God and the politicians – where next? -Sep 29, 2005

Is ‘faith politics’ on the rise in Britain? Are organized religions seeking to get people to vote as acolytes rather than citizens? Should we fear the influence of religious lobbyists on our lives and laws? Are faith schools damaging for a genuinely plural society?

These and other important questions were put in the spotlight once again by writer and broadcaster David Aaronovitch in his BBC2 documentary ‘God and the Politicians’ (28 September 2005).

The programme suggested that there is a spectre haunting British public life – that of religiously orchestrated manipulation.

Its primary example was the Rochdale constituency in the May general election – when a non-religious politician, sitting MP Lorna Fitzsimons (1997-2005), was defeated by a pro-life Catholic, Paul Rowen, partly through the influence of anti-Iraq war Muslims.

The documentary highlighted dubious attempts by one lobby group to wield an anti-Jewish vote against Fitzsimons. It suggested that Rowen had opportunistically denounced government policies as ‘Islamophobic’ (and then showed him struggling to justify this). And it interviewed a Muslim campaigner who said he would prefer his MP to be Catholic rather than someone of no faith.

Understandably, Ms Fitzsimons was unhappy. She thought that she had been picked on and voted against for not being a religious believer, retorting that “my political belief is my religion, and it is very value-laden.”

According to interviewee Robert Worcester, a prominent pollster, 55% of those not influenced by religion (around one-third of the UK electorate) can be expected to vote, while the figure increases significantly to 65% among those who do have some kind of religious affiliation (the other two-thirds).

Moreover this effect, it was argued, may be magnified in marginal constituencies, where communities characterised by a higher-than-usual incidence of religious commitment might be able to influence voting outcomes significantly.

Keith Porteous-Wood of the National Secular Society may have inadvertently weakened the mathematical case by saying, in a different context, that it is only around a third of the population “for whom religion really matters”.

But whatever the statistics, it seems from their statements, actions and affiliations that politicians are definitely taking religiously influenced voters seriously, and that local activists are not averse to seeking advantage through them either.

While seeing this as a worrying scenario, Aaronovitch was careful not to infer inappropriate parallels with the USA, where the substantial machinations of the religious right and the so-called ‘moral majority’ have visibly influenced the outcome of major elections.

He also fairly interviewed senior UK religious leaders (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Sir Iqbal Sacranie and Bishop Tom Butler). They all disavowed any desire on the part of their own faith communities to get caught up in, or to manipulate, party politics.

Nevertheless, Aaronovitch was unconvinced – and ‘God and the Politicians’ went on to suggest that there are reasons for thinking that religious bodies have both the desire and the capacity to wield significant amounts of political power or clout in their own right.

As evidence it cited the keenness of party leaders to address faith audiences, the role of bishops in the House of Lords, the stance of the Catholic hierarchy on issues like abortion, religious involvement in lobbying the G8 on global poverty, the spread of faith-based education, the parcelling out of state service provision to religious organisations, and support for the controversial incitement to religious hatred law.

Surprisingly, perhaps, only fleeting visual reference was made to attempts by faith groups to ban or censor plays which caused them offence – ‘Jerry Springer The Opera’, ‘Bezhti’, ‘Corpus Christi’, and now (it seems) the National Theatre’s ‘St Paul’.

It will be interesting to see what kind of reaction this programme gets from other religious leaders and groups.

Some will no doubt point out that David Aaronovitch is not an impartial observer. Along with writers like Polly Toynbee and Nick Cohen, he is personally unsympathetic to religious perspectives as well as politically opposed to “an unusual interest in religion” exercising sway in public life.

Moreover, it wouldn’t be too difficult to criticise ‘God and the Politicians’ for lumping together a variety of issues which require much greater differentiation, for failing to distinguish different religious approaches to governance and society, and for affecting surprise that many believers are disinclined to restrict spirituality to the purely private realm.

But to dismiss the programme because of those limitations, or because of the sceptical perspective of its originator, would be wrong and inappropriate. For as Bishop Tom Butler candidly declared, religion faces two ways. It has been a force for good, but it has also been a force for evil.

That being the case, the problem is how to move beyond a seemingly irresolvable stand-off between, on the one hand, those who want to exercise religious power in ways that threaten or marginalise others; and, on the other hand, those who fear that any role whatsoever for religion in political life will degenerate into an abuse of privilege.

Like David Aaronovitch, Ekklesia is not an impartial observer of this knotty problem either. Rather, it is a think-tank with an interest in promoting radical, post-Christendom ideas – ideas about how we can develop a different approach to faith and politics once the ‘two-faced’ attempt to maintain religious control is ended.

Our starting point is not a generality, but a specific example about how a faith community, the Christian church, can, if it so chooses, redefine itself and its public role in ways that enable it to speak without fear, yes, but also (and crucially) without favour.

In this regard, a major part of Ekklesia’s concern is to encourage Christians to examine the historic message of the Gospel afresh, specifically from the viewpoint of those who have often been marginalised or downtrodden by institutional religion.

We argue that Christians, of all people, have a particular reason for rejecting a religious system engineered in alliance with a governing power so that it can gain its own status and security over and against others.

For it was precisely this kind of malign politico-religious concordat which ended up crucifying Jesus, whose rejection of imperial rule in favour of the domination-free life he called ‘the kingdom of God’ proved such a threat to those who wanted to lord-it over others.

In the name of this same Jesus, Christians were called into a new community of equals – an ekklesia (a voluntary, public society) developed out of distinctive communal practises.

It is the rediscovery of this primary vision, buried by the deceptive alliance of church and state, which would enable Christians to develop a new kind of politics based on of mutuality, hospitality, non-violence, social solidarity, economic sharing, ecological consciousness and restorative justice.

An indispensable requirement of such a stance, moreover, is the active disavowal of dominance, privilege, manipulation and coercion – those malignant features of much historic religion which (understandably) made so many people suspicious of its aims and motives.

Ekklesia’s challenge, therefore, is first and foremost to the churches. Are our Christian communities willing and able, on the basis of the distinctive vocation of the Gospel, to disavow the use of money, power and privilege for their own sectional advantage?

We realise that this is a difficult question. But it is one which will have to be faced sooner or later, given the trend towards decline in conventional religious institutions.

In the case of Britain, disavowing Christendom would certainly mean ending the establishment of the Church of England, by which paradoxically (as David Aaronovitch pointed out) faith is subordinated to the state, and the state’s institutions are given a spiritual veneer – to the credit of neither, though as he also suggested, in a way which has at least been preferable to naked rule of one over the other.

It would also surely involve ceasing to claim a privileged role for the church in public education, ending unelected Episcopal favour in the second chamber, repealing the antiquated blasphemy laws, removing tax advantages and anti-discrimination exemptions from public religious bodies, and rethinking hate crimes against people (whether on grounds of race, religion or sexuality) in terms of public order offences rather than undue restrictions on speech.

On this basis, the Christian churches would be entitled to expect the same civic and political rights and protections as other groups and persons in society. They would be free to form and develop their own associational life, to address others through the media, and to organise, lobby and advocate for change (hopefully in ways consistent with the Gospel) within civil society.

What would the implications of such a new, radical settlement be – for the churches, and for wider society? What would be the challenges and opportunities for both? And what of the corresponding status of other faith communities (for whom Ekklesia cannot speak, and whose concerns may turn out to be distinctly different from, even if parallel to, those of the churches)?

From the viewpoint of the churches, what is being suggested as ‘a new settlement’ would be far from easy. It would require disarming courage. Christian leaders (most particularly, Church of England leaders) often suggest that their community enjoys no particular privilege in society as a whole. But when measures towards disestablishment and equal treatment are suggested, these tend to produce anxious resistance.

This is primarily a matter of cultural captivity. The challenge of a post-Christendom (post-fear and post-favour) polity for the churches is that they would need to develop much greater capacity, organisationally, spiritually and intellectually. They would also need to develop a fresh self-understanding which was, in terms of their size and status, more modest; and in terms of their willingness to speak and act, more courageous.

To put it another way, the opportunity and demand for a post-Christendom church in a plural Britain would be that of becoming less of a functionalist body embedded within the social order, and more of a witnessing community – seeking to instantiate Christian commitments through practical words and deeds.

These words and deeds would, of course, remain thoroughly political – that is, concerned with how power is acquired and used, by whom and for whom; not just with personal piety and spiritual inter-subjectivity.

Christians would rightly be (as they already are) involved in peacemaking, sustainable development, community building, social care, the struggle against poverty, campaigning for asylum seekers and refugees, opposing racism, advocating human dignity and defending the environment.

From the viewpoint of wider society, therefore, ‘religious types’ like Christians would still be a nuisance, a pest and an aggravation, as well as (hopefully) a support and an inspiration.

A post-Christendom settlement, based on the mutually beneficial separation of church and state, would neither silence religious and anti-religious voices, nor resolve all their arguments and differences. But it would create the basis of the ‘level playing field’ in civil society which many talk about, but few are prepared to countenance – either because they want to maintain privilege for religion, or because they want simply to exclude it.

In ‘God and the Politicians’, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gave expression to the alternative path in his own way, by stating categorically that while his faith community needed a voice, cultivating “a Jewish vote” in British party politics was not desirable. Instead, he talked about the ethic of self-restraint in the public arena, seeking to persuade not force. The development of similar ideas ought, with time and dialogue, to be possible across other religious communities – among Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, for example.

There is a need for faith communities to convince the sceptics (like Aaronovitch and Porteous-Wood) that they want to be partners not theocrats. And there is likewise a need for the sceptics to engage in a constructive dialogue with faith communities about how to keep the square we share public.

Repairing the conversation and trust between forward-thinking religionists and those of humanist and secularist opinion is therefore vital. For in reality what we require is something considerably more bold and imaginative than a dichotomy between ‘God and the politicians’: we need a way of enabling particular communities of conviction to develop distinctive roles and perspectives within a plural society; a public space which they can affirm, shape, contest and support.