler!) and there is a splendid modern University in Canterbury as well as an ancient Cathedral. Secularization has crept as far South as "the garden .of England"· and with it, a decline in church-going, Sunday School-se~ding, and a sharp increase in crime, vandalism and the divorce rate. A~ the present time, we are feeling the effects of the econom!c rec~ssion, unemployment is rife, many feel insecure m their jobs, and there is a high incidence of depressive illness"