The Wardman Wire

Earlier this week I interviewed Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in his parliamentary office. Such great revelations as emerged are mostly reserved, I’m afraid, for Third Way magazine – which is not some kind of house journal for Blairism, but a Christian social ethics and current affairs monthly founded in the 1970s.

What they had in mind in using the title “Third Way” was a re-framing of standard political discourse in terms of principles emerging from the biblical traditions of social thought.

The Influence of Personal Convictions on Politics

Anyway, the influence of religion and other personally grounded [notice I didn’t say ‘private’] convictions in the political arena was obviously one of the issues I wanted to discuss with the new head of Britain’s third party – especially as there was a minor fuss when he proclaimed, shortly after his election as leader, that he was an atheist. Well, that’s what most people think occurred.

As a matter of fact, there was no such announcement. What happened was that Clegg responded to one of those quick fire interviews, was asked whether he believed in God, and was given only two possibilities, yes or no. So he chose the one that approximates closest to his view. On that basis many headlines and columns were written.

This little episode certainly tells you rather more about media pigeonholing than it does about the subtleties of Mr Clegg, as you will find out when you read May’s Third Way. But it also highlights a rather important question that hardly figures at all on the commentariat’s agenda. As I put it in one of my sideways interrogations,

“How do you think not believing in God impacts on the way you conceive politics and the way you make political decisions?”

Though Nick Clegg is undoubtedly a thoughtful man, I’m probably not breaking any embargoes by revealing that this question took him a bit by surprise. I suspect the same would be true of almost any figure in public life. We have got very used to enquiring about how religion should or should not enter into the political process through the pores of politicians who “do God” in other aspects of their lives (at least). However, it rarely occurs to anybody that non-belief might be anything more substantial than a rejection of, or aversion to, “religious faith” – whatever that means for the person doing the non-believing.

Non-belief is more just than a Vacuum

I think it’s rather more interesting than that. I don’t at all buy the idea that morality is impossible without faith. Demonstrably that is not so. Nor do I accept the implicit view of many established religious leaders that some kind of religion is always better than no kind of religion. But whether and how you see your actions framed by some sort of higher purpose, ideal or vocation, however conceived, is not an uninteresting or unimportant question.

The Hebrew prophets, among others, were clear that the opposite of belief in God, who for them was of wide import for communal behaviour, was false belief rather than no belief.

The revolutionary mystic Simone Weil was also surely right to say that there are at least two kinds of atheism; one of these is a necessary purgation of false ideas about God – those that lead to arrogance and death-dealing in the name of the divine. For that reason, and many others, I would strongly discourage Christians (or anyone else) from forming hard-and-fast opinions about political figures on the basis of their espoused beliefs, convictions or philosophy of life. But I would still like to know something about what those beliefs are.

Openness about Belief (or not) provides a Three Dimensional View

This is not idle or prurient curiosity; I think it would be generally healthier if people in public life felt more free to talk about the basic convictions that shape them – including the kind of God they do or do not believe in, and how they draw the parallels, consonances and tensions of belonging to a ‘community of conviction’ (such as a church, a mosque or the British Humanist Association) with the holding of public office as a representative of people of all beliefs and none in particular.

This is part of what some electors may wish to know, and it might also help to inform a better conversation about how convictions developed outside the political arena can and do enter it – as will inevitably be the case, openly or by stealth, whether there is a clear distinction between church and state in matters of public governance (as I believe there should be) or not.

And it has a downside

There are two main obstacles to this openness:

• First, there is the fear that it will instantly be sensationalised or polarised by those who take dogmatic stances for or against “religion”.
• Second, there are some (though I think they are a distinct minority) who fear that any discussion of belief issues instantly compromises the neutrality of government and opens up the prospect of some theocratic nightmare.

But we need an adult debate

It’s important to question such negative prognostications - if we want our politicians to be adult, open, human and varied, we have to be so ourselves.

Nick Clegg made it clear to me that he believes both in disestablishment, because no one faith institution should be advantaged in a mixed society, and in the active participation in the political process of people formed by a variety of convictions and life-stances.

The aim here is a civil society, rather than a servility to any fixed belief system.

What this leaves open for debate is the set of ground rules required by such a pluralism, its limits and balances, and what the role of belief groups as voluntary associations can (or should) be in a democratic polity.

Wrapping Up

There are a number of possible answers to these questions. But all of them will inevitably be about something more demanding than “doing” or “not doing” God.

Tags: nick clegg, simon barrow, third way, doing god, we don’t do god, british humanist association[tags]nick clegg, simon barrow, third way, doing god, we don’t do god, british humanist association[/tags]