Simon Barrow (London, Ekklesia): Deep questions may be raised about the settlement the Archbishop of Canterbury is feeling towards in his desire to accommodate diverse religious sensibilities within the fabric of a unitary secular system of law and governance. But the response of his most trenchant critics (blank incomprehension that there is an issue to address, followed by “ignore this nonsense and move on”) is equally inadequate.
Any society that recognises its inherent diversity and which aspires to a commonality founded in openness has to address the question about what place diverse ‘communities of conviction’ have in relation to the wider rights and duties of citizenship. The problem with Dr Williams’ current explorations, and with the most antagonistic responses to them, is that they are over-conditioned by ‘the Christendom mentality.’
Historians usually use the term ‘Christendom’ narrowly, particularly in relation to the archetype of Charlemagne, and commentators often use it too vaguely as a descriptor for the geographical spread of organised Christianity. I am using it, following Stuart Murray and others, to denote the long era in Europe during which the beliefs, institutions and social norms of the Church were upheld by government and vice versa. In reality this era has been in decline since the Reformation and the English civil war. The establishment of the Church of England is an attenuated and receding form of religious hegemony.
However as a cultural and political mindset ‘Christendom thinking’ remains powerful. It is evident in antique notions of ‘a Christian country’. It is revealed as benign paternalism by Anglican talk of “accommodation” and of the “privilege and burden” of speaking up for “other religions.” And it remains seriously problematic when it is translated into the constitutional idea that in order to preserve a civic space for religion it is a requirement that there is some formal inclusion of religious authority within the realm of law and governance. The alternative, it is suggested, is its exclusion from the public sphere. Both liberal establishmentarians and French-style secularists (like many in the National Secular Society) share the view that this is what the essential choice amounts to. It is not.
The “excluded middle” in the Christendom paradigm is the growing arena of civil society and voluntary association. Here is the space where Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, humanists, atheists and others have the opportunity to congregate, model their social arrangements, advocate moral values, form free social or economic partnerships, maintain tradition-based systems of arbitration, enhance society’s cultural mix, address elected representatives, contest other ideas and ideologies, work for justice and peace, gather and worship freely, engage in charitable activity, contribute to media debates, and join with other citizens in forming political projects.
Both religious and non-religious people need equal protection and provision under the law, including the maintenance of free speech, presentation and expression. This is difficult, since there is no natural neutrality in such matters, but it can be worked at together. What truly free faith communities do not require, however, is the sanctioning of parallel jurisdictions in the civil code when there can be perfectly adequate procedures available for private arbitration and contracting. Neither do they essentially rest upon establishment, unelected leaders in a second parliamentary chamber, exemptions under equalities and human rights legislation, schools that select on the basis of group affiliation, or special tax status.
These arrangements, accrued for the Church during the Christendom era, actually militate against the moral and practical utility of voluntary action by creating ‘client religion.' Faith with integrity (think Tutu, Gandhi, Luther King, the Dalai Lama and others) changes people and situations by example and persuasion, not by coercion and privilege. Removing rather than extending the elision of religious and governing authority does not mean the enforced privatization of religion (even if that is what some of its advocates would like), but means liberating both faith and civic governance from the dangers of dependency and collusion.
In other words, a proper distinction between the associational nature of religion and the universal obligations of law and governance through the legislature, the executive and the judiciary is something required for the integrity and benefit of both. Commentator and academic Akhandadhi Das has made this point very succinctly. He points out the sources of the system of law we now have in the UK are plural, and include land and inheritance provisions which drew on ancient Hindu Manu-smrti texts in the nineteenth century, for instance. So voluntary codes can set examples that others may wish to follow. But this, he rightly says, is a different proposition to the one Archbishop Williams seems to have suggested because it depends upon avoiding confusion between communal and supra-communal legal codes.
Moreover, law and religion (or any humanistic philosophy concerned with transcending the immediacy of life with a 'higher moral purpose') are different kinds of enterprises. The law helps us establish common boundaries about what is acceptable in the absence of wider consensus. That is a modest but vital process. At their best, religious and other life stances “extol positive qualities of kindness, generosity and responsibility to others” beyond legislation. You can outlaw racist actions, for example, but eliminating racism is about changing hearts and minds.
Therefore, bearing in mind the distinction between voluntary practice and unitary codification by the state, religious and civil codes should run as a series in different spheres. Integrating them, or regarding them as essentially inimical, involves misunderstanding both how they differ and how they may freely benefit one another. (I am talking optimally here. Of course there can be bad religion and bad law.)
As Akhandadhi Das puts it: “State laws don't promote the best behaviour; they're designed to stop the worst. We need inspirational influences, [but] religion often gets into a mess when it tries to affect the laws we all agree to live by. It succeeds best when it offers a vision of ideal human behaviour and provides a spiritual process of personal transformation that helps us grow towards that ideal.”
I would add that this process is political and not simply personal (think environmental and anti-poverty action), and that there is all the difference in the world between groups – religious or otherwise – seeking just law for all, and groups seeking sectional advantage. We need a transformed relationship between faith and society.
See also: Rethinking religion in an open society.
Simon Barrow is director of Ekklesia, the religion and society think-tank. His regular blog is FaithInSociety.
