Faith in Politics? Rediscovering The Christian Roots of our Political Values (introduction)

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I NTROD UCTIO N TO THE SECO ND E D I TI ON

The first edition of this book was driven by four factors. First, the low esteem in which politicians are held and the general alienation from, or at least indifference to, the democratic political process in this country.

Secondly, a conviction that this was very unhealthy, and that the political system under which we live could and should be robustly defended, and we should all be encouraged to make it work. Because of those two factors the book was entitled Faith in Politics? – with a question mark at the end, one which was sometimes overlooked when people referred to the book. In short, given the low reputation of politicians and the general disenchantment with the political process, can we still have confidence in the system?

The third factor was a belief that the fundamental values and understanding of life on which our democracy is based have their roots in the Christian faith.That is why the second part of the title read Rediscovering the Christian roots of our political values. This reference to Christian values was not meant in an exclusive sense, for clearly our system is also in part the result of Enlightenment philosophers and nineteenth-century Utilitarian reformers.

The fourth factor was the recognition by some of our most respected thinkers that the combination of market and social liberalism which has driven Western society for the last thirty years has revealed a gaping void in our public life, and that something is seriously wrong with the way we live now.

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The Way We Live Now is the title of Anthony Trollope’s 1875 novel about financial scandals. When Trollope returned from abroad he was appalled by the greed and dishonesty that these scandals revealed. This reminds us that the present discontent with politics is nothing new, nor is the low esteem in which politicians are held. In his great dictionary Dr Johnson defined a politician as ‘A man of artifice; one of deep contrivance’ and Boswell records him saying that Politicks are now nothing more than means of rising in the world. With this sole view do men engage in politicks, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.1

Whatever view we take on whether the political scene in the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries was worse than it is now, our responsibility is with the present, and we cannot be anything less than seriously disturbed, not just by the Westminster bubble, but the whole global politico-economic system and the corruption that seems so endemic in the world today.

FAITH IN POLITICS – EVEN LESS FAITH THAN BEFORE? As we approach the 2015 General Election these four factors are even more marked now than they were in 2010.

The first edition of this book was written in the light of the scandal over MP’s expenses. Not surprisingly, surveys showed that MPs in parliament were held in particularly low esteem at the time. More serious still, such surveys revealed widespread alienation from the political system as a whole, as indicated by low turnout in elections and a dramatic fall in political party membership.

The latest survey of public attitudes towards conduct in public life carried out in 2012 showed a slight upturn in positive attitudes to MPs from 2010 – 2012 as MPs tightened up the expenses system; nevertheless there has been a serious overall decline since 2004.2 2

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For example, in 2004, 31 per cent of respondents believed that all or most MP’s told the truth. In 2012 this had dropped to 20 per cent. In 2004, 50 per cent of respondents believed that all or most MP’s did not use their power for personal gain, but in 2012 this had dropped to 33 per cent. Over the whole period from 2004–2012 the average level of trust in Judges was over 80 per cent, that of MP’s less than 30 per cent.

The report also shows that some 40 per cent of respondents were in effect disconnected or alienated from the political system.

As it said: This alienated group of citizens just sees no party that could sufficiently express their political views or represent their interests, and is overwhelmingly sceptical or deeply sceptical about public life. Moreover they are particularly located in the younger age groups, with 46 per cent of the under 30’s falling into this category.3

Amongst this exceedingly gloomy data two bright spots appear.

First, people are much more positive about their local MP than they are about MP’s in general. The average level of trust in a person’s local MP over the period 2004–12 is about 45 per cent (compared to less than 30 per cent for MP’s in general), which is higher than for top civil servants Then amongst people from an ethnic minority background in the age group 30–44 in lower occupational grades 79 per cent hold one of the two most positive attitudes to standards and trust in public life. Despite those two tiny lights, it is clear that the challenge facing anyone who wants to convince the electorate of the importance of the political process is still a huge one.

A new factor in the political process, whose full effect is still to be gauged, is the rise of campaigning groups using digital communication.This was brought home to me in connection with Part II of the lobbying bill. Part II of this bill emerged in the summer of 2013 without any consultation and without any convincing rationale, though the Government said that it was in order to keep big money from distorting election results by using third party Introduction

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campaigners as had happened in the United States. Charities and other campaigning groups believed that that bill would severely curtail their democratic right to campaign in election year and immediately dubbed it ‘the gagging bill’. They then formed a Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement which I was asked to chair. Through intense campaigning the government was first of all forced to delay the passage of the bill to consult, and eventually to amend the bill in a number of significant areas, though not in all that was required.The pertinent point here is not the flawed bill itself, now an Act, but the power of campaigning to bring public pressure to bear. For example at one stage in the passage of the bill the Commission set up a petition.

Only four days later I was able to stand up in the Lords with a petition containing 160,000 signatures. The old style politics may be tired, but this new style politics enables anyone to have a voice on the issues that matter to them. Some MP’s, who feel threatened by this new style of politics, rightly point out that in the end it is they who have to carry responsibility for decisions that are made, and as often as not decisions are a matter of balancing one claim against another. However, MP’s are there to represent their electorate. Although as representatives rather than delegates they are required to use their own judgement, as Edmund Burke classically argued, it is fundamental to the democratic process that people should be able to bring their views before them, especially during an election period. Campaigning groups like 38 degrees with 2 million members, and a policy of campaigning on a range of issues that concern their members, is one of these organisations that enable the ordinary public to feel that they have a say.

What has also emerged with some starkness over the last three years is that the crisis in the political system is part of a widespread loss of confidence in many of our major institutions and a sense of moral decline in society as a whole.

In 2004 those rating standards in public life quite or very high were 46 per cent of those questioned, but by 2002 this has fallen to 35 per cent. Those rating them quite or very low rose in the same

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period from 11 per cent to 28 per cent. This is a serious situation, even accounting for the particular scandals of those years.

Some comfort can be had from the fact that although there was an overall decline in standards from 2004 – 12 this hides fluctuations in that period. Standards rose from 2004 – 8 and then fell sharply in response to the scandals concerning MP’s and the press.

As they began to respond to the crisis, confidence in them rose slightly. So, as the report notes, if trust can be lost, it can also be regained. This is an important point. It would be quite wrong to think that we are on a slippery slope taking us ever downwards.

What goes down, can go up. Standards may fall, but they can also be raised. Confidence in the political system and public life more generally, could be regained. This is also pertinent to the press, for the newspaper hacking scandal has undoubtedly contributed to the general loss of trust over the last decade.

Investigations into phone hacking by the News of the World and other News International publications which began in 2005 resulted in high profile sackings, criminal charges and culminated in the closure of the News of the World in 2011. The Leveson Inquiry into the behaviour of the press and the police was set up in the same year. Despite strong opposition from sections of the press an independent system of press regulation under Royal Charter was in principle put in place in late 2013. Unfortunately the majority of the press were not prepared to sign up for this, and they have set up their own regulator IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. This has been heavily criticised as failing to meet the essential requirements for an independent regulator set out by the Leveson Inquiry. So this is an issue that will need to be watched very carefully.

In the light of this scandal it is not surprising that the average level of trust in tabloid journalists from 2004 – 12 was about 11 per cent, much lower than any other profession, thoughTV and news journalists rated 52 per cent and broadsheet journalists 39 per cent. People will draw their own conclusions from this, being encouraged by the continuing trust put in TV and news journalists, and to a lesser extent broadsheet journalists, or disIntroduction

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mayed by the behaviour of tabloid journalists. Apart from this, the press is under huge financial pressure because of alternative ways in which people now access the news, and readership of newspapers is falling fast.

Although the press is not dealt with in detail in this book, a flourishing, free press is fundamental to democracy, and a capacity to investigate an issue persistently and in depth is a healthy, indeed essential, feature. In an ideal world no doubt there would be no vested interests that distort the truth but in the world as we know it partiality is inevitable, and the only way in which the truth can be served in such a world is to ensure that there is multiple ownership, so that what one set of vested interests wants concealed it is in the interests of others to reveal. As they may all be in it together, as we say, all bound up with commercial interests of one kind or another, it is also good to have publications that so far as possible stand outside the system altogether to report what goes on inside it without fear or favour. Sometimes one feels that it is only in Private Eye that one discovers what is really going on in the world, and learns what has been concealed in mainstream reporting.

Freedom within the law to express one’s views, and to publish those views, is fundamental to that liberty which is discussed in the first section of Chapter 4. We take it for granted in the UK, but any conversation with someone who has escaped from a regime where such freedom is denied, will quickly bring out what a precious feature of our society this is. It has to be strictly guarded even in a democratic country; if not, it can quickly be lost or curtailed. In India, in 2014, Penguin pulped all copies of a scholarly book on the history of Hinduism because the Hindu nationalist BJP party pressured them to do so. It was a very sinister development in a country that prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy, and a development which has not yet received the publicity that it should have done.

An even greater crisis in recent years, one with wide reaching and long lasting consequences, has been the banking scandal.

Beginning in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it was touched on briefly in the first edition of the book, and not only 6

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did this collapse trigger the biggest recession in 80 years, but what has become apparent is that its effects have been devastating in many other ways. Adding to this, a further series of near criminal policies by the banks continues to be revealed. The average citizen has been seized with a mixture of disbelief and outrage at this behaviour. The distinguished columnist Sir Simon Jenkins, a notable champion of the free market even in areas which are the moment are protected, ended one column by stating that all those bankers and financiers involved in the near collapse of the system should be taken out at dawn and shot.Yet bankers remain shameless. Profits can go down, and still vast bonuses are paid.Thousands can be made redundant, yet it seems that money can always be found for such undeserved sums.

The banking crisis was not an accident waiting to happen. It was brought about by human beings acting with criminal irresponsibility. In one way we are all involved. As a society we have been living with far too high levels of debt for too long. Governments too are to blame both for the extent of deregulation in the first place and a failure to have strong enough financial watchdogs in place. But the key players are the bankers whose ratio of debt to real assets was far too high, and who thought they could control the future by eliminating risk with ever more complicated financial packaging.

Since then we have seen huge fines, sometimes running into the billions, for financial wrong doing. By March 2013 major banks in America had received penalties of $100 billion for wrongdoing with an estimated $151 billion still to come.Yet as was reported by one insider, many treat even such massive fines as ‘the cost of doing business’ which can be absorbed and which will have no real influence in changing behaviour.4 In the UK amongst other scandals there have been fines for fixing the Libor rate and the foreign currency rate as well as for misselling insurance and pensions on a massive scale. A world ruthlessly driven to maximising profit at any price has been exposed. When the film TheWolf of Wall Street was shown in the Wall Street area of New York in December 2013 the outrageous immoral behaviour of the predaIntroduction

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tory financial wolf of the film was cheered by many of those who were watching – those who were not from the financial world who were watching found it a very disturbing experience, not least because of all the talk about Wall Street having changed since the crisis.

A very simple story sums up the fundamental change of ethos that has taken place in our times. At a party I found myself talking to a man who had retired from his bank surprisingly early. When I enquired why, he said it was at the time of the ‘big bang’ in 1986, when the combination of financial deregulation and big banks taking over many smaller institutions resulted in a huge surge in financial activity. He said he had prepared a financial specification for a particular client on the basis of what he judged to be in the best interests of the client.The new owners examined this and told him to scrap it and shape up another deal which would gain more profit for the bank. He decided it was time to leave. There had been a fundamental change of outlook from what was in the interest of the client to what would maximise profit for the bank.

Profit is not a dirty word. But the mission statement of Dayton Hudson the America retailing group sets this in its proper place.

This says: The business of business is serving society, not just making money. Profit is our reward for serving society well. Indeed, profit is the means and measure of our service – not an end in itself.

That, I think gets it right. Profit is the means and measure of the service. But the purpose is the service of society, whether it is through manufacture, retailing or financial services. In so much of our life, that is what has been lost or was never there in the first place.5 Even apart from that however, it was argued by Adam Smith and has been repeated by insiders in the financial world many times since, that a good ethical environment is fundamental to the success of the whole market economy.6 One aspect of this is a concern for the broader social context in which the market 8

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operates. Matthew Carney, the new Governor of the Bank of England warned at a City dinner that capitalism was at risk of destroying itself.

Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself.7 Fundamental to the good ordering of a democratic society is the probity of the police, and it is good that in the survey on public standards from 2004 – 2012 senior police officers were second only to judges with 69 per cent of respondents trusting them.

(There was no survey in relation to junior officers.) However, very sadly, all is far from well in the area of policing.

In 1989 the Hillsborough tragedy left 96 people dead and 766 injured in the worst stadium disaster in British history. Their families were never happy with the official story, but it was only after 23 years with the report of an independent panel that the real truth of what caused the crush began to emerge, with evidence that the original account was skewed.

On 12 February 2014 the Home Secretary reported to Parliament on where the enquiries had got to. As reported in Hansard, she said: Around 400 witnesses have made requests to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to see their original statements. In addition, the IPCC has recovered around 2,500 police pocket notebooks. These pocket books had not been made available to previous investigations and are now being analysed. The IPCC has also conducted further analysis of the 242 police accounts now believed to have been amended.

What has emerged, and is continuing to be revealed, about the Metropolitan Police is even more serious, not least the evidence of lying and corruption in the investigation into the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

All this is very disquieting. Desmond Tutu tells the story of being a student at King’s College, London in the 1960s when he Introduction

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liked to go out in the street simply to look at and talk to a policeman because he did not cease to marvel at the fact that the police were on his side and not against him. It would be terrible if that were no longer true.

Despite a succession of scandals involving the police there is also some encouragement to be had from the fact that, after however long a period of time and as a result of persistent courageous campaigning by individuals, successive governments have been willing to try to get at the truth. For truth matters. Indeed public life depends on the assumption that the truth is being told, which is why lying to parliament, or falsifying evidence, have always rightly been regarded as such serious offences.

I am not someone who thinks that everything has gone to the dogs and that all standards of behaviour have fallen. Clearly in many areas of life standards have improved, and some forms of behaviour which previous generations took for granted, we now find morally intolerable. Nor on the other hand do I think that overall we are morally better than our forebears. Indeed the debate as to whether things have got better or worse is perhaps best met by the remark of R. H. Tawney, the leading economic historian and Christian Socialist of his generation, who might have been thought to belong to those who thought that there had been some improvement. However, when he was asked if he had noted any progress in the world in his lifetime, he replied laconically, ‘Yes, in the deportment of dogs. Dogs today seem much better behaved than the unruly creatures I knew in my boyhood.’

One positive point which needs to be underlined from the surveys quoted earlier is that the public has been quite consistent in expecting office holders to abide by the seven principles of public life, especially honesty, being committed to the public interest rather than their own, making objective decisions and accountability. Measured by these principles the public may think that standards have fallen, but the fact that we consistently think that there are standards which remain essential, and which should be observed, is important and gives grounds for hope. We need to

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continue to press home their indispensability in all areas of our public life.

THE FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS The first chapter on ‘Speaking for God in a Secular Age’ examines the basis on which the Church claims to speak in and to the political arena. In the text a distinction made by Rowan Williams between programmatic and procedural secularism is referred to.

Since the first edition of my book the lecture in which Rowan Williams made that distinction has been printed, along with a range of other illuminating essays that relate to the role of religion in public life.8 Particularly worth noting are the early chapters of his book in which he outlines his understanding of a pluralist state.

In such a state both Christians and Muslims, who have wider loyalties and who acknowledge a higher authority, can participate in the democratic process and live with the consequences, even if some policies are enacted to which their religion is opposed.

Also published since the first edition is a book by Nigel Biggar in which he argues that the anxiety of many Christians to offer something distinctive in the public sphere is misplaced. What matters, he argues, is not that a view is distinctive but that it has integrity, and by this he means that it is derived in a serious and integrated way from Christian foundations.9 This is relevant to my argument that Christians may very well participate in a process of building up an overlapping consensus on some issue without having to bring their underlying world view into the public frame.

The second chapter, on Law and Morality, considers the basis of law, and argues that it has both a moral and a theological foundation. Law is a far less modish subject than democracy, for example, but it is in fact more fundamental to our way of life than even parliament. Wise commentators rightly remarked that one of the many mistakes made in Iraq was the idea that democracy consisted mainly of getting an electoral system going, whereas in fact the rule of law is much more basic. Law is rooted in morality, and understanding the correct relationship between the two is vital to the health of a democracy. That relationship has changed in recent Introduction

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years, but it does not mean there is no relationship. That relationship remains vital for all areas of our political life.

The integral nature of this relationship between law and morality has recently been championed by one of the most distinguished legal philosophers of our time, Ronald Dworkin. In Justice for Hedgehogs he argues for a ‘value holism’ in which fundamental values, our understanding of law and our approach to politics are seen as an integral whole.10 Beginning with the values of integrity and personal responsibility he argues that a state must treat all its citizens with equal respect and concern. He then shows the outworking of this in both law and politics. Dworkin believes that the realm of value and what follows from it politically and legally constitutes a self-enclosed circle of reasoning which cannot be undermined by science or justified by any religious or metaphysical point of view. It is valid in its own right. In a further book, Religion Without God11, he argues that values such as beauty and goodness constitute an objective realm existing in its own right.

Dworkin does not believe in God, but for him this realm of value and beauty is what religion is all about, and it is in relation to this that a person’s life has meaning and significance.

Dworkin’s argument is an important one in combating both ethical relativism and legal positivism. As indicated above, he is an example of how you do not need to have a conventional religious faith to see that law must be grounded in, and integrally related to, fundamental moral values.12 The third chapter on ‘What makes us think God wants Democracy?’ has a deliberately sceptical title because it is so easy to claim that a particular political system has religious backing, as was done for so long by advocates of the divine right of kings. But, aware of this, it is nevertheless maintained that ‘Democracy is the worst system in the world – except for all the others’.13 At the same time it is argued that it is above all a Christian understanding of what it is to be a human being in society that enables us to see importance of democracy in its totality, both as an expression of a desire to live well together, and as a check on our tendency to pursue our own interests at the expense of others.

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The fourth chapter on ‘Liberty, Equality and Life in Community’ looks at the three political values enshrined in the slogan of the French Revolution and argues that all three are absolutely fundamental to the Christian faith. Although they may be championed by a whole range of political philosophers, the Christian faith offers a sure grounding for them; one which others may not be able to share, but which they can recognise as undergirding values that have a Christian basis as well as a secular justification.

The case is even stronger than may have been apparent at the time of the first edition of my book as a result of Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual. In this book he sets out to change our whole, taken for granted, understanding of the origins of liberal egalitarianism.14 He argues that Renaissance scholars and those who have followed them fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the classical world. For him it is St Paul who is the key figure in affirming the worth of the individual as such, and in a detailed intellectual history tracing this through the Christian Middle Ages shows how the value of the individual was continually reaffirmed in different ways. One respected academic reviewing the book in a secular journal wrote: In the course of this journey, he explodes many (perhaps even most) of the preconceptions that run through the public culture of our day – and that I took for granted before reading this book.15

The book is a much needed corrective which provides a solid historical basis for ‘The Christian roots of our political values’, the subtitle of my book. Perhaps the only thing that is surprising is that the Christian basis of liberal egalitarianism has been ignored for so long. As Siedentop argues,‘If we in the West do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?16 The fifth chapter on ‘Does God believe in Human Rights?’ again has a sceptical tone to it because a cursory reading of some parts of the bible might give the impression that God doesn’t.

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an opponent of the rights which we now take for granted.

Nevertheless, it is maintained that, properly understood, the Christian faith again offers a sure foundation for rights, and it is no accident that the prime movers to bring the UN Declaration on Human Rights into existence after World War II were some prominent Christian statesmen.

CHAPTER 6 – ISSUES OF IDENTITY The final chapter on ‘Who do we think we are?’ discusses those questions of identity which are so crucial to understanding the world in which we live today. There is a very close connection between identity and religion and this is the major reason why religion is such a potent factor in the world. The Christian faith offers some distinctive insights about the issue of identity, casting light on the question of who we think we are, and which has implications for one of the major political concerns of our time.

National identity is not something that is fixed and unchanging.

On the contrary, it is in a state of continuing flux depending on the nature of the polity and the circumstances that a country faces at the time. Linda Colley, for example, has shown how the concept of Britishness was forged between 1707 and 1837 by a set of ideas such as Britain as an island and a bastion of liberty, and as a Protestant nation with a powerful navy in contradistinction to France, a despotic Catholic country.17 More recently she has stressed that all the identities in the British Isles, whether Scottish, English, Welsh or Irish have been shaped by their relationship not only with one another but in relation to the Empire and Europe, and that these identities have varied greatly depending on the historical circumstances of the time.18 Since the first edition of this book I have been privileged to be a member of a new Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, convened by the Woolf Institution. This went out to public consultation in the summer of 2014 and is due to publish its final report after the 2015 Election. This has enabled me to think further about the relationship between religion and identity not only from a Christian point of view, but from the perspective of 14

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living in a multi-faith society, albeit one still with an Established Church. From about 2000 to 2008 there was a fair amount of anxiety and debate about the concept of Britishness. If it is not so much to the fore now, this is because we are much more at home with the concept of multi-identities than when Norman Tebbitt first proposed his question about which cricket team we support (quoted later in this book). One sign of this was the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in which a story of British history was told which people in Britain felt comfortable with, even though to avoid controversy it did not go very deep and was not recognised as the Britain they knew by Americans.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, in exploring concepts of Britishness, many attempts were made to go beyond civic identity, which is concerned primarily with institutions, to include a range of values which were thought of as particularly British. Gordon Brown, for example, in an article written in March 2008 wrote that what matters are: The common values we share across the United Kingdom: values we have developed together over the years that are rooted in liberty, in fairness and tolerance, in enterprise, in civic initiative and internationalism.

He went on to suggest that these values live in the popularity of our common institutions from the NHS and the BBC through to the Olympics and such movements as Make Poverty History.

This kind of list has been criticised in two ways. First, for suggesting that these are distinctively British values. But it can be argued that these are values which have been developed in our society, and which are fundamental to our life now, so they are British in that sense, without claiming that British society has a monopoly on them. The same values may be present in other societies, perhaps taking a different institutional form.

I would suggest three of these values are fundamental to our life together. Fairness, tolerance and openness to the world. Since the Civil War of the seventeenth century the English (leaving aside the Welsh, Irish and Scots for the moment) have on the whole been Introduction

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reticent about their religious beliefs. Scratch an Englishman and deep down you will probably find that some residual belief is in fact there, but even stronger will be a moral conviction that things ought to be fair, a conviction which has come to be part of the moral ethos of all the constituent nations of the United Kingdom.

One obvious manifestation of this is the idea of ‘fair play’ in sport, but it goes much deeper than this. It is difficult to see where the historic roots of this conviction about fairness lie. This is not the case with tolerance, for the roots of this can be clearly seen in the cult of liberty that characterised the British identity forged from 1707 to 1837 as traced by Linda Colley. Openness to the world also has historic roots. These are to do with having been a great empire, the transatlantic alliance and the fact that, like it or not, we have been bound up with the rest of Europe. This means that in contrast to the United States a policy of isolationism has never been a serious option for the British. The loss of empire and the weakening of the transatlantic alliance may have taken place, but its healthy legacy is a sense that we should play a constructive and responsible role in relation to the rest of the world. So, fairness, tolerance and an openness to the world may be British values that go beyond the civic ones, even though they are clearly related to them.

Lord Parekh has been critical of the stress on values by Gordon Brown and others. He suggests that it is a sense of common identity that is needed, and that if we had that we could live with different values. He thought it more important to identify the interests, projects and loves that we have in common, for it is these that have shaped our identity. The problem is that we are a nation made up of a whole variety of subcultures, not just ones formed by religion or ethnicity, but by tastes in entertainment and music, by education and class, by wealth and poverty. Even mass popular entertainment only unites a small part of the population. Twelve million people may watch a TV series, but that means that 50 million are not doing so. The fact is that the number of factors which give the country a common sense of belonging together today are very few. When asked what they love about their 16

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country, people are likely to give very different answers. When, much to the surprise of his friends, the poet Edward Thomas, volunteered in his forties to fight in World War I, and they asked him the reason, he simply bent down and picked up some soil.‘For this’, he said. It was the landscape, over which he had walked for so many hundreds of miles that he cared for, as well as all that it stood for. That is not an answer everyone will give. So it is important to try to identify those fundamental features of our life together which are not just a matter of personal preference but which are symbolic of our shared life.

First among them, of course, is the Sovereign, not simply as the apex of our political system, but as a focus of identity for the nation. One of the features of the monarchy, at least since Victorian times, is that it has not been racist.Victoria as Queen Empress insisted that there should be no discrimination on the grounds of race with her imperial subjects.This tradition has continued to our own times and is a marked feature of the rule of present Queen.

The case has been similar in the case of religion. In 1809 all the places of worship were open to celebrate the Jubilee, including synagogues. The sons of George III made a point of visiting the more fashionable synagogues.This was no doubt due in part to the fact that the war debt was being financed by Jewish bankers, but whatever the motive, official visits took place.19 In our own time the Queen has not only visited many places of worship of religions other than her own, she has strongly supported events like the multi-faith Commonwealth Observance in Westminster Abbey, in which leaders of all the main religions take part. It was an aspect of her role she emphasised in her speech to Church of England bishops on 15 February 2012. The Queen said: Here at Lambeth Palace we should remind ourselves of the significant position of the Church of England in our nation’s life. The concept of our established church is occasionally misunderstood and, I believe, commonly under-appreciated.

Its role is not to defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of

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other religions. Instead, the church has a duty to protect the free practise of all faiths in this country.

It certainly provides an identity and spiritual dimension for its own many adherents. But also, gently and assuredly, the Church of England has created an environment for other faith communities and indeed people of no faith to live freely. Woven into the fabric of this country, the church has helped to build a better society – more and more in active co-operation for the common good with those of other faiths.

One important consideration in relation to the monarch will be the next Coronation service, which will assuredly be different from the last one and reflect that fact that we are a multi-faith society. In respect of this it is important to note that there is nothing fixed and final about the service or even the oath, which has sometimes been reformulated to respond to the circumstances of the time. After the experience of James II and the fear of a Catholic monarch coming to the throne, the oath for William and Mary in 1689 was rewritten so that they had to promise ‘to rule according to the profession of the Gospel and the Protestant religion established by law’. They were handed a bible with the words‘to put you in mind of this rule and that you may follow it.’ A few years later, in 1702, Anne had to make a declaration against transubstantiation.20 Beyond the monarch, however, it is important to identify civic events in which the country can give public expression to its own distinctive character and sense of itself. In the same way that a family will have certain events when it expresses and celebrates its life, so do nations. In the United States this is Thanksgiving Day, which succeeds in a remarkable way at bringing the nation to a halt, so that members of families can gather together from hundreds of miles away to express what it is to be American. For Americans too, the flag has an almost sacred quality as a sign of multiple races, religions and communities belonging to one polity.

After 9/11 there was hardly a house in the United States that did not have the flag flying outside.

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Some have suggested that in Britain we too should have a national day, but at the present juncture this would only be an artificial creation with no hope of taking off. Much more positive, from the point of view of national solidarity, is the evolution of Christian festivals, especially Christmas, to become periods of celebration for everyone, regardless of their religion. The loss of a distinctive Christian message may be distressing for Christians, but in terms of social solidarity it is a gain. Jonathan Freedland, writing from a Jewish point of view, says that when he grew up his family studiously avoided anything to do with Christmas, with a great aunt not even allowing the word to pass on her lips. Now, he says, ‘It is a kind of collective Sabbath’ for his family, with turkey, seasonal music and all.21 It is another example of the evolutionary approach, so characteristic of British life, of osmosis and crosscultural fertilisation.

This process has in fact been going on for many years. Not just events like the Commonwealth Service already mentioned, but in many acts of practical co-operation. During recent decades the public good has been served by initiatives, usually taken by the Church of England and working through the good relationships built up with other faith leaders. For example it was such relationships that helped to quieten the unrest in Northern cities in 2001.

Civic authorities have a role in this evolution by ensuring that all faiths are properly represented on civic occasions, but because of its historic position, so does the Church of England. The Mayoral service for example, in most communities, still takes place in the major Anglican Church, and this can be so designed as to reflect the religious makeup of the area.

In the autumn of 2013 I had to preach at the service marking the beginning of the legal year for the Western Division in Bristol Cathedral. A similar service for judges, lawyers, magistrates and civic authorities takes place in every part of the country at this time of the year. In Bristol both the High Sheriff and the Mayor were Muslims, the High Sheriff being very devout. She asked that passages from the Qur’an be read, including the opening verse.

The Bishop of Bristol acceded to her request, and it was arranged Introduction

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that they be read in the Cathedral, when everyone had been seated and welcomed but before the actual Christian service began. It was a brilliant decision that made the Muslim High Sheriff feel, as she said, embraced, but did not alienate the core congregation or indeed Muslims, by any blurring of boundaries.

I believe that starting where we are, but seeing how this can evolve in an ever more inclusive way, is the one best suited to our nation, and the one most likely to achieve the goal we desire. The difficulty with starting again from scratch is illustrated in a tiny way by the prayers that are said in the House of Lords every day, prayers which are voluntary but which are in fact attended by believers from all the main faiths.These are highly traditional prayers for the Queen, the Royal Family and the work of parliament – not prayers anyone would say in their personal life. From time to time the call has come to update them, or to include other subjects, or to let people other than Bishops in the Church of England say them.

Every time this happens, the Procedure Committee of the Lords, before whom such requests comes, resists them.Tiny changes have been agreed, a greater choice of psalms and Prayer Book collects, but nothing fundamental – because as the committee knows, it really would be a Pandora’s Box, and nothing would be agreed.

That is a situation of stasis, but there are other contexts where greater development and latitude is I believe possible.

It has been argued that being British is one of the most successful examples of inclusive civic nationalism in the world.22 This is borne out by opinion polls in which people are asked about the importance of different aspects of being British. The replies indicate that to speak English, being a British citizen and respect for law and institutions associated with it are key, all scoring over 80 per cent. Sharing customs and traditions rated only 52 per cent and being Christian a mere 31 per cent.23 This suggests that being British is indeed primarily a civic identity, and that people are very happy for this to co-exist with a variety of religions, customs and traditions. In so far as being British involves more than this, it means fleshing out those values of fair mindedness, tolerance and openness, which are implicit in our institutions and common life 20

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with a multi-faith undergirding. It also means identifying, affirming and developing the unifying symbols connected with our national institutions in a multi-faith direction. Beyond this, what it means to be British is a matter of organic growth, and this cannot be forced. I believe that the Church of England (but not only the Church of England) is helping to facilitate that evolution in an inclusive way.

At the moment in England we have an established Church, which as many leaders of other faiths have said, is a help to them in taking their place in public life. Perhaps we should see the Church of England as a gnarled old oak, maybe no longer with the strength and vigour of its youth, but still standing and able to support the rambling roses growing up all over its leaves and branches. Cut the oak down, and what do you have?Vigorous growth perhaps, but a scramble for the light, and nothing to hold on to. Like all analogies this one is not exact. But my point is that a broadly tolerant religious body like the Church of England can play a significant role in shaping an evolving narrative for our society that is more inclusive of other faiths. My vision for our society from this point of view is of a society at ease with itself. A society in which individuals and communities:

• • • • • • •

Feel part of an ongoing national story In which they are free to practise their religion and express their beliefs In which they are treated with equal concern and respect by the state In which their culture and religion are respected as part of a continuing process of mutual enrichment In which their contribution to the texture of our common life is valued In which they are confident in helping to shape public policy In which they are challenged to respond to the many manifest ills in the society itself and the world as a whole.

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•

In short, a society in which they feel at home and to which they want to contribute.

During 2014 the underlying alienation of so many from our political system came together with issues of identity in two dramatic ways.The first was the European elections in May. UKIP came out top with 27 per cent beating Labour on 25 per cent, the Conservatives on 24 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 7 per cent. It was the first time in our lifetime that neither Labour nor Conservative topped a national election. Commenting on this result Sir Anthony Seldon wrote: When the earthquake subsides, what will be left is a deep distrust in Britain and across Europe of the EU, and a reassertion of national interest. This question of national sovereignty has been the biggest question in British politics for the past 50 years.24 This is part of the truth. But the vote for UKIP is not just about national sovereignty; it is the expression of disenchantment with the prevailing political order, a feeling that the major parties are all part of an establishment which is not taking into account the feelings and interests of ordinary working people.

This was further reinforced with the result of the bye-election held on 9 October 2014. Clapton, a formerly safe Conservative seat, fell to UKIP, who achieved a majority of nearly 60 per cent of those voting. No less significant was the result of the other bye-election on that day, the former safe Labour seat of Heywood and Middleton. Labour retained the seat by only 617 votes, indicating that a number of Labour seats in the North of England will be vulnerable in the General Election. Overall it was predicted that in the light of these results UKIP are likely to win 5 seats at the General Election with another 25 possible.

The second focus for this combination of nationalism and discontent was the Scottish Referendum on independence on 18 September, an event which aroused more genuine political passion than any other in living memory.

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Although the Scottish people voted 55 per cent to 45 per cent against independence and agreed that it was better to stay part of the United Kingdom, everyone is agreed that the referendum will act as a catalyst for the political reform which is so necessary for the whole of the UK. It will of course lead first to more devolved powers to Scotland and then to Wales. But in England there is a huge imbalance between London and the regions which needs to be addressed, as well as the issue of England itself in an increasingly federal United Kingdom. Not least there is the issue of local government whose powers have become increasingly attenuated over the years. All this will be difficult and controversial, but for the moment anyway, politics has come alive for many – though not for all. In Scotland although the turnout as a whole was a substantial 85 per cent there was the familiar contrast between areas where it was much higher and others where it was much lower, revealing a subclass still disenchanted even over a major issue like independence.

As a result of the promises made to the Scottish people by all major parties before the vote on the referendum, and the widespread realisation that this has huge implications not just for the four nations but for the whole political structure of the UK there is likely to be a Commission on the Constitution in 2015. The knee jerk response to the referendum result has been to call for English votes for English laws (Evel). However the prospective imbalance of Scottish MPs being able to vote on English Laws whilst at the same time English MPs would not be able to vote on ones devolved to the Scottish Parliament is only one aspect of a much wider imbalance. This is caused by the fact that England provides 84 per cent of UK MPs, reflecting the size of the population, Scotland 8 per cent, Wales 5 per cent and Northern Ireland 3 per cent. If the UK is to remain united with those elected as MPs all having equal powers and status it will be necessary to consider something similar to that which operates in a number of countries where voting power does not simply reflect the size of the constituency. For example California has 2 members of the US senate to represent its 38 million citizens, the same number as Introduction

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Wyoming, which only has 583,000 people. A similar principle operates in Australia regarding the relation between New South Wales and Tasmania. To achieve lasting unity special arrangements have been made to recognise the needs of minorities.

One key reason why many people believe it is crucial for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to stay together, and for the whole of the United Kingdom to be a strong player in Europe, is because of the devastating power of globalisation, especially its economic consequences. Individual nations are increasingly helpless before an international financial elite who can move money and industry round the world at will. The only way in which international capitalism can be ordered for the good of both the individual nation and the whole is by intensive cooperation between states and the building of strong continental and worldwide institutions. As Gordon Brown put it in an article before the Scottish referendum: In years to come getting control of your economic destiny will involve new, more intense relationships with your neighbours, your geographical region, your continent and the wider world, and will inevitably mean layer on layer of cooperation with regional and global institutions, recognising that there are global problems – such as climate change, open trade and development – that need global solutions. One example suffices: no country today can secure its tax base without international cooperation to root out tax havens.25

One implication of this is that the euro scepticism so favoured in some quarters needs to be resisted. A stronger Europe, not a weaker one, is the only way the individual nations of Europe make their proper contribution in a globalised world. This applies in every area of life, not just the economic sphere, but no less on climate change and foreign policy.The case for a more, rather than a less, integrated Europe has recently been powerfully restated by Anthony Giddens.26 In all the forthcoming talk about a new constitutional settlement in the United Kingdom this European 24

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dimension must not be lost sight of. We need a ‘federal Britain in a confederal Europe’ to use Timothy Garton Ash’s phrase.27 Whilst there are compelling economic arguments for this future, I believe it also carries a moral and Christian imperative.

For nationalism, on a Christian perspective, and even when not distorted, is only a partial, limited, and finite good. From a Christian point of view we find our identity first and foremost as members of the body of Christ and within the family of humanity.

Other identities are subordinate to these. The emergence of nationalism, racism and right wing policies seen all over Europe in recent years is a reflection of the alienation felt by so many with the political process, and this is in turn fuelled by the economic consequences of globalisation. Globalisation is a fundamental feature of our time, and if it is to serve and not just devastate local and national economies, active co-operation between nations is crucial. A book which made huge waves in 2014 was Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty which analysed the growth of inequality in our times. He wrote,‘If democracy is some day to regain control of capitalism, it must start by recognising that the concrete institutions in which democracy and capitalism are embodied need to be reinvented again and again.’28 This for me points to the desperate need not just for political reform within the UK but for much stronger intergovernmental institutions and organisations working across continents and internationally. I don’t see how else the money now rapidly circulating round the globe can be controlled and channelled to serve people as a whole, and make the world more a reflection of that universal banquet in which everyone has a place.

CHAPTER 6 – FURTHERING THE COMMON GOOD The Common Good is a fundamental category of Catholic social teaching which came to prominence in the United Kingdom with a thoughtful document issued by the Roman Catholic Bishops of England and Wales in 1996, prior to the election. More recently there has been an attempt to carry this forward with a new Introduction

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approach to politics which has included other Christians and those of other faiths.29 In Western society today it is generally held that there is no shared understanding of the common good; rather, each individual will have their own ideas about this. There are also many influential thinkers who argue that this is not just what society happens to be like at the moment, but what it should be like. What we share is the rule of law, and providing we act lawfully each individual should be free to make their own choices about the nature of the good life. Apart from the law there are certain public goods, such as the provision of clean air, which the normal market mechanisms cannot control and which therefore the state provides on the basis of taxation. Such public goods include a basic security provided by the police and the armed services. This view of society, a nomocracy (from the Greek word for law), is often contrasted with a telocracy (from the Greek word for goal or purpose), in which a society is united by a common understanding of what life together is about.30 Britain before the Reformation was a telocracy, with its common goal provided by a widely shared understanding of the Christian faith which was imposed by the state.The problem with telocracies, as we see in the world today, is that the scope for individual freedom can be non-existent or marginal, especially the freedom to practise a religion or ideology different from the one imposed by the state. For this reason many religious people, for whom belief is fundamental to their whole being, have often placed freedom to practise the religion of their choice above a shared understanding of the common good, as we see in the foundation and history of the United States. However, no less significant from a Christian perspective is the conviction that we belong together and that a shared common life rooted in justice is fundamental to human wellbeing.

I noted in the 2010 edition of this book that there were some signs that the tectonic plates of our society were beginning to shift, that the ideology which put the individual pursuit of gain and pleasure above the well-being of society as a whole, and which had dominated Western society for thirty or more years, was beginning 26

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to be questioned. In 2009 for example we saw some major challenges to this by Michael Sandel and Amartya Sen. Since then this challenge has become even more insistent.

In his Reith Lectures and subsequent book based on them Michael Sandel showed in a range of examples that neither economic liberalism nor social liberalism is enough.31 We need to find other values, in addition to free choice, for society to function as, in our better moments, we want it to. So why have we been reluctant to admit to this for the last fifty years? The first reason is that we all have such different ideas of the good that it would seem impossible for society as a whole to agree on any common notions. Secondly, we fear that if there was a societal notion of the good, it would be one dominated by fundamentalists. But as Sandel pertinently remarked ‘fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread.’

Liberals stress the notion of each to their own understanding of the good, indeed it has come to be seen as one of the defining characteristics of a neo-liberal. But Sandel rightly points out that if they do not engage in the debate about a common good the ground will be occupied by others.

Michael Sandel has since then worked out his thesis in another important book, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.32 In a serious of vivid examples he shows how we have gone from using the market as an efficient mechanism for the distribution of goods and services, to being a market society where almost everything can be bought. He shows how in some areas this not only fails to work from an economic point of view, but how it crowds out precious non-market values. To take just one example: in Israel on a designated donation day students go from door to door collecting money for good causes. An experiment was conducted by two economists. One group of students was given a short motivational speech about the good causes. The second group were given the speech and promised a 1 per cent personal bonus on what they collected. The third group were given the speech and a 10 per cent bonus. The bonuses were not deducted from the amount collected. It turned out that the unpaid students Introduction

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collected 55 per cent more in donations than those who received a 1 per cent reward and 9 per cent more than those who received 10 per cent. Overall Sandel argues that if we believe in non-market values we will have to champion them in the public sphere.

Economics is not neutral and we cannot leave everything to financial incentives. At the moment many of the values that we cherished thirty years ago are being undermined and crowded out.

Michael Sandel’s work is just one example of an intense disquiet with the underlying philosophy of Western society today. Another, mentioned in the first edition, is the work of the Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.33 Similarly, shortly before he died the much respected thinker Tony Judt wrote a book called Ill Fares the Land.

He begins, ‘Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today.’34 He then points to the growing inequalities in wealth, health and life expectancy in almost every country in the world, and the world as a whole. He notices how in recent decades there has been a preoccupation with the pursuit of wealth combined with an excessive individualism. Everything has been seen in economic terms. We cannot go on like this he says. ‘We cannot continue to evaluate our world and the choices we make in a moral vacuum.’35 As many have done before he points out that markets need values such as trust, honesty, and restraint and that, ‘Far from inhering in the nature of capitalism itself, values such as these derived from long standing religious or communitarian practises.’36 Judt laments ‘the unbearable lightness of politics’, dominated as it is by the ideas of self-expression and freedom of the individual.

‘What we lack is a moral narrative: an internally coherent account that ascribes purposes to our actions in a way that transcends them’37 A no less striking example of something shifting in the secular world is the work of the German Sociologist, Jurgen Habermas.

What is remarkable about his work is not only his stress on the debt he thinks European society owes to religion in the past for its most

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fundamental public values but his thesis that religion still has an indispensable role to play.

There is a profound underlying anxiety in Habermas which is expressed in the title of his book An Awareness of What is Missing.

For all its achievements, he argues, the modern secular state cannot of itself arouse in people a sense of solidarity with all humanity, motivate people to act for the common good, or even give undergirding reasons why a people should feel loyalty to a political community. Here, clearly, faith communities have a role to play, not least because, he suggests, they encourage community action, whereas secular morality is primarily directed towards the individual as such.

All this, however welcome, might seem obvious enough. But Habermas wants more from religion, as expressed by his reference to ‘the unexhausted force (das Unabgegoltene) of religious traditions’. By this he does not just mean the contribution of faith communities to the tasks indicated in the above paragraph, but the possibility of secular reason assimilating, in its own terms, more of what was once thought of in exclusively religious ways.

Habermas readily affirms that concepts like person, freedom, community and solidarity ‘are infused with experiences and connotations which stem from the biblical teaching and tradition’.38 He then argues that this process needs to continue, because something crucial is now missing in secular discourse. There is of course a qualification. What counts is the persuasiveness which translations of religious concepts have for the secular environment.

Does this understanding of religion put forward by Habermas imply that its future is to be fully assimilated in secular terms until it is totally attenuated? In short, is it being treated in purely instrumental terms? Habermas strongly denies this, for he maintains that despite the process of assimilation, the basic truth claims of religion will quite properly remain strange and other to secular reasoning. ‘Faith remains opaque for knowledge in a way which may neither be denied nor simply accepted.’39 More recently Robert Skidelsky and William Skidelsky have offered another powerful critique of the assumptions underlying Introduction

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our present economic policies.40 They begin by criticising the notion of a liberal state held by people like John Rawls, arguing that it rests on a misconception of liberalism as being neutral and devoid of any positive purpose. Classic liberalism took it for granted that upholding civilisation was among the functions of the state. ‘In any case, neutrality is a fiction. A ‘neutral’ state simply hands power to the guardians of capital to manipulate public taste in their own interests’.41 They argue that neither money nor increasing the GDP are ends in themselves. The state exists for something. Nor is it enough just to say that we need various primary goods which are necessary for any choice about the nature of the good life.The state itself should be characterised by a range of goods, without which it is seriously lacking. These are basic goods, defined as those which are universal, that is fundamental to any conceivable society; final, that is, an end in themselves and not just a means to an end; sui generis,that is, not just part of some other good and indispensable. The authors select seven goods which they argue meet these criteria, health, security, respect, personality, harmony with nature, friendship and leisure.

These seven could be argued about. For example, a more Aristotelian view was held by T. S. Eliot, one which I discuss, namely that the purpose or goal of humanity is ‘virtue and well-being in community’. There is, however, a fundamental agreement that we need goods other than a respect for free choice above all others.

Given these pleas by highly distinguished secular thinkers like Sandel, Judt, Amartya Sen, Habermas and the Skidelskys, to which could be added others such as Will Hutton and David Marquand, I believe that people of Christian and other faiths should work more closely with secular thinkers to build up a much thicker moral framework for our public and economic life, one that includes but goes beyond a simple emphasis on the free choice of the individual. We need to work at what John Rawls calls an overlapping consensus. Rawls believed that we have to keep our overall world views out of this consensus, we have to proceed by public reasoning. As is made clear in this book, there is no problem with the 30

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concept of public reasoning in principle. It is entirely congruous with what the Christian church has taught about our capacity simply as human beings to agree on certain basic moral truths.

That said, the concept of public reasoning is not as neutral as it might at first suggest. We bring our world view into public reasoning whether we are aware of it or not, (and we ought to be aware of it), by how we select the evidence and how we weight the arguments.

But whether or not there is total agreement about the telos of society, we need to co-operate in the goal of achieving an overlapping consensus for a much more robust framework for our economic and public life than we have at the moment. For what is clear from the cri de coeur of these leading secular thinkers that have been quoted is that there is an emptiness at the heart of our public life in the West. However important freedom of choice might be, it is not the only value, nor should it always be the overriding one.

We need a much richer concept of the common good. Religious people and institutions of all faiths have an important role to play in thickening and deepening that concept.

What has gone wrong, as we might suspect, is in the end a reflection of what has gone wrong with our whole understanding of what it is to be a human being in society. Since the seventeenth century our culture has been dominated and shaped by an excessively individualistic view of what it is to be a human being. But mind is a social reality. We are persons only in and through our relationships with other persons. The Africans have a good word for it: Ubuntu. Christianity, Judaism and Islam, in their different ways, share this essentially inter-relational understanding of what it is to be human.

Before we are isolated individuals, making our lonely existential choices, we belong together in a common life, a life characterised by interdependence, a changing mixture of dependence and independence; of helping and being helped. Life in families, communities and societies is fundamental to who we are. This means there is a common good and a public good which is not just the sum of our individual preferences. So also there are civic values Introduction

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and virtues which reflect this belonging together; a societal solidarity giving rise to non-market norms. These are norms and values that need to be struggled for in a world increasingly dominated by a market trying to crowd them out. Faith communities are rooted in these values. We need to stand by them, and we can do so not only with one another, but with serious-minded secular thinkers.

If those outside the church too often have a false view of religion as something that is only to do with the individual, there are those within faith communities who fail to understand that being religious is not just about going back to the source documents, usually in a highly selective manner, but is about inhabiting a tradition, to use a phrase of Rowan Williams. It is out of their respective traditions of shared habit and wisdom that religious communities have the resources to contribute to an ongoing debate about the common good. From these traditions they will make their contribution in an argumentative democracy.

Richard Harries King’s College, London October 2014

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