Theocracy anyone?
Sometimes the level of disgustingness can still surprise and disconcert and sicken.
Faith groups are to be given a central role in shaping government policies, a senior minister has vowed. John Denham, the communities secretary, said the values of Christians, Muslims and other religions were essential in building a “progressive society”. He attacked secularists who have called for religion to be kept out of public life. Mr Denham revealed that a new panel of religious experts has been set up to advise the Government on making public policy decisions.
What is a ‘communities secretary’ and why does the UK government think it’s a good thing to have one? Why does New Labour have such a chronic frozen painful hard-on for ‘communities’ and community-thought and ‘faith groups’? Why is it so soft in the head? Why is it so determined not to treat people like grown ups?
Mr Denham argued that Christians and Muslims can contribute significant insights on key issues, such as the economy, parenting and tackling climate change.
Meaning they can contribute such insights as Christians and Muslims? Insights that they would not be able to contribute if they were not Christians and Muslims? If so – what, exactly, would those be? What kind of insights? Arrived at how? What can Christianity and Islam tell anyone about the economy? And as for parenting – those could be some pretty dubious insights, unless the ‘communities secretary’ picks his ‘religious experts’ very very carefully indeed.
“Anyone wanting to build a more progressive society would ignore the powerful role of faith at their peril,” he said. “We should continually seek ways of encouraging and enhancing the contribution faith communities make on the central issues of our time. Faith is a strong and powerful source of honesty, solidarity, generosity – the very values which are essential to politics, to our economy and our society.” The minister said that the Government needed to be educated by faith groups on “how to inform the rest of society about these issues”.
……………………………..
I can’t even say anything rational on that; the disgust is too visceral. Why? Because it’s so abject, so crawling, so untrue, so stupid, so insulting. We don’t need “faith” to build a more progressive society; “faith communities” don’t make a contribution on the central issues of our time – most of them do the exact opposite, pitching fits about contraception, gender equality, gay rights, secularism, liberalism, individual rights, non-procreation, and on and on. “Faith” is by no means the only or a particularly good source of honesty or generosity and its talent for solidarity all too often slides into hatred of or indifference to everyone outside the “faith group.” And the government, above all, does not need to be educated by “faith groups” on how to shove religious ideas down everyone’s throats – the very idea is intrusive, presumptuous, patronizing, and mind-bogglingly insulting.
He added that he was sympathetic with religious leaders, such as Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had complained of the rise of aggressive secularism in Britain. “I don’t like the strand of secularism that says that faith is inherently a bad thing to have and should be kept out of public life,” Mr Denham said. The religious panel is being launched this week to coincide with a series of interfaith initiatives designed to increase social cohesion. It is being headed up by Francis Davis, a fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, who is a prominent figure in the Catholic Church.
Well isn’t that sweet – the UK government will from now on be advised by a panel headed by a prominent Catholic. Soon the UK will catch up to the US, whose Supreme Court is majority-Catholic.
This is so vapid and inane it astonishes me that it could possibly be said in public by a government minister in any place other than a theocracy. Did they not notice what the Catholic Church does wherever it has a bit of leverage on political decision making? Things become less progressive, regressive even, people are threatened with penalties for being people, and God is used as a big stick to threaten women, gay people, the young, etc. etc. It’s totally totally mad.
When the ABC speaks of aggressive secularism he means atheism, not secularism. Secularism is a way of arranging our political lives so that religion does not get the upper hand, and justifications for actions have to be made in such a way as not to depend on religious presuppositions. We are seeing the Enlightenment under threat, and perhaps seeing the first signs of a reassertion of clerical power over secular affairs. This is the first, telltale sign of theocracy in Britain. So much for parliamentary democracy. It is not something to be tolerated without a fight.
I was sure that AC Grayling would have something on this, and he has – here. What is it about governments nowadays? They have no vision, and they spend all their time trying to bend to the wishes of the most benighted. Democracy seems to be losing its way, and some of Grayling’s questions are right on the money:
What indeed?! Of course, the irony is heavy, for clearly Mr. Denham has not thought this through at all.
I very rarely comment, but an occasional note of support should hopefully inspire you that our war (of ideas) needs you to keep fighting. As always, well said OB.
This crap is bad news for rational people in Britain. And I think some have abandoned their rationality.
This evening I was walking from U of Bristol down the hill to dinner w/two colleagues, one deaf and one hearing. We were signing, and minding our own business when I heard the slamming of feet behind us, and some screams of “excuse me. excuse me!!!” I turned around to see two young adults running to catch up with us. The young man said “Can we pray for hearing?” And I said “what??” And the guy said, again “Please let us pray for hearing.” By now my friend Rachel had translated this to British Sign Lg for our deaf colleague Paddy. I am not English so have almost no filter about being direct and saying “NO!” to this type of rude intrusive self-indulgent narcissistic request, and that’s what I did. Rachel and Paddy, being British, were so stunned that anyone would act this way on a public street to perfect strangers, were comatose from shock.
The piety-resistant English have obviously been badly contaminated. It was simply disgusting. I wish I’d slapped those two smarmy-assed young Christians.
The annoying thing (well not the only annoying thing) is that the predictable response from some believers will be that opponents of this are discriminating against Christians, Muslims etc, trying to ‘silence’ them.
They don’t seem to understand – because they haven’t thought it through and are still labouring under the assumption that religions should be automatically privileged – that the right to be heard is not the same as the right to be listened to. The right to be allowed a platform is not the same as the right to be given one.
It’s not discrimination to say this idea is absurd and anti-rational because no-one is stopping Christians and Muslims having their say; they just can’t have it merely because they are religious – they have to make their case in universal, natural, human terms, not by appealing to personal, unverifiable supernatural claims.
I too am extremely curious as to what ‘significant insights’ Christians and Muslims can contribute that somehow others can’t – what special knowledge have they acquired through their particular jumble of superstitions that is so intrinsic to the well-being of society? They’ve got lots of unique opinions of course, but opinions are just that, and again are only valid in society as a whole if they can be stated in universal natural terms, at which point their supernatural origins just melt away unneeded.
‘Well isn’t that sweet – the UK government will from now on be advised by a panel headed by a prominent Catholic.”
Aye, terribly sweet indeed!
Move over, Maddy, from the Guardian, and make way for another of your rivals.
Catholicwww.guardian.co.uk/profile/francis-davis
Thanks, Rana.
Claire – ick, ick, ick, ick, ick.
At least on the face of it, I like the idea of a communities secretary. Some of the mandates are reasonable enough: encouraging meaningful interaction between groups (to moderate extremism), organising logistics for municipal governments, community input over public space (no doubt in true Naomi Klein fashion), that sort of thing. I can’t help but agree that urban decay and mass alienation are genuine problems that have to be dealt with in order for any group to earn the designate of a ‘civil society’, and I also have to confess that over the past 8 years when we talked about prevention of terrorism instead of bombing countries, these sorts of avenues were exactly what I had in mind. The words are mushy, but life is a little bit mushy too.
But in reality all these mandates have dark undersides. The wary liberal halfway expects that ‘meaningful interaction’ can come in the form of little provincial wars, and has a Big Brother sort of feeling to it (“these people are extremists, while those people over there are just full of zest”). “Community empowerment”, i.e., “giving people and communities more of a say on the services they receive and where they live”, sounds like a potential precursor to privatisation of services. Managing public space is potentially… well, irritating: if I want to make a giant snow penis on my lawn every winter then I’m not much interested in having the Community Police demolish it.
As for advisors, I think Grayling poses some good questions. When he talks about ghettoization with the Northern Ireland example, he is potentially challenging the idea that Denham is living up to the promise of ‘meaningful interaction’. Still, I don’t think Grayling hits the mark by touting the 10% figure, since the issue is cohesion, which doesn’t necessarily have to do with people having an active (weekly) engagement in their community. Most people (including the religious) often get by on auto-pilot, living according to the accolaides given them by their imaginary communities; i.e., they know their god’s rulebook and would cohere fine enough with real fellow members of the fraternity if they ever had the chance to chat. But surely these people still matter if we’re interested in talking about extremists and people living at the margins, as Denham ought to be.
“Anyone wanting to build a more progressive society would ignore the powerful role of faith at their peril,”
Well, I can agree with the wording, if not the intent of this sentence.
The “role of faith” has been to mindlessly retard progress and prop up whatever prejudices people cannot support with reason and evidence. To ignore such a force for maintaining the status quo is certainly a peril for any society wishing to claw their way out of the nasty, brutish past and find a more just and equitable future.
That is so vapid. It totally ignores the price in blood paid to get the Catholics OUT of British government… by Protestant martyrs.
;-)
At the riks of sounding idiotic, is it time to found a Secular Party in Britain? I note there’s one in Australia.
Benjamin –
I disagree with your assessment of the 10% figure. People may be going on autopilot, but if they really stopped and thought about the implication of that number then surely we’d see something approaching an end to the ridiculous way people stretch for religion when they talk about meaning and morality. Clearly that 10% figure shows that the vast majority of people are developing meaning in their lives and making ethical choices and possible even building communities without actually calling on religion and it’s only a lack of thought that leads to them appealing to religion when they’re asked. Essentially it’s that old canard of there’s a big gap between what people say and what they do and that gap shows that religion isn’t actually an influence.
I’m not sure I understand your point Benjamin. You say that you like the idea of a ‘communities secretary.’ What in particular do you like about it? That some people – other than the leaders – imams, bishops, pastors, etc. – who will have a voice that ordinary people won’t have – will be included in a ‘community’ quite contrary to their own will in the matter? And included because of some quite accidental feature of their birth and parentage?
And, remember, the suggestion is being made against the background of a deliberate disparagement of the secularising tendencies of the age, which the Archbishop of Canterbury has characterised as aggressive, no less, despite his own idiotic aggressive forays into public space. If anything has been aggressive in Britain lately it has been Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Church of England in that order. And instead of moving to a more homogeneous public space, which is certainly implied by the relatively small number of people who practice their religion visibly, the government wants to emphasis religious differences, and entrench people more deeply in their faith ‘communities’, which is not likely to lead to the kind of social accord that Britain so clearly needs just now, where most people carry on their fairly secular lives against the foreground whining of religious leaders, who want more say, and consider unbelievers as something less than human, as Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor so kindly said as he took his departure.
One is led to ask Nick Cohen’s question again: What’s Left?
You seem not to be considering the possibility that he is stroking and patronising faith groups in order to keep them sweet (and quiet). He is a politician, so he knows that telling people that their views are being taken on board is more productive than telling them to piss off, and undermines their explicit reasons for being uncooperative. Remember that public consultations are a stage in the process by which politicans do what they would have done anyway. Or you may right.
I don’t get it either, Ben. How is the fostering of ‘communities’ not the opposite of ‘cohesion’ rather than the way to foster it? And then what exactly is cohesion and how much of it do we want and for what purposes? And what is ‘mass alienation’?
Sure, life is mushy, but that doesn’t mean the state has to impose mushy categories on all of us. I don’t think the state should be urging us either to ‘cohere’ or to clump ourselves in ‘communities’; I sure as hell don’t think it should be urging us to do both at once.
Ken – there are ways of stroking ‘faith groups’ well short of creating official government panels of them.
Kallan, it’s for sure a matter of interpretation, so it will probably be hard to come to agreement. What if the people who run on autopilot (say, an additional 40% of the population) are beholden to that 10% through a shared sense of identity? You don’t have to go to church every week to have your mind changed by the Pope.
Sure, we can question the extent of their faith and devotion by drawing inferences from their inactive lifestyle, but that might not give us the results we desire when we confront them with the fact. They might just respond in the usual op-ed faitheist sort of way, ala Sholto Byrnes, by putting accent on faith as an individual experience. Diffident individualism isn’t distinct from the problem, it is central to the problem.
Eric,
If people don’t like the religious community they’re born into, they should be given opportunities to change it or drop it entirely. Ostensibly, fostering ‘meaningful interaction’ is probably meant to take the edge off of multiculturalism, and so be helpful in this way. Additionally, if people in geographic communities are missing out on the mere experience of fellowship and fraternity (esp. in urban and suburban areas), then that’s a problem. These are the purposes, evidently, of the communities secretary. It might be a fool’s errand; as I remarked, there’s a dark side to each item of the mandate. But I’m enough of a communitarian that I can sympathize with the problems that they’re supposedly trying to grapple with.
A distinct issue is whether or not this Denham fellow is an errant twit. Maybe so. His use of rhetoric against secular activism is probably not helpful in building bridges between non-theistic third sector organizations with the communities they live in. One of the problems that these secular humanist organizations have is outreach: people don’t know about, or feel massively alienated from / intimidated by, local action networks. So maybe a group of humanists need to have a quiet word with him.
Benjamin,
sorry, but however you wish to dress it up, it’s simply a nonsense.
I’m an atheistic, single parent who’s trying (pathetically) to resurrect his music career, but doesn’t seek to impose his (white, male, 40, Scottish,etc,etc) cultural values/ethics to the detriment of others.
Where’s my damn ‘community’?
And why should these supernaturalists get preferential representation over me?
equality before the law, but not when it comes to framing it, apparently. Ah, the joys…
“Can I pray for hearing”
That is such strange outrageous behaviour to have occurred to you and your friends, Claire, as you were all going about your business in Bristol. The cheeky devils must be cousins of Fred Phelp.
Apart from being cossetted in a British street, I hope you enjoy your stay in Bristol.
Here’s the core of the problem perhaps –
“encouraging meaningful interaction between groups (to moderate extremism)”
Better to encourage (if anything) interaction between people – just people – not groups. Better not to have the state defining what a ‘group’ or a ‘community’ is – especially when the state in the form of the UK gov’t seems so determined to define it as religious and nothing else. We all belong to a large number of ‘groups’ and it should be up to us to decide which of them are salient – we really don’t need the gummint herding us all into ‘faith-based’ groups and grouplets.
Another objection –
‘”Community empowerment”, i.e., “giving people and communities more of a say on the services they receive and where they live”,’
‘Communities’ shouldn’t have more of a say because communities don’t have minds or emotions or needs or wants. Communities, like corporations, should not be treated like people with rights; communities should not be treated as conscious entities with feelings.
I’ll tell you what it is – now that I’ve looked at that page. (The ‘communities’ page.) There’s equivocation throughout – most of what it says could apply just to neighborhoods and be perfectly anodyne and sensible – but much of that could also apply to the communitarian kind of community, and some of it obviously does, like the bit about tackling extremism.
Typical bureaucrat-speak in that, I suppose – but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.
Ophelia, it could be either communities or cohesion, they’re not necessarily one and the same. Though communities necessarily have to have some internal cohesion in order to be communities, that doesn’t mean that they cohere very well with the people outside of that particular neigborhood, mosque, church, school, etc. Nor does it mean that cohesion presupposes community (as with my original point made in response to Grayling’s 10% figure). But I can see how ‘meaningful interaction’ is supposed to provide cohesion across communities, but I can also see the value of people just shutting up and getting along in a secular framework so that they don’t engage in internecine warfare (as Eric rightly brings up in the India/Pakistan example).
I suspect that the answer to your second question would give us a way of separating the dark side of these policies from the ameliorative intent — in the unlikely event that there is a single answer. I’m a political liberal in that sense so I can’t pretend to have anything interesting to say about it. But if people themselves do separate themselves into communities, then the government (pref. ultimately the local ones) can take their word for it and try to build bridges. Or, better, to help out the third sector workers who are doing the bridge-building. (Certainly not by making their advisors exclusively religious — it’s hard to tell from the vague words you see in print. But if that’s what this fellow is doing, then he’s batty.)
By mass alienation, I mean chavs hanging around malls without any sense of identity they can’t buy, people going to work without any sense of meaning to their lives, etc., the sort of blue-tinted montage that you would see in a Counting Crows music video.
Eric, I think we agree. I just add that it seems incoherent for this Labour party keener to bash away at the “community” (better: coherent aggregate) of atheists and agnostics that feel dreadfully uncomfortable with the new attention being paid to the theocratic minority.
Andy, they shouldn’t.
Any music online?
Benjamin,
well, since you ask, yes there is!
(hope this is ok, OB?)
here!
meant to put that at the foot of my previous post. But didn’t.
:-)
All this community and cohesion bit, to me, misses the point. OB quoted, and commented upon, one of the most objectional bits:
“We should continually seek ways of encouraging and enhancing the contribution faith communities make on the central issues of our time. Faith is a strong and powerful source of honesty, solidarity, generosity – the very values which are essential to politics, to our economy and our society.”
It is the explicit, and obnoxious, statement that people of “faith” are somehow better than the rest of us and should have a privileged position in discussions about important issues.
He can set up as many consultitative committees as he likes BUT deliberatley excluding certain people (those without “faith”) is counter to the basic principles of a democratic society.
Of course, Andy!
Quite so, about the exclusion. It’s noteworthy that no government boffin would ever say that ‘unbelief is a strong and powerful source of honesty, solidarity, generosity’ – but handing that little prezzy to ‘faith’ is perfectly all right.
Andy, your fingers need to be placed under arrest for violating the laws of thermodynamics!
Keith, I’m not sure I can interpret that passage the same way. If there’s something contentious about the statement, it’s not any implication that the religious occupy a privileged place as a function of those essential values, but rather the assumption that the religious occupy any place as a function of those values. i.e., I’m not at all interested, as a humanist, in having government officials think seriously about what some nutty cardinal has to say about charity. If anyone has anything to say worth listening to, it’s the people who are doing actual work operating the soup kitchens and so on. If they happen to be religious, fine, but their community and good works are the central element.
Benjamin Nelson: “…but rather the assumption that the religious occupy any place as a function of those values. i.e., I’m not at all interested, as a humanist, in having government officials think seriously about what some nutty cardinal has to say about charity.”
No, I disagree: the nutty cardinal is entitled to express his views — as we all are — but currently the views of some are given special weight because of their expressed religion.
But what you say doesn’t disagree with what Ben said, Keith. Of course the nutty cardinal is entitled to express his views, but Ben didn’t say otherwise – Ben said he’s not interested in having government officials think seriously about what some nutty cardinal has to say – which is a different thing.
Benjamin,
You’re far too kind!
Of course, it would be nice if the rest of the world were to acknowledge my artistic genius…
:-))
Cheers,
Andy
It seems ditzily unreal, as though the govenment’s apparant fetish for copying America has combined with a pathalogical reversal of cause and effect. Hm… pandering to religion seems to do well for politicians in America, therefore we have no choice but to do it too.
I still can’t understand how we’ve come to have such things as faith schools on the disingenuous coat tails of multiculturalism. This overt pandering just doesn’t seem like something we would accept and I have to keep reminding myself that it’s really happening.