Philip Larkin "Church Going"

Philip Larkin's "Church Going" conveys a strong theme of absence in religion for both the poet himself and every attendant of modern church.  From the very beginning Larkin mentions the disbelief of religion inside of the church even while the sermon is going on.  As he talks about his own thoughts, his belief with religion is absent as he fills an empty seat on a pew with an empty shell of a man.  He ponders about the other participants of this tradition and wonders why they all attend also.  Do they really believe in it, are they like him, or do they all congregate to relieve themselves of past sins in order to cleanse the palate?  Larkin erupts these types of question through the poem as he establishes another theme through his many questions.  He strongly persists on the idea that God may becoming absent in religion and people due to the church and its ways.  He forms the idea that the church is killing religion in itself because we are forced into a confined building and expected to praise instead of actually wanting to; relaying the idea that it has become more of a conditioned  habit than a faithful tradition.