“We don’t do G-d”, Alastair Campbell once famously said, intervening in an interview his boss, Tony Blair, was giving to an American journalist. But increasingly politicians, business leaders and journalists are having to grapple with the impact of God. By that I mean the profound impact that faith has on people’s identity and motivations (all over the world but even in the UK which is famously ambivalent in its attitude to faith). The 2001 census showed that over three-quarters of British people say they belong to a faith. This does not necessarily translate into regular attendance at places of worship but it does highlight that people’s outlooks, values and perceptions are often shaped by religion.
While faith groups have very different histories in the UK, there are now a large number of faith communities here, with five communities numbering a quarter of a million plus. Some faith communities have grown sharply since the second world war (largely as a result of immigration), whereas Christianity in Britain has deep roots and is interwoven within the fabric of British history. In a booklet published in December which I co-edited called “Faith in the Nation”, Gordon Brown, the prime minister who is the son of a religious minister, writes in the foreword: “Britain, of course, has a strong Christian tradition, but the landscape of our country today is resolutely multi-faith.”
“Faith in the Nation” includes essays from a number of faith leaders setting out their views on British identity, integration and multiculturalism, and the position of religion in the public realm. While we often hear about conflict between and within faith groups, the contributions shed light on much common ground between faith leaders.
In particular, there are three areas where there seems to be broad consensus. The first is on the constitutional position of the Church of England. It is no surprise that the Archbishop of York John Sentamu launches a vigorous defence of the established church, but other faith leaders are also comfortable with the “British model”, with the host church making space for other faith groups and guaranteeing a fixed position for faith in the sands of public life. Sentamu emphasises the notion of “faithful capital” which he argues “stands as perhaps the greatest bulwark against disestablishment in providing a reminder of what the Church is doing on a daily basis.” The calls for disestablishement seldom come from minority faith groups and invariably come from secular sources.
A second area of consensus is a critique of multiculturalism, which has been seen to place an exaggerated emphasis on diversity at the cost of common national identity. Many faith leaders see it as having had a corrosive effect on Britishness and the Chair of the CEHR Trevor Phillips has also criticised it for leading to segregation. Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi agrees, contending that “Multiculturalism leads not to integration but to segregation. It deconstructs everything that goes into the making of a national identity: a shared culture, a canon of texts everyone is expected to know, a collective history and memory, a code of conduct and civility, and a sense of loyalty to the nation and its institutions. No society can long survive without these things.” Certainly, the multiculturalist model has been discredited and while it retains some wisdom, we need to move beyond it.
The third area of common outlook from the faith leaders is that they all seem to be preoccupied by the growth of an aggressive secularism. As the Catholic leader Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor argues, ” … the intolerance of liberal sceptics can be as repressive as the intolerance of religious believers.” This is distinct from a “reasoned secularism” which would understandably be wary of moves towards a theocratic-style system where religious leaders have too much power. But this militant secularism wishes to banish altogether any trace of faith from the public sphere and confine it to people’s private lives and spaces, which denies a crucial component of people’s identity.
Very few people are arguing that faith groups should have a grip on politics and society. Of course faith groups, when lobbying on any issue, must accept the possibility of getting no for an answer. But politicians and policy-makers must acknowledge the surge of faith which has taken place in contrast to post-war “secularisation” theorists and should feel more comfortable using this particular “f” word.