Yesterday, The Times ran an article that was, in effect, an elegy for the manual gearbox (Times: Is it farewell to the manual gearbox?). Specifically, they note ‘Fewer than a quarter of cars registered in 2024 had a manual gearbox’. Given the rise in EV sales, the extra expense on car manufacturers to offer multiple gearbox options and a simple cutting of the numbers for those who actually care about having a manual gearbox, the writing seems to be on the wall for the future is fully automatic. If you are a car enthusiast, I imagine this represents a trauma. If you are like the rest of us who broadly want a comfortable car that will get you from A to B without fuss, I imagine more of a collective shrug.

I don’t want to mock what I neither understand nor is my particular interest. I don’t like it when people laugh at the stuff I’m into just because it’s not their thing and don’t get it. I have no desire to do that here to classic car enthusiasts who mourn the loss of the manual gearbox. I can sympathise with a plea for purity that often comes from those who enjoy a particular pastime. We do it all the time with sports and other things, so why not with driving? Just because it is functional for most of us doesn’t stop those for whom it is a joy from having preferences over what makes it pleasurable to them. If that is manual gearboxes and an active left leg, who am I to pour scorn?

But what struck me reading the article is that a lot of the matter came down to a plea to “the way we used to do it”. A desire to maintain the old forms. A refusal to simply go along with the modern version simply because it is the majority preference. Some driving enthusiasts I remember harking back to the day when ‘driving was a real skill’, by which they meant drivers had to find a particular level of revs before they were even able to change gear without horribly grinding them altogether. I can only imagine what such enthusiasts would make of not even needing to change gear at all. Again, if this is all part of the fun of driving for you, I get it (by which I mean, I get that it is something you find fun – not necessarily why you find it fun). But the tenor of the argument is that the old way is not so much better in reality as having more heart, being more interesting and therefore more enjoyable. It is an argument that won’t cut the mustard with those for whom driving is not a matter of fun or skill, but a functional matter that should be as painless, easy and comfortable as possible.

This same discussion kind of discussion comes up in the church all the time. There are those who would argue certain old forms are better – offering all manner of reasons for their position – that doesn’t survive contact with the modern world. Something that most have long since moved on from, who view the matter as twee and quaint, is stubbornly held onto by some as right, better or simply being preferable for anybody with any seriousness about the thing in question.

Of course, there are things in the church that rightly should not change. The basic form should be the same as whatever it has been for the last 2000 years or so. But there are plenty of things that really are just forms that worked well in a time or place that no longer makes a lot of sense in the modern world. It isn’t that the thing is wrong, nor is it that it is wrong to change it either, simply that it doesn’t make a great deal of sense in the world we now inhabit. Some may continue to mourn its demise, but when the overwhelming majority of people cannot understand or wrap their head around why we would continue doing it, we do sometimes have to accept modernity occurs and we must adapt to it.