David Cameron threw a little Easter party the other day. He stood on a box and addressed a bunch of people who stood facing him with their hands folded tidily in front of them like subdued schoolchildren, and what he said was, there should be more of this kind of thing all around.
LAST week I held my fourth annual Easter reception in Downing Street. Not for the first time, my comments about my faith and the importance of Christianity in our country were widely reported.
Some people feel that in this ever more secular age we shouldn’t talk about these things. I completely disagree. I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more ambitious about expanding the role of faith-based organisations, and, frankly, more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives.
Who’s we, kemosabe?
What horrible bullying garbage that is. It’s not a “Christian country”; that’s not a meaningful description, and if it were, the UK still wouldn’t fit it. Heads of state government shouldn’t make untrue and coercive statements like that; it others most of the population.
Crucially, the Christian values of responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, and love are shared by people of every faith and none – and we should be confident in standing up to defend them.
Well then they’re not Christian, are they. Then there’s no point in calling them Christian, is there. If you want to talk about good values, do that; there’s no need to call them Christian, and it’s bad and harmful to call them Christian.
People who, instead, advocate some sort of secular neutrality fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code. Of course, faith is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality.
That makes no sense. It’s also untrue apart from the last sentence. It’s also stupidly vague – what “consequences of that neutrality”? It’s also utterly pointless, since he admits that “faith” is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality. Quite right, it’s not, so shut up about it.
Many atheists and agnostics live by a moral code – and there are Christians who don’t. But for people who do have a faith, that faith can be a guide or a helpful prod in the right direction – and, whether inspired by faith or not, that direction or moral code matters.
But secularism doesn’t mean obliterating that “faith” with fire and sword. It doesn’t touch it.
I call that party a dud.
If England or the United Kingdom is a Christian country, wouldn’t that mean that they would prohibit people from publicly calling out that Allah is god and Muhammed is his prophet? Or, if they tolerate this, wouldn’t that mean that the UK is NOT a Christian country? How can they have both at once, unless one or both are not meaningful claims?
It is for the citizens of each country to define what they are. But The English language belongs to the whole world, and Cameron cannot unilaterally redefine it into fashionable nonsense.
Unfortunately for us, we’re a country with a blithering, incompetent buffoon for a prime minister.
Cameron isn’t the head of state, that’s Brenda. Cameron is head of government.
Here’s some more Easter idiocy for your amusement – http://archive.today/cNJU1
I can’t even imagine the sort of person who would find this convincing.
Far be it from me to agree with Cameron on anything that isn’t incontrovertible fact, but…there is an official religion here, the official church is the Church of England–so official that some bishops are automatically members of the House of Lords, and get to vote on legislation–and that’s a Christian church, so in that sense, yes, this is a Christian country.
That doesn’t mean they prohibit other religions or persecute atheists, it just means that the government and the church are irretrievably muddled together, and the lowest level of civic government that controls how my taxes are spent is the parish council. Sigh.
It also means I have the inalienable right to be married and buried by the church, should I want to be. I guess that’s supposed to be the big perk…r
As a resident of the US, I understand that the UK has some official state religion but that seems more like a formality, and likely simply a holdover from Henry VIII.
All said, I’d agree if values are universal, then there is no need to stand up for specifically *Christian* values as such. If faith is neither sufficient nor necessary for morality, then morality can be handled totally apart from faith. Cameron seems to be wanting to have it both ways, and rather than sounding hypocritical, he just comes off as sounding rather dim and confused.
Yes, it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion#Christian_countries
(Scroll down for Anglican.)
What on earth are you talking about? (Also applies to the “bullying” stuff above?) I’m an atheist, and I know many others, and, none of us feel bullied, coerced or “othered” by the fact that there’s a state religion and some of our parliementary leaders like to prattle on about it every now and then. This is having grown up in a tiny village with a single 900+ year old church, and having since moved to a large city with more churches, denominations and religions than I can shake a stick at. Yes, I’m just an anecdote, but the official state religion is honestly not a big deal to practically everyone.
From the tales I hear coming out of the States, I feel much more comfortable – less bullied, less coerced and less othered – in my officially-Christian-but-generally-quite-secular-in-practice homeland than I think I would in the officially secular but actually horrible rabid frothing religiousness of the US.
Front page of tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph: David Cameron ‘fuelling sectarian division by bringing God into politics’
Key para (in context of above comments):
I guess it depends how you define “country”. Is a country the same thing as its government? Is it the land bordered by other countries or the sea? Is it the population of that land? Is it the culture of that population – the things they do which differentiate them from other groups of people?
It’s definitely not wholly defined by any single one of those things. It may be constructed of all those things to varying degrees and priorities depending on who’s writing the definition, but some of them simply can’t be considered “Christian” in any meaningful sense of the word, and I don’t think any of them is 100% Christian in any way.
What I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact that a state religion isn’t simply the same thing as “this is a Christian country.” Just for one thing, if that’s what Cameron meant, he should have said “this is an Anglican country.” Saying “this is a Christian country” is much more sweeping and totalistic than citing a state religion.
The issue isn’t whether you feel bullied or not, it’s what Cameron intends by saying it. When heads of government and/or state make announcements of that kind, they are applying a certain kind of social pressure. I’m not saying people feel bullied by what Cameron said (although I certainly can think of classes of people who are likely to feel bullied by it), I’m saying he said a bullying thing.
That’s why secularism is seen as a good idea by many people. It’s better not to have state power trying to push us one way or the other on religion.
Really? Because I don’t think anyone I know ever feels that the state ever tries to push the state religion. I mean, it’s there, but it’s in the background. Like, way, way in the background. Yes, it’s what some people believe in, and they’re welcome to do so, but it’s just part of life.
I get much, much more of a push (which is still pretty damn negligible) on religion from the Jehova’s Witnesses and the Mormons that pop round and ask me if I’ve been saved (or whatever their wording is) once or twice a year, and they’re definitely not CofE. Cameron trying to evoke the warm fuzzies from non-churchgoing CofE middle-England types simply does not register. For anyone I know.
Can’t quite figure out how something that people don’t feel bullied by can be a bullying thing.
How would you know that? How would you know that no one of your acquaintance ever feels that the state ever tries to push the state religion? Would they all tell you if they did?
Your guesses about what people you know think on the subject are not relevant, especially since they are only guesses, or not even guesses but assumptions.
In any case, as I said, I’m talking about what Cameron did.
What’s remarkable isn’t that Cameron thinks that the UK is a Christian country but that he actually expressed that belief.
Sorry, I overstated my position in an attempt to be succinct, and to try to point out that I’m not just a data point of 1 (honest!).
What I meant was that I’m not aware of anyone I know feeling that. But also, having talked to quite a lot of people I know about religion (my CofE parents, some of my CofE friends – including when I agreed to do the Alpha course where they were amusingly less successful than they hoped to convert me – my Atheist friends, my Catholic friends, my New Agey/Neopaganey friends, etc…), and we’ve talked a fair amount about why they believe (or don’t believe) the things they do and the source of their faith, and how some people react to their faith – and none of them have ever happened to mention “the state pushing Anglicanism” as any kind of factor.
Yes, they may feel that anyway and happen to not have mentioned it. And there may be people I know who I’ve not talked to about religion who do feel that way. But… it really doesn’t feel that way.
Or rather “Bits of it are an Anglican country.”
There’s the further complication- is it the Church of England or the Church of England? There are long Anglostic and Angleist traditions and there are people who lament bitterly the way religion keeps being dragged into the CofE. Indeed, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that one of the first candidates for Anglican sainthood would be the atheist Ralph Vaughan Williams.
What on earth are you talking about? (Also applies to the “bullying” stuff above?) I’m an atheist, and I know many others, and, none of us feel bullied, coerced or “othered” by the fact that there’s a state religion and some of our parliementary leaders like to prattle on about it every now and then.
I can think of examples of exceptions to almost anything.
Fact is, just because one bunch of people aren’t offended by something doesn’t mean the rest of us have to suck it up.
Crucially, the Christian values of responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, and love are shared by people of every faith and none
I have always wondered how evangelicals state this with a straight face – humility? are you kidding me..
@mefoley: I have the inalienable right to be married and buried by the church, should I want to be
You don’t. CofE churches frequently refuse to marry people. They will usually bury you if your family want it, but I don’t think they have to (I guess if you have been a member and then formally excommunicated they won’t)
You don’t speak for me. It may not bother you personally, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
The CofE buries anyone who no-one else has arranged a funeral for or if there are known relatives. I don’t know what the procedure would be with someone who made it plain they weren’t a believer, but they may do so even then.
Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to. Just myself and the people I know who I’ve discussed religion with. Apologies if that was unclear.
Fair enough.
So, because my experience is apparently not as universal[0] as I’d previously suspected, could you help me understand how Cameron mentioning that we are a Christian nation makes you feel bullied, coerced or othered? Can you explain the mental connections and whatever unspoken societal attitudes that you’ve experienced link the one to the other? Because that’s honestly quite foreign to me, which seems strange in the country I’ve lived in my whole life, and I’d like to understand. Does your religious background/affiliation play an important role? If so, would you mind sharing what that is?
TIA
@karenellen
could you help me understand how Cameron mentioning that we are a Christian nation makes you feel bullied, coerced or othered?
Anecdotal , based on 2-3 year stay in London.
Perhaps you should ask that question to a Muslim/Sikh/Hindu teenager born in Britain with immigrant parents.
As far as I know , from my friends, these are the ones who feel pressured or othered – they have a culture that their parents are desperate for them to retain but their allegiance is also to the country they are born into.
The PM of the country has no business mixing his personal religion with his politics – and a who cares attitude about it will not help. If there is no distinction between a christian citizen and any other citizen and the laws are secular then the “Christian country” designation is useless and shouldnt be used. If there is a difference then the country sucks anyway.
@Deepak Shetty, thanks for the reply.
They feel like they’re being coerced to convert to Christianity? Wow. I was not aware of that, and it’s genuinely suprising. I also would have guessed that the othering would be down to racism/xenophobia over their 2nd-generation immigrant status, rather than their religion. Thanks for the correction, I’ll try and update that into my general worldview.
As far as I’m aware, the law as it is written is secular and non-discriminatory (although the reality of who the police target is another matter), and the fact that we have a state religion was now, so I thought, a mostly vestigal wart of history. (Changing that viewpoint now though…) But even if the designation was totally useless in practice, that wouldn’t change the reality of us actually having an official state religion, and it still being factually true. It’s like evolution – even if you don’t believe it’s true, wish with all your heart that it weren’t true, and have some alternate explanation that means it doesn’t have to be true, that doesn’t make it not true. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
I’m surprised by your surprise, karellen. It seems so obviously othering, right on its face. It feels othering to me, all these thousands of miles away – it makes me feel as if Cameron doesn’t want atheists coming into his Christian country.
This of course is not a very significant feeling in the great scheme of things (mine, I mean), and I know the reality is that Cameron is most unlikely to think that. But for people of other religions actually in the UK? Yes, I do think that’s a very hostile unwelcoming thing to say. “We are a Christian country” sounds as if it should continue with “and you are here on sufferance.”
And politicians need to be sharply aware of political rhetoric, so he can’t have been unaware of that.
I’ve never felt that I was adequately represented by David Cameron anyway. This Christian stuff is a disturbing development. Blair was deeply religious but did not say too much about it while in office, although he was heavily into the “interfaith” thing.
Karellen, I am in the UK and I think the state pushed religion onto me from a young age because of the collective worship requirements in state schools. Neither of my schools were faith schools but we prayed, sang hymns and were given religious sermons. These tended to be general enough not to alienate other religions (not too much Jesus) but were full of God. When I had my doubts, which I did from a young age, I would remind myself that the teachers clearly believed it, although with hindsight I think many didn’t. The problem is that its so normal that we don’t even see it.
Well, the most obvious example is if you have kids… I don’t personally, but all of my friends have had to spend quite a bit of time deprogramming their kids from the religious indoctrination they get at school. There’s nothing “unspoken” about it – it’s completely blatant. To have the PM weighing in on the matter simply reinforces it. If we can’t have a properly secular education system, then where are the atheist schools?
They feel like they’re being coerced to convert to Christianity? Wow. I was not aware of that, and it’s genuinely suprising. I also would have guessed that the othering would be down to racism/xenophobia over their 2nd-generation immigrant status, rather than their religion.
Othered definitely – coerced – it depends on the type of person you are – if you already face some issues because your skin color isnt the same – you cant change the skin color but you can change your practices , right? Like rugby/football instead of cricket or as it turns out , go to church. The older generation just forms its own insular communities and refuses to integrate(like Southall for Sikhs or Wembley for Gujuratis) but the younger generation gets trapped between these two worlds. But which is the straw that breaks the camels back? is it the xenophobia or is it the racism or is it the overt religiousness ? I dont know but I wonder why those straws are there.
Why couldnt Cameron for e.g. have stated that all are welcome , religion or no religion , that UK is multicultural.
But even if the designation was totally useless in practice, that wouldn’t change the reality of us actually having an official state religion, and it still being factually true.
You are missing motive – What’s Cameron’s motive? Is he on Mastermind answering a quiz question?
I certainly feel othered when Cameron (or anyone) talks about this ‘Christian country’. What that says to me is I may be born and raised here, but as long as I happen not to subscribe to a particular set of beliefs I’m always some sort of permanent guest. It says the I can never completely claim a British identity because part of that identity is absolutely and officially following a religion to which I don’t belong.
It says we elect a political party to govern based on popular vote, have many checks and balances in place during their time in power, and have to re-elect them at least every five years, but another, much more confused and ancient set of beliefs is permanently enshrined in the country’s identity, there’s nothing you can do about it, and it can be brought up as the ultimate trump card by the opponent in any argument where a non-Christian tries to suggest that the playing field isn’t quite level: ‘Well this is a Christian country.’
And don’t get me started on Charles Moore’s utterly ridiculous and insulting column in the Telegraph, which would just take hours to dissect, such is the density of fallacies, confusions and simplifications.
Just playing devil’s advocate for a minute: Assume there’s a country with a history of patriarchal social power relationships, but it’s mostly worked that out and most people consider themselves feminists. But it still calls it, for historical reasons, a patriarchy. There is an official state social hierarchy, and it is patriarchy. Nobody pays any attention to it, although a few old goomers do get to sit in the Senate just because they are designated patriarchs, and it’s true that schoolchildren have to study patriachy at school, but generally, in ordinary walks of life, women are the equals of men. The head of state holds his position by right of patriarchy, of course, but nobody pays much attention to him in a constitutional democracy.
Now, how is that a *not* a patriarchal country?
So how come it isn’t valid to say that the UK is a Christian country? The queen has her job because God–the Christian one. Bishops get to debate legislation in one of the houses of government because God. The churches/parishes get a say in how to spend tax money. Schoolchildren are required to take RE — Religious Education. They pray a Christian prayer every day in the House of Commons. Even if only 10% of the population self-identified as Christians, under that system, isn’t it valid to say it’s a Christian country?
I’m not saying it’s a good thing — I hope that’s obvious. I *much* prefer separation of church and state *and* no privileges for the church side of things (like tax breaks and privileged communication with clergy and so on). I don’t want the Parish Council getting to spend my money (although they do buy daffodil bulbs and organize volunteers to plant them around the parish, which is probably more productive than a lot of things my taxes go for).