The coalescence of British and EU anti-discrimination law is but an immodest garment for trenchant ideology. Harman’s bill strives to subjugate individual freedoms, such as that to religious expression, beneath state-imposed rights. This legislation is the progeny of faith in social engineering, not social mobility; it ignores that toleration and freedom in Britain were derived from the right to religious observance free from state proscriptions.

If enacted, the bill will require organisations to employ without thought to suitability, and allocate resources under the perverse dictates of positive-discrimination. In practice it will conflict with the stupendous fabric of precedents that define rights to individual expression as supreme. Ironically, anti-discrimination measures will be invoked to ensure that religious groups may practice their faith without hindrance. Equality defers to liberty.   

“I don’t practise any religion nor worship any God, and fear all fanaticism and that’s bred by faith so I ought really to be sympathetic to Dawkins’ book ‘The God Delusion’. But it moves me – to be frank – to fury. Partly because it assumes that men were stupid until science rescued them. Partly because its ignorance sees no reason not to remain ignorant of what belief is like for those who do believe. Partly because of its certainty, Where’s the point of attacking

“The trouble with a lot of government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem, it’s an eccentricity, it’s practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities.”

Ok, Williams is right that there is a widespread perception that religion is “a bit fishy”, but I don’t see how the government can be blamed for this. MPs who raise secularist concerns are only echoing a major sector of public opinion, and I haven’t noticed many senior ministers denouncing religion. He is fuelling a crass culture war by complaining that poor Christians are persecuted by nasty secularists. If religion is now widely mistrusted maybe he should ignore the speck in the government’s eye and consider the beam in his own.

His conclusion raises a very interesting issue:

'The tragedy for the Church is that it is missing a huge opportunity. There are millions of young people out there who are disaffected from mainstream politics but equally dissatisfied with the mindless consumerism and callous selfishness of modern life… With so many youngsters thinking deeply about what’s right and wrong for the world, this should be a golden age for Christianity — the most revolutionary of religions. But while the Church renders itself a laughing-stock over sex, it hasn’t got a hope of converting the young.'

I largely agree. It is a PR disaster for the C of E that it can be justly accused of tolerating homophobia and sexism. But this isn’t the only issue, and it’s rather misleading to isolate it.

In fact it is a symptom of something deeper. The Church reeks of a model of authority that offends the young, or most of them. Its slowness to accept women and gays is one]]> Theo Hobson 2009-12-09T10:37:35+00:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/faithbased/5609378/knox-the-symbol.thtml In the Times today Libby Purves convincingly depicts Amanda Knox as a symbol of sexual liberation gone wrong.
She makes the wider point that celebrations of casual sex have crept into mainstream culture recently: ‘The “fling”, the mile-high grope on the plane, the strange head on the pillow are commonplaces of joke and memoir with no shame attached.’

I’m sorry to sound like the Libby fan club (I praised her here recently) but she is one of the very few voices who can say this sort of (important and true) thing without sounding like a moralistic prude. I can’t think of any male pundit who can do this. Maybe male pride is so brittle that we daren’t sound unmacho; maybe the public male voice is too tied to flippancy. The fact is that it’s amazingly difficult to object to the harmful smut that surrounds us without sounding like a killjoy reactionary. One has to be nuanced and principled at the same time. I therefore nominate Purves as a new sort of Mary Whitehouse, who dares to say that smut is serious, and that promiscuity is the death of love.  

Back to]]> Theo Hobson 2009-12-07T12:30:52+00:00 http://www.spectator.co.uk/faithbased/5564153/pathetic-optimism.thtml Imagine some poor bloke who has been publicly, humiliatingly dumped by his girlfriend. He writes her a long letter, pathetic in its fantasy-land optimism that the current setback need not be final. And now look at the conclusion of Williams’ speech in Rome last Thursday.

‘All I have been attempting to say here is that the ecumenical glass is genuinely half-full – and then to ask about the character of the unfinished business between us.  For many of us who are not Roman Catholics, the question we want to put, in a grateful and fraternal spirit, is whether this unfinished business is as fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume and maintain. And if it isn't, can we all allow ourselves to be challenged to address the outstanding issues with the same methodological assumptions and the same overall spiritual and sacramental vision that has brought us thus far?’

If this point of view catches on, then maybe I’ll have to peel off the labels I’ve superglued to my children’s foreheads, which will be painful for everyone.

These people are immensely stupid, and arrogant. To suggest that one does cultural violence to one’s child by exposing him or her to religion is very close to nutty. My children are exposed to various cultural influences, from Black History Month at school to crass jokes on Childrens BBC. So what if a bit of God is in the mix? It would be easier to pin a label on a herd of cats than on my 8 year old daughter. In fact when I try and raise theological issues with her she tends to roll her eyes and mutter atheistically. I bet atheists’ kids are not so freethinking as to question atheism.

The concept of sainthood is an excellent illustration of the muddle at the heart of Anglicanism. It is clear proof that this church cannot move on from its Roman roots, it can never ‘get over’ this, as one talks of someone getting over an ex. What, to an Anglican, is a saint? Is it, or is it not, someone who has been canonized by the Roman church? Anglicans like Williams are carefully agnostic: they refer to Rome’s saints approvingly, but imply that there are lots of non-Roman ones too. 

The only consistent approach for non-Roman Catholics and non-Orthodox is to drop the concept of sainthood completely. It’s a papal Trojan horse.
 

The key sentence is this: “faith and power are not good bedfellows, and I for one am always glad to see religion kicked out of bed by a secular state.”

The point is that no practically no other Christian writer is saying this sort of thing. For institutional orthodoxy, and the snooty fear of secular liberalism, is more dominant than ever – in theology and religious comment. (This is largely because really liberal Anglicanism is a spent force, a dead experiment.) Purves’ distrust of institutional power, and affirmation of the secular ideal, is now an extremely marginal position for a Christian to take. She is an important voice. In fact, it was a piece she wrote soon after September 11th 2001, saying that Christians should advocate the separation of church and state, that prompted me think afresh about the C of E’s establishment.