Simon Barrow (London, Ekklesia): As in many media firestorms, a lot of the smoke over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent pronouncements has come from the minor conflagrations over lesser issues. It may soon blow away. But something big is burning. Dr Williams’ interventions over family sharia and the English civil law penetrate the to the heart of this country’s history.
What he is saying is that the UK is becoming a ‘unitary secular state’, that this poses problems for communities of religious conviction in certain areas, that historic Anglican privilege which has afforded wider protection for religion per se can no longer be justified on its own terms, and that the solution is therefore a broader set of exemptions within the law for all faith groups.
The example he cites is conscience opt-outs within the medical service over abortion, but what lies behind this is the desire of Catholic agencies to refuse gay adoptions, and a raft of exemptions from equalities legislation in employment and public service provision.
Personally, I find it rather offensive that the head of my Church is telling me that to be a Christian is to require opt-outs from fairness and justice, when the message of the Gospel would seem to many of us to point in exactly the opposite direction. But that objection, and the feelings of anger that the non-religious may equally feel, miss the point. The Archbishop is contending, as a matter of liberality and pluralism, that special treatment is required for religion.
Where does this argument come from? The backdrop is that an Anglican settlement (rooted in the authorisation and subjection of an Established Church to the Crown) is beginning to give way to a more diverse ‘multi-faith’ one in the minds of those who wish to defend their position, but who are running out of excuses in a plural society.
The answer, they are increasingly saying, is exemptions for the many, rather than the few. But this idea, if unchallenged, could clearly end up replacing specific anomalies with a larger and wider set of problems. Not just one lot of sensitivities being used to attenuate the universality of public provision, but loads of them. Not just a blasphemy law for Christians, but for all faiths (Dr Williams came perilously close to this in his recent James Callaghan Memorial Lecture, while arguing that the current law was “probably” not defensible). Not just unelected bishops in a second parliamentary chamber, but many other religious leaders too. And so on.
Each of these issues can and will be tackled on its own. But it is worth understanding what the wider agenda is – and why the vested interests of government as well as certain religious leaders is deeply implicated.
Institutional Christianity has been on the wane in terms of numbers, money, power and influence for some time. Arguably a slow, incremental process of disestablishment has been taking place since the Reform Acts in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, other religious communities (notably Muslim and Black Christian ones in urban areas) have been growing, but against a background of racism, suspicion and inequality in the wider culture.
So you have an Established Church that feels it has reached a point where its self-preservation is on the line and other churches and faith leaders who feel (rightly or wrongly) that they would be vulnerable if the position of the Church of England was irreparably damaged. This creates the conditions for a potential wider alliance of ‘the religious’ within the secular realm. Ironically, such an alliance may be reinforced by the visceral, partial and intemperate attacks launched upon religion as such (an unhelpful abstraction, at best) by those denounced by their targets as ‘media atheists’. The danger is that reactionary solutions emerge from the clash and convergence of mutually reinforcing ‘victim narratives’.
What is crucial to understand, moreover, is that at a time when the institutional fabric of the churches is declining, their capacity to mobilise what still amounts to a huge army of volunteers and projects is considerable. This is why, in a contract culture reinforced by ‘consumer choice’ ideology, and with the government worried about funding issues and the political demand for more effective, measurable and local services, the idea of involving ever more faith groups in welfare and education provision has taken strong hold.
A lot of public money is at stake. At Ekklesia we perceive this as a religious form of a ‘new deal’. Government and the churches (and increasingly other religious groups) are seeking to solve their respective problems of sustainability and legitimacy by getting into bed together over schools and public services. One of the results is that differences over issues of equality, say, become much more sharp, and systemic. Thus the utility of a wider ‘settlement for religion’ coming in to ‘solve’ this through general exemptions – but at the risk of undermining the very notions of universality and shared public-ness upon which our threatened social fabric has been built. As Anthony Barnett suggests, it all fits together. And the issues involved are very large indeed.
What is particularly sad is that Dr Williams, whose perhaps clumsy attempts to mediate these issues have brought them into focus, came to his archiepiscopacy from the disestablished Church in Wales. He was once arrested on an anti-nuclear weapons protest, he was associated with the distinctly radical Jubilee Group of Anglo-Catholic socialists, and he still has a generosity of spirit and a depth of intellectual outlook from which you might expect much, much better.
But the Archbishop has now been thoroughly sucked into the Establishment he heads, partly because his painstaking desire to see all sides and balance all interests can so easily be exploited by those with a sharper eye to the political main chance. His direct intentions may arise from personal good will (few who know him would doubt that), but the misguided version of pluralism he is coming to espouse is now part of the problem, not part of the solution.
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