[Editorial note: I have held Simon’s column over until today due to the urgent need to move the site - we’re getting there.]

Flexing the faith muscle

The vocal lobbying of Catholic leaders in Scotland over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has undoubtedly raised the hackles of many commentators concerning the place of organised religion in public life – specifically the political arena. As a result, the demanding task of creating a durable public discourse for discussing ethics and understanding science has been reduced to voter management and angry counter-assertion.

How to Engage?

There are a number of different strands to figuring out what might and might not be a constructive contribution to public decision-making from a religious perspective, but they all tend to get bundled together rather indiscriminately when people become over-agitated, resulting in negative polarisation rather than positive argument.

“The growing audibility of Christian voices in public affairs may partly be a reaction to the success of Muslims in aggressively using their religious identity as a political tool,” writes Ellis O’Hanlan, in the Irish Independent.

He continues: “If the imams can do it, goes the thinking, why not the bishops? Whatever the reason, after years in the shadows Christians are undoubtedly beginning to flex their collective muscles once more… But giving in to the demands of bearded men in frocks for the sake of a quiet life rarely results in a quieter life for anyone.”

Well, hold on a minute. I seriously doubt whether bishops are taking imams as their prime role model, though there is undoubtedly a feeling in sections of the church that Christianity attracts more hostility and criticism than other religions in the public square, on account of the need not to increase alienation among volatile minorities.

Seeing The Larger Picture

But what about the larger picture? Here we seem at a loss. That “whatever the reason” gives the game away. What it is saying is something to the affect that “we don’t know for sure, and it doesn’t matter. The issue is that these people are getting too big for their boots and it shouldn’t be allowed.”

Actually the reason for the resurgence of reactive ecclesial political lobbying matters a good deal, because it tells us what is at stake and what different responses are possible.

Ekklesia has been arguing for some time that the root issue troubling Christian leaders, in particular, is the continuous and long-term demise of the influence and position of the historic churches (especially the established Church of England) within society, corresponding with a long-term decline in attendance, affiliation and finance. This is often denied, but the evidence is pretty clear overall.

A Process of Informal Constitutional Polarisation?

In former years the moral stance and institutional interests of the churches were substantially in alignment with the prevailing mood and political framework of Britain. This meant that even though they were losing numbers they retained influence through the vicarious ideology of a nominally ‘Christian country’. But the growth of moral and political/ideological pluralism (‘permissiveness’ and ‘secularism’ to their detractors) has changed the situation substantially.

Moreover, the stakes have been raised not just by the increasingly severe questions raised about blasphemy laws (on the way out), unelected bishops in the Lords (under review) and a range of other inherited provisions which some see as their ‘dues’ and others as unjustifiable privilege. They have also been sharpened by the fact that the government, desperate to find new stakeholders and providers for pressurised public services, has been giving faith communities a larger role in taxpayer funded provision (like welfare and education).

This means that issues around equalities, competing moral visions, and the extent to which religion itself should be acknowledged or given influence within such provision, have come to the fore.

What has been happening, without much acknowledgement and debate, is a re-drawing of the informal concordat between church and state; the mutation of a singular Christian Establishment into a fuzzier multi-faith settlement mediated not by an attenuated constitutional arrangement, but by myriad mechanisms for consultation, participation and formal contracting with local and national government.

The Church of England and the Catholic hierarchies have been largely willing to go along with this drift because they still have the clout to maintain their hegemony in certain key areas (the great majority of faith schools are Christian, say) and because there is a growing perception of the need for religious solidarity in the face of secular pressure.

This tendency has, ironically, been reinforced by some secularist pressure groups turning the concept of ‘the secular’ into something synonymous with a set of generalised anti-religious sentiments, and by the assault of the ‘new atheists’ on any idea that religionists can think and behave reasonably.

Excluding the middle in this way actually suits the interests of those who want to retrench a more functionalist kind of religion rather well. “These people don’t just want to have a neutral public square, they want to exclude the religious altogether” is an argument that can be trotted out to thwart attempts to envisage creative alternatives to a zero-sum game between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’.

Where to go next?

What we need to do instead is to sit down together to work out where appropriate and beneficial boundaries between religion and state can be drawn, and how to distinguish between manipulation and participation. One area where a highly useful distinction can be made is between voluntary-based religious action in civil society and direct involvement in governance.

As a Christian I cannot see any reason why a male bishop of one denomination should get an automatic seat in parliament’s second chamber, for instance – or how such an anomaly would be usefully dealt with by extending it to Muslim leaders or to secularist societies for that matter. People should be in parliament because they have been elected or (in some cases) because they have been nominated on account of expertise and experience, not religious or non-religious affiliation.

Likewise, if faith groups are going to contract into helping with the provision of community-wide public services funded by all taxpayers, then they will need to recognise, as a reasonable precondition for so doing, the acceptance of fully equal access not bound to any one belief stance.

These things ought to be a matter of fairness, and of keeping what is public truly public. They do not and should not inhibit religious groups – along with non-religious ones – from initiating their own projects, contributing to public debate, speaking their mind, working for particular causes, demonstrating, think tanking, and developing social and civic forms of association aimed at characterfully commending particular virtues, practices and beliefs more widely.

Creative steps to take?

In order for that kind of distinction to be recognised within the churches (I cannot speak for other faith communities), two things are necessary.

First, an acknowledgment that equal participation not special privilege; grassroots performance not top-down prescription, is the proper and effective way for free faith to exercise influence within society – not on anaesthetising political grounds or because “we are losing”, but on the basis of the values of justice and compassion embodied in the Gospel message.

Second, a recognition that the shift towards negotiated pluralism rather than attenuated Christian hegemony in public life enables the churches to embrace a different role, location and status within the social order – one more akin to a creative minority, dissenting where necessary, but seeking to act through persuasive example rather than coercive control (“the demands of bearded men in frocks”). On the other hand, trying to cling on to fading privilege will simply increase opposition, stoke ire, and lead to the kind of rejection that some religious leaders fear.

We are, of course, far from this more creative situation right now. Instead, church leaderships remain in denial about the consequences of living in a mixed belief society and are adopting an essentially defensive stance when they feel threatened – blame it all on those naughty secularists.

But while Cardinal O’Brien may have played a role in securing an immediate compromise from the Brown government on a particular Bill he despises, the larger consequences of this may be that – far from winning friends, influencing people and winning arguments – the Church has only really succeeded in strengthening its harshest critics.

Wrapping Up

The hectoring approach saps energy and distracts attention away from a more positive role – showing the love of God in action. This remains true whether you agree with what the Church has been saying on any particular issue or not. Faith isn’t a muscle to be flexed; it’s an invitation to be offered. But who wants an invitation from the class bully or from the neighbour engaged in what appears to you to be self-interested one-upmanship?

Tags: simon barrow, ekklesia, thinking aloud. pluralism, secularism[tags]simon barrow, ekklesia, thinking aloud. pluralism, secularism[/tags]