There are communities and then there are communities
What exactly are they talking about? What do they mean by ‘communities’? It does make a difference.
We are working to help people and local organisations create strong, attractive and economically thriving communities and neighbourhoods. Our aim is to ensure that they are given all the support they need to make the best of their communities and overcome their own difficulties. These are problems like community conflict, extremism, deprivation and disadvantage.
That sounds (mostly) benign and useful. In fact it sounds like what Barack Obama used to do – and in doing realized that he wanted to change more than just local ‘communities.’ People live in (literal) communities and neighbourhoods, and it is good to help those communities and neighbourhoods thrive. But…people also ‘live in’ non-literal ‘communities’ and some of what the communities department does seems to apply to that kind of community – but they’re not clear about it, so their mission statements and lists of objectives are bound to be at least somewhat misleading.
Or, on the other hand, perhaps they are talking only about literal communities on the website, but in that case, the ‘communities secretary’ is doing something very peculiar in setting up a panel of religious ‘experts’ to advise the gummint. Why would that even be part of his remit, if he’s the secretary for communities-and-neighborhoods as opposed to the secretary for communalism? It seems like Animal Control setting up prayer meetings. Superfluous, intrusive, and fundamentally not their job.
Certainly, it makes a difference, and the difference it makes is enough to suggest that the government should not be having an advisory body composed of representatives of religious insitutions. Let’s by all means talk about people of faith and of no faith at all, but let’s not pretend that faith ‘communities’, as insitutions, don’t come carrying big sticks, and you can see the sticks being wielded in all sorts of places around the globe. So giving religions a public role in advising the government is already to introduce these big religious sticks at the public level, because it is to accord to religious institutions a respect and regard the expectation of which is built into their public persona. They like being told things like this:
Of course, Denham also says that people of no faith can be deeply moral and profoundly altruistic too, but he rather overeggs the religious pudding, by saying things that are not true of many religious believers, and of all religions, and by creating a religious advisory group he gives religious institutions a level of social authority that they would not have without that role. I am quite aware of the effects of religious intervention in public affairs, denying people the right to die with dignity, denying – take a look at the Catholic Church and Washington DC at the moment – the right of gay and lesbian people to live with dignity, placing women in a very invidious position in society by second listing them in their religions in ways too numerous to mention here, and so on. To have such institutions playing an advisory role to government, regardless what is meant by the word ‘community’, is to accord all the horrible aspects of religion a level of respect that they do not deserve. It suggests, given the praise that Denham lavishes on them in his speech on inter-faith day, that it would be improper to criticise religious institutions or the values that they uphold, and that in itself is a serious danger to the fabric of human rights in the United Kingdom.
“Certainly, it makes a difference, and the difference it makes is enough to suggest that the government should not be having an advisory body composed of representatives of religious insitutions.”
Exactly. The initiatives on the website seem innocuous enough BUT consultitative committees should not be drawn just from religious institutions.