Faith & Spirit Quote by Michael Flanders

A perfectly British piece of deadpan that treats modernity like a politely inconvenient miracle. Flanders takes the old piety-laced warning - "If God had intended X..". - and flips it into a punchline where the supposedly humbler option is hilariously industrial. Not wings, not feathers, not even the romance of the open sky: railways. The joke lands because it drags divine intention down onto the platform next to steam and timetables, exposing how quickly humans recruit God to justify whatever comfort they already prefer.

The subtext is suspicion of technological evangelism, especially the mid-century cult of flight. Postwar Britain watched air travel and the jet age sell themselves as destiny: faster, higher, shinier, more "advanced". Flanders, a performer steeped in revue and satirical song, pokes at that sales pitch by pretending to be the reactionary who argues from Providence, then revealing the argument's absurd elasticity. If you can make God endorse rail infrastructure, you can make Him endorse anything.

It also works as a classed, cultural gag: flying is glamorous, a little American, a little futuristic; rail is familiar, municipal, scheduled, reliably damp. The line deflates aspiration with logistics. Underneath the whimsy sits a sharper point about how societies narrate progress: we pretend our inventions are fate, then call dissent "unnatural". Flanders replies: fine. If we're going to mythologize machines, at least pick the one with a buffet car.