3 SEPTEMBER 2005, Page 17

Are Tony Blair and George Bush dabbling in Satanism?

Asuper production of Don Giovanni at the Sydney Opera House last week led my thoughts far from Prague, where it was first performed, far from Australia and far from Mozart. The point of departure was the famous moment that marks the real end of the opera: the moment when the great seducer Don Giovanni goes to Hell.

This is not the end of the libretto. Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, gild the lily with a final scene in which the pure resolve to live happily ever after and the deflowered Donna Elvira resolves to become a nun. An Australian audience had the honesty to giggle at this, and rightly. As the Sydney Morning Herald’s ecstatic opera critic put it next morning, most of us would rather follow the breathtakingly beguiling Don Giovanni to Hell than linger with the prissy in Paradise. But one suspects that Mozart judged a defiant exit by an amoral atheist too daring an ending for the audiences of his day.

It is, however, the only satisfactory ending. You do not need reminding of the intricacies of the plot of Don Giovanni to follow me. It is enough to recall that at the moment of his condemnation, after a life in which he has denied God, mocked religion, deflowered innumerable women and knowingly pursued a path of unremitting wickedness, Giovanni is offered the chance to repent and save his soul. He rejects it. He chooses Hell. That is the final twist.

And the reason this started my thoughts racing away from music is that the final twist represents a very serious blasphemy against the Christian religion — yet audiences from Mozart’s day to the present, most of whom would call themselves Christian, are likely to overlook it. It is a blasphemy to which (from the language and imagery they use) I think Tony Blair and George W. Bush are susceptible. Their mistaken interpretation of their faith places them, along with a powerful but errant strand of Christianity, perilously close to Satanism. It is time for the Archbishop of Canterbury to point this out.

Giovanni rejects God. He thwarts God. He refuses to come over to God’s side. He chooses the Forces of Darkness.

Be clear that at this point Don Giovanni is not an atheist. Not any more. Judgment confronts him. To his horror he has seen the dead rise. Hell yawns beneath him. His words leave no doubt that he has recognised as much. At this moment, therefore, what Giovanni is saying is, in essence, ‘I was wrong. There is a God. But I defy Him. I am on the other side. I am [as the massmurderer Timothy McVeigh quoted in his last words before the electric chair] the master of my soul.’ This is astonishing behaviour. Were I upon my death to be confronted with irresistible evidence that my atheism had been mistaken, I should at once repent of my godless life, protesting (as Bertrand Russell said he would), ‘But Lord, you should have given me more proof!’ After that I would surrender myself to God’s will.

Giovanni is different. He recognises the Divine Will, and rejects it. I have to say (and the Sydney audience recognised it) that there is something quite magnificent in this. It is thrilling.

Undoubtedly it is blasphemy on Giovanni’s part, but it comes close to being blasphemy on W. Amadeus Mozart’s part too. His opera hints at the possibility of a challenge to God; the possibility of serving a different general in a perpetual war between two great armies, both of which are ‘true’.

The Church, with its claims to the only truth, has long been unhappy with such notions. Dualism (or Manichaeanism) is a Christian heresy; it was one of the heresies of the Albigensians or Cathars. For the belief that the universe is ruled by two powers, one good and one evil, who are of comparable potency and exist in permanent contention, some fitful support can be found in the Gospels, but the spirit of the New Testament points in another direction: to the view that there is only God, or a falling away from God, and nothing else. Jesus does mention Hell and the Evil One but He does not go on about it; and such references can be interpreted as a nod in the direction of the orthodox religious metaphors of His day. On the whole, however, Jesus accentuates the positive and never dignifies evil. Speaking for myself, I finish the Gospels with a strong impression that He saw weakness and blindness — failures of will and obstructions to our human vision of Truth — as the problem, rather than the active recruitment of witting and willing human helpers by a Satanic rival.

A belief that such a thing could be happening in the world — even if the belief is held by someone determined to stay on God’s side — is really the major step towards Satanism. Once you see a universe in contention between two great cosmic forces, the question of which side you sign up to becomes, in the philosophical sense, a rather secondary matter. To see our world and all our fellow human beings as subject to the call (whether or not it is heeded) of the Devil’s recruiting sergeants, and to believe that some of us have already been recruited and are working for evil, is to make a huge statement. Possibly there is none more huge.

I think Tony Blair may think like this. It is certainly the drift of his imagery and language. George W. Bush almost certainly believes it. The Sun believes it. Many (not all) Christians do, too, though they shouldn’t, and in my work considering complaints from the public to the Broadcasting Standards Council I was struck by how ready enthusiastic Christians are to see Satanist dangers all around.

I always found Satanism — Dennis Wheatley and all that — comical. Many Christians do not. At one BSC meeting I found myself reminding an agitated fellowmember of the complaints committee that Satanism wasn’t true. Can educated people sincerely believe there is a Dark Force at work in the world? Those like me who find the very idea ludicrous have a real problem putting themselves into the mental frame of those who believe it. Do they suppose the Devil’s servants know they are the Devil’s servants?

I think that an Islamic extremist is a man under a serious misapprehension. Do the American President and the British Prime Minister think he is possessed? By whom? What can they mean? I honestly don’t know.

Matthew Parris is a political columnist of the Times.