Faith in Government - the public meeting

L to R: Stephen Timms MP, Alistair Burt MP, Rt Revd Christopher Herbert

“It’s a long time since I’ve spoken at a political meeting where so many people turned out to listen,” said Alistair Burt MP, as he addressed an audience of 180 in Welwyn Garden City’s Campus West building on Monday night, 7 April, on the theme of “Faith in Government”.

Religion is still alive

As chair for the evening, I kicked off the proceedings by quoting from Tony Blair’s speech on Faith and Globalisation, using part of the opening paragraph of the speech as a jumping-off point to explain how religion, far from having disappeared off the map as many had expected and some still hope, is very much a force - for good and for ill - in public life. You can download the script of my speech here.

I then invited each of our speakers, the Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP, Alistair Burt MP, and the Rt Revd Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St Albans, to give their views on faith and politics.

All three speakers, as one would expect for committed Christians, gave positive messages about the importance of faith in politics and the ways in which they applied their own faiths to their political lives.

Faith - a great starting point for politics, says Stephen Timms

“Faith is a great starting point for politics,” said Stephen Timms, a Christian and a Minister of State at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Faith communities can make uniquely powerful contributions to building stronger communities and to social cohesion. He believed that those who are committed to their faiths can be more open to those of other faiths than people who have no faith. If you have a faith, you understand why a person’s faith is so central to their identity and life.

He had found this kind of openness in Christian schools and colleges that he had visited in his constituency and elsewhere.

And faith communities treat people as citizens rather than as consumers.

He wanted to see faith communities retaining their distinctiveness but working together. He was particularly keen to see faith communities and faith-based organizations delivering public services. In fact, the DWP will be changing the conditions of the New Deal (a programme that gives people on benefits the help and support they need to look for work, including training and preparing for work) so that it will recognize the capacity of faith-based organizations to run suitable programmes, especially for young people.

Faith communities within a secular democracy - Alistair Burt

Alistair Burt said that he shared much with Stephen Timms in terms of their values, even though they were from different political parties. “Faith,” he said, “informs all the mainstream political parties.” He, too, wanted to see a greater involvement of faith communities in delivering public services. But he cautioned that it is essential that faith communities do not become an arm of government. They must maintain their independence.

Faith communities can - and should - influence government and parliament, said Mr Burt. But they must remember the context in which they are operating. The UK is a secular society and a parliamentary democracy. The government is obliged to listen to citizens, but it is not obliged to agree with them. Faith communities cannot make demands based on their beliefs and expect that the government will do what they want. If they have a case, they must demonstrate its worth by evidence and reason. Just believing something to be true is not a sufficient reason for the government to accept it.

Democracy is a two-way street, Mr Burt said. He was appalled by pressure groups, whether religious or not, which made demands and failed to honour those who serve in public life, in parliament or elsewhere. It was particularly important for faith communities to honour and support their parliamentary representatives, even if they didn’t agree with them. Some of his most uncomfortable moments had occurred in church meetings where he had been grilled and attacked in a very personal way. He hoped that faith communities would show more sympathy and concern for the personal and human needs and feelings of MPs and others in public life.

Faith communities have a responsibility, he thought, to inform politics and public life, but he was opposed to the idea that faith communities might form political parties. All the major parties are open to people of any faith.

He concluded by warning of the increasingly vocal secularists who are loudly proclaiming their hostility to religion of any kind. They are just as dogmatic as the most fundamentalist Christian, possibly more so, since they refuse to concede any place in life, let alone public life, for religion.

Bringing faith to bear on public life - Bishop of St Albans

The Bishop of St Albans observed that there had been great improvements in public attitudes to faith in recent years, but there is still contempt in some quarters. Back in the 1970s, he had represented the Hereford Diocese on the Hereford and Worcester Education Committee. He used to be invited to visit schools as “the man who believes in God” - a kind of museum piece for an oumoded belief. Now, he said, things are very different.

He described the choice he had to make while at university, whether to answer what he took to be God’s calling to him to enter the priesthood, or to go into politics, which he greatly enjoyed. He had chosen the priesthood. Coincidentally, after many years, this now allows him to engage in politics as one of the 26 Church of England bishops sitting in the House of Lords.

The bishops in the House of Lords, the “Lords Spiritual”, are not delegates of the Church of England nor of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Christopher explained. They vote according to personal conscience and not according to a Church of England “party line”. However, they bring religious values explicitly into politics. He tries to listen very carefully to the debates in the House and he has been privileged to serve on select committees on various pieces of legislation that have been of particular interest or concern to him. He instanced the Mental Capacity Bill, to which he had been able to make a number of contributions.

However, as important as what happens in parliament is, what really matters, he thought, is what happens at local level. Faith communities can make a vital contribution to social cohesion. People of faith could put themselves forward to serve on their local councils. District and county councils sometimes have morally very difficult decisions to make. People of faith should bring their principles and values to bear on such challenging cases. At the very least, those who have to make such decisions should be honoured for the service to which they have committed themselves.

All three speakers agreed that, on balance, faith can contribute in important ways to politics, whether from the inside or from the outside. People of faith should certainly not stand aloof from politics.

The Baha’i view

This was an interesting event for a Baha’i to chair. Baha’is do not take part in partisan politics, but the Baha’i teachings are packed with political values (in the broad sense of politics as the art of government). For example, in His letter to Queen Victoria, Bahá’u'lláh says this to parliamentarians:

O ye the elected representatives of the people in every land! Take ye counsel together, and let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind and bettereth the condition thereof, if ye be of them that scan heedfully. Regard the world as the human body which, though at its creation whole and perfect, hath been afflicted, through various causes, with grave disorders and maladies. Not for one day did it gain ease, nay its sickness waxed more severe, as it fell under the treatment of ignorant physicians, who gave full rein to their personal desires and have erred grievously. And if, at one time, through the care of an able physician, a member of that body was healed, the rest remained afflicted as before. Thus informeth you the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

And He gives them this prayer to say as the enter the council chamber:

“O my God! I ask Thee, by Thy most glorious Name, to aid me in that which will cause the affairs of Thy servants to prosper, and Thy cities to flourish. Thou, indeed, hast power over all things!”

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Christian, religion, faith, politics, Stephen Timms, Labour, Alistair Burt, Conservative, Bishop of St Albans

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