21 January 2016
Clash Of Cultures at Cologne
Christian or not, children should be taught the principles of Christianity
by John Watson
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. No, not tears for the passing of Caesar but tears of sympathy for the unlucky, in this case tears for the ill luck of The Rt Hon Baroness Elizabeth Butler–Sloss GBE PC who chaired the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life. The Commission reported under the title “Living with Difference” on 7 December 2015, after two years of deliberation and consultation.
It isn’t the make up of the Commission which impels sympathy, although it is true that two years working with a committee of 20 drawn from the ranks of religious leaders, academics and (inevitably) humanists cannot have been a barrel of laughs. Nor is the reason for sympathy obvious from a casual reading of the report itself. There is no dreadful error of syntax or presentation. Weighing in at over 100 pages, the report is well-structured with an overall vision being applied successively in the areas of education, media, dialogue, action and law. Some of the content too is useful, particularly where stress is laid on the importance of dialogue and encounter, although the sense shown in these areas is more than offset by the chapter on the media which, in a vain attempt to soften the stultifying suggestion that every newsroom retain at least one religious belief specialist or subscribe to one specialist agency, resorts to offering baubles by way of compensation; awards, no less, to “recognise and reward the best in religion and belief coverage.” This thrilling idea is not the only touch of Hollywood, however. At paragraph 5.29 there is a McCarthyesque proposal that a panel of experts on religion and belief should identify those outlets “who need to improve their reporting on religion and belief”, something towards which the sinisterly named Religion Media Centre is apparently already working. Woe betide those who are not PC in this area. A virtual stoning by internet trolls perhaps? Still, they need not despair. Re-education is at hand. If the Committee has its way “a core element in all media training courses [will] include world religions and the implications of the changing religious landscape”. Yes, that is right. All media training courses, presumably including those dealing with programmes on football and the arts.
Now, you may feel that so far the report is just what you would expect from a Committee of assorted clerics, academics and (inevitably) humanists and that Lady Butler-Sloss, a clever woman by all accounts must have known what she was in for from the start. Why then the sympathy? Where the bad luck? Well, although Lady Butler-Sloss must have realised that certain of the recommendations in the report would be contentious, what she cannot have known is that within a very short period of its publication, events at Cologne and elsewhere would expose the report for what it is, an intellectual doughnut, something which dances round the peripheral issues without dealing with the centre. Here she was unlucky and it is out of sympathy for that bad luck that we should shed our tears.
At first sight the reports from Cologne, where, over the New Year holiday, crowds of young men who were originally from North Africa and the Middle East attacked local women, seemed too good to be true. That is not in the sense that the attacks were other than despicable, you understand, but rather because they played so perfectly into the hands of those who are opposed to immigration that it seemed possible that right wing parties had in some way orchestrated them. Still, that doesn’t appear to be the case and it seems likely that a major factor was the approach to women taken by certain elements within the Muslim community.
The Cologne attacks have caused outrage, not just within Germany but also among the great majority of Muslims, who have no sympathy for this sort of behaviour. Still, as the story continues to unfold, we will no doubt hear plenty about the relationship between the perpetrators’ behaviour and the beliefs and customs in the communities from which they come. Perhaps there will be no connection at all but that seems improbable. It is much more likely that there will be some link between their actions and the value put on women by certain factions within Islam. Whatever the final analysis, however, the incident, and the use which will be made of it politically, will bring into focus the tensions caused by introducing into Western society immigrants whose way of life and beliefs are very different to our own. How to resolve these tensions is central to the debate on immigration and it is a great pity that the Commission’s report talks so much about areas which depend on it without dealing directly with the central point. To what extent do we expect immigrants to adopt our way of life and to what extent should they develop separately?
The “vision” set out in chapter 3 of the Report flits round the topic by stating that all should feel part of an ongoing national story but should be free to practice beliefs and religions, provided they do not constrict the rights and freedoms of others. OK, so far as it goes, but precisely what is the “national story”?
The report makes much of the decline of the Church of England and lays emphasis on the spread of other faiths, of humanism etc, but its approach to the national story is best gleaned not from its list of contributing factors but from chapter 4 which deals with religious education in state schools. The key paragraph here is 4.27 which proposes “a subject dealing with religious and non-religious worldviews” built up in a way which reflects the diversity of UK religious belief. This extrapolates the current system for English non-faith schools and it is envisaged that schools will build on minimum requirements in different ways. That may sound fair and liberal but the honeyed words conceal a double betrayal, a betrayal of both the immigrants themselves and of the host community. Let’s start with the immigrants and with what they or their forebears expected when they made the decision to come and settle in Britain. One Hindu who gave evidence to the Commission had few doubts:
“To work hard, to be a good father, to be a good and active citizen, to go to the local church to celebrate the Almighty in his glory, and to be a good neighbour and, yes, to have a couple of pints of warm beer on the way home.”
Perhaps that is atypical as to the churchgoing. Many would expect to maintain their own faiths but the general point is still well made. Immigrants come to the UK to join an existing culture and for that to happen they and their families need to understand it. To help them to do so, their children need to be given a good grasp of the Christian tradition from which its ethics principally derive and that means that the study of Christianity should have primacy over the teaching of other religions (oh, yes, and of humanism, too) in the curriculum. That has nothing to do with making converts. Many immigrants will no doubt adhere to and study their own religions. Why should they not? Nor does it have anything to do with how many people go to church, a topic which the Commission seems to regard as central. It is about knowledge and understanding. If we as a people have invited immigrants to join our national story we must see that they and their families understand it. Christianity is as important to that story as are the facts and myths that make up British history. They should be taught both and if we deny them this key to our way of life, palming them off with politically correct talk about diversity and world vision, we condemn them to being second class citizens. That is a betrayal, the first of them.
The second betrayal is of the home population. We have as a country had immigrants throughout our history and much of the richness of our national life is down to that. Huguenots, Jews, Africans, Asians, West Indians and others too have come here in successive waves and each time we expect them to gradually assimilate into the main stream. Of course they live in relatively separate communities to begin with. That is understandable. It is a new land and it takes them time to assimilate. Of course they must be free to practice their religion. We have a long history of religious tolerance. Still we expect official action to encourage the communities to merge and not to encourage separate development. They have not been invited so that they can turn bits of our country into separate communities, for example communities where it is seen as other than tragic when a teenager cuts off his hand because it has blasphemed, but to become British and the hope and expectation is that they will gradually become part of our community in every sense, sharing culture, intermarrying with the natives, sharing our ambitions and our endeavours. To help that happen they must be exposed to our culture and to Christianity and if we fail to give them that exposure we betray the expectations of the native population as well as the newcomers.
At this point some of my readers will baulk. “Oh, come on” they will say, surely the expression “in a way which reflects the diversity of UK belief” imports some bias towards the principal religion. If that is so the Report should have said so and in any case I do not believe it is. The Report in its anxiety to please all religions (oh, yes, and the humanists too) has lost contact with the aspirations of immigrants and the British people. It will be a good thing if the incident at Cologne brings these aspirations back to the centre of the debate.
