- Politics and religion
The Seat of the Universal House of Justice, Haifa, Israel
Religion, politics and power
Welcome to a new series of occasional posts on the theme of religion, politics and power. Religion is becoming ever more prominent for good and ill in the public square. Questions about the relationship of religion, politics and power are increasingly important and demand answers. The Bahá’í sacred texts and commentaries have some interesting insights into these questions.
Ridván and Bahá’í elections
The Ridván season in the Bahá’í calendar prompts some thoughts about politics and religion.
Why? Well this is the time of year when Bahá’ís across the world elect their local and national governing councils. And this year is a special one. In less than a week’s time, members of the world’s National Spiritual Assemblies (the national governing councils) will converge on the Bahá’í World Centre in Haifa, Israel, to take part in electing the Universal House of Justice, the Bahá’í community’s international council.
Religion and identity politics
Religion is becoming ever more salient as a marker of identity. At the same time, we live in an era of identity politics, a time when people campaign and vote on the basis of presumed group identities and interests. Congruence of identity based on ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender and so on, is seen as more important than ideas or policies. And more important than personal qualities, such as integrity, honesty, trustworthiness, capacity to contribute effectively to parliament and government.
To put it crudely, people vote for a candidate because he or she is one of “us” and not one of “them”. At its worst, identity politics can descend into an exclusivist politics of the tribe. The needs of humankind as a whole are then ignored in favour of the sectional interests of groups. Universalism gives way to particularism.
This paper by Tufyal Choudhury of Durham University (published by the Department of Communities and Local Government in April 2007) has some interesting findings about the function of identity politics for Muslims.
Does religion have any place in a secular democracy?
This interview in New Statesman with Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham shows that evangelical Christians also have some strong things to say in the political realm:
“There is a Christian view of politics,” he says after lunch at a fish restaurant by the coast, “and whether or not the government knows it, it has a God-given duty to bring wise order and to facilitate human flourishing.” The Church does not just have a right to comment on whether ministers are failing in their divine task, he argues. “To try to shut us up, to say, ‘You keep off the patch’” is “totalitarian”. So, no apologies for his Easter Sunday sermon on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, in which he criticised the government for “pushing through, hard and fast, legislation that comes from a militantly atheist and secularist lobby” whose aims are a “1984-style world” where “we create our own utopia by our own efforts, particularly our science and technology”.
“Using what is in effect live human tissue for experimental purposes is not a frontier we think people ought to cross,” he says, “and we’re going to go on saying that. The more of these moral frontiers a government crosses, the more it owes to citizens to make a space for conscience, not just in voting but in how scientists and doctors carry this work out. To think that the Church should not be involved in politics is to say: ‘Here are some areas of crucial concern for human flourishing, but the Church is not allowed to address these matters of public debate.’ I think that’s ridiculous.”
However, philosopher Mary Warnock, also writing in New Statesman, contends that religious belief is no basis for law-making. Critical of the way in which Roman Catholic MPs were very strongly advised by the Church to vote against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, Baroness Warnock says:
I have no idea how many practising Roman Catholic MPs there are. But even if they happened to form a majority in the House of Commons and could prevent the passage of the Embryology Bill, I believe that they would have no business to do so, unless they could find other reasons than their own religious convictions on which to base their opposition. Society is not a religious organisation like a church. Laws must as far as possible be made in the interests, far wider than matters of faith, of all members of society, whether or not they hold any religious views. As legislators, MPs and governments must consider the consequences of the measures before them, how they will probably affect society and whether they will do more good than harm. It is the role of legislators to be consequentialists. They must not ask, “What does my religion teach about this measure?” but “Will society benefit from it in the empirical world?”
And she continues:
That religion, any religion, may seem beleaguered in a generally secular society may account for the increasingly hectoring demands that it should exercise authority over us. Yet it is essential to hold on to the fact that in this country we are not a theocracy, but a democracy. Parliament must make the final decisions on legislation, even though these are also moral decisions. Parliament must try to judge what is the common good. We all have the right, and duty, to criticise the law. But it is parliament alone that gives law the authority, without which we would face political chaos.
It’s interesting to compare the views of Bishop Wright and Baroness Warnock with those of Alistair Burt MP and Bishop Christopher Herbert of St Albans at the “Faith in Government” public meeting on 9 April in Welwyn Garden City (I blogged about the meeting here. Alistair Burt, like Bishop Tom Wright, is an evangelical Christian, but his views about place of faith in a secular polity have some similarity to those of Baroness Warnock. Bishop Christopher Herbert is by no means an evangelical, but he, like Bishop Tom Wright, felt that he had a responsibility to speak out on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. But unlike Bishop Tom and utterly unlike the Roman Catholic MPs, he took a more nuanced approach to the Bill.
So what do Bahá’ís think?
The first thing to note about the Bahá’í approach to administration and legislation is that it should always be grounded in principle.
In other words, it should not be about finding compromises between rival interest groups and competing agendas. It should be about “that which profiteth mankind”, as Bahá’u'lláh says in His tablet to Queen Victoria. He advises “the elected representatives in every land” to “regard the world as the human body” which needs healing. The art of good government is, in effect, the art of healing the body politic – what is good for the part is good for the whole and vice versa.
Bahá’u'lláh praised Queen Victoria for having “entrusted the reins of counsel into the hands of the representatives of the people” (I assume this praise was given symbolically; Queen Victoria was the inheritor of centuries of British political evolution from absolute monarchy to the sovereignty of parliament and had no choice but to entrust the reins of counsel into the hands of parliament and ministers) and advised the representatives of the people “to be trustworthy among His servants, and to regard themselves as the representatives of all that dwell on earth”.
The Bahá’í position is clear. Good politics – in the sense of good and just government – is absolutely not about promoting or defending sectional interests. It is about meeting the true needs (rather than the wants) of the world’s peoples. This does, of course, raise the question: who decides what the best needs of the world’s peoples are?
The Constitution of the Universal House of Justice, promulgated on 26 November 1972, gives the House of Justice these duties (amongst others):
… to do its utmost for the realization of greater cordiality and comity amongst the nations and for the attainment of universal peace; and to foster that which is conducive to the enlightenment and illumination of the souls of men and the advancement and betterment of the world;
… to safeguard the personal rights, freedom and initiative of individuals; and to give attention to the preservation of human honour, to the development of countries and the stability of states;
Interesting to compare these constitutional duties with the approaches espoused by Christians and Muslims (recognizing that not all Christians have the same views, any more than all Muslims do). The Baha’i approach to administration and legislation is – or should be – holistic and universalistic, but must also recognize and accept that different people and different groups in society may well have different needs.
If it doesn’t welcome diversity as well as unity, it cannot “safeguard the personal rights, freedom and initiative of individuals”.
Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Christianity, Islam, religion, politics, democracy, parliament, Universal House of Justice
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{ 18 comments }
There is a very interesting debate on similar topics for Evangelical Christians on NPR:
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/evangelical_politics/
They are asking (and answering for themselves) many of the same questions, it’s a very interesting conversation.
Thanks, Anne, for the link. I shall go and have a look.
Dear Barney, do I have permission to Tag this to my del.icio.us page? Thanks and Happy Ridvan to you!
Congratulations on this piece, Barney. A perilous subject to deal with, navigated with aplomb!
Barmak, I would be very happy if you were to Tag this post to your del.icio.us page.
John, many thanks for your very kind comment. As you may imagine, I drafted and redrafted the piece. Not entirely sure I got it right, but there are other things I want to say about this perilous subject.
I like Mary Warnock’s argument that religious belief is no basis for lawmaking. It seems similar to an argument expressed by the former priest, Frank Purcell — as reported by Umm Yasmin in a blog entry called Moral politicians:
“In his talk on interfaith and social cohesion, the former priest elaborated a position on the role of religious politicians responsibilities living in pluralistic democracies. It was, without doubt, the best explanation I have ever come across. Essentially it boiled down to this:living in a religiously pluralistic society, people can hold varying positions on moral questions that affect society (i.e. should we pursue embryonic stem-cell research? should women have free access to abortion? should drugs like marijuana be made legal? etc.) various religions provide ‘revelation’ on answers to various questions, but unless it is possible to support those positions by appeal to reason, a person does not have the right to impose their faith-based position on others.”
Hi Barney & Steve (and everyone),
Thanks for the excellent link to the research on Muslims and identity politics Barney, that looks like it will be useful for my research – so cheers!
Steve mentioned Frank Purcell, and his explanation of the role of politicians who are also religious, I thought was very good. It takes a middle position between the stark dichotomy of ‘religions shouldn’t be involved in politics’ and ‘politics should be ruled by religion’.
Steve, Umm Yasmin, thank you both for your comments and for taking the discussion forward. Frank Purcell’s position is precisely that taken by Alistair Burt MP and by the Bishop of St Albans (in the meeting on “Faith in Government”). This is a position that I find persuasive. Legislating on the basis of revelation alone can (and does in some places) lead to religious tyranny, but excluding faith-based thinking from the political arena is to deny a genuine source of moral reasoning.
I suspect that genuine acceptance that there can legitimately be diverse moral positions on a range of question can be very challenging for Baha’is and the Baha’i institutions, unless we take seriously ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s strictures on the importance of balancing scientific (i.e. rational) and religious thought.
It seems to me that religious people (of whatever faith) who are engaged in political processes need to think very carefully about the role their faith plays in their thinking.
I hope to return to some of these questions in later articles in the series.
Dear Barney, perhaps you can help illuminate your last post, by providing some quotes from Abdul Baha, from his seminal work on governance, “The Secret of Divine Civilization?”
Very good thinking, Barmak. Thanks for the suggestion. I shall return to this after International Convention.
Dear Barmak (and Barney): there is more from Abdu’lBaha on politics in his “Sermon on the Art of Governance”
http://www.h-net.org/~bahai/trans/vol7/govern.htm
and in the tablets of the divine plan, and Traveller’s Narrative. He was really engaged in the issue of “good governance” although steering clear of the particular political movements and politicians of his day.
I agree with Mary Warnock that religious convictions should not have a direct role in political debate. I think there are different ‘logics’ at work in politics and in religion, and they should not be confused. “God said so” is no argument at all in politics, because it cannot be debated and compromised, while politics requires precisely debate and compromise.
I think that religion and politics are like complementary organs with different purposes. The core business of government is coercion: coercion is the service that governments are created to provide. I of course would pay my taxes without being forced, so long as I know that everyone – or most people – are paying theirs. They feel the same way about me. I obey laws, not just because I had some remote say in making them, but also because I know that I am not the only one. Social contracts need the possibility of enforcement to work, and we make governments to underpin our social contracts. But coercion is precisely *not* what is required in either religion or ethics. A religious or ethical choice only has value if it is free. So government and religion have incompatible core businesses – and they need one another. A government can only function if 99% of the people, most of the time, obey the laws and use the procedures. They need a degree of altruism in the population. They can try to elicit altruism with a state ideology (such as communist internationalism or the civil religion of America) but these are always blasphemous and based essentially on fictions, the state that needs them has to intrude into the sphere of conscience to sustain them. So the state needs non-state communities and families that provide it with the virtuous citizens it needs to function without a policeman at every mailbox. Religious communities, on the other hand, because they must function without coercion, need some other agency that ensures they can operate in a peaceful, secure and free society.
It is important to government that most of its citizens be honest, trustworthy, corageous and self-sacrificing when the need arises. It is not important whether they have these virtues because they are Sikhs or Quakers or humanists. In fact it is an advantage if the state has a variety of religious communities, emphasising differing virtues. There is no religion that teaches that lying is good, or cowardice. But the different communities emphasise one or other virtue and behaviour more than others. The state for different purposes, or because times change, has a need for a variety of virtues.
So religious and ethical people bring their virtues into the arena of politics. But once there, they must persuade with evidence and arguments that are common to all, and the goal must be the well-being of all, not obedience to what some people think is the revelation of God.
I’ve discussed this further in _church and state: a postmodern political theology_, available on Amazon and probably also in a university library.
Regards
Sen McGlinn
Sen, many thanks for your insightful and helpful analysis. It certainly helps me to get a better handle on the relationship of church and state. The differences of function of religion and government and their complementarity was certainly a message that came from the two MPs and the Bishop who spoke at the “Faith in Government” meeting and it is a schema that should help combat the kind of fundamentalism that wants religion and government to be coterminous.
I find your point about the importance of religious diversity an interesting one. Of course, such diversity also challenges the state to manage inter-religious tensions that will also inevitably exist to some extent in religiously diverse countries (while refraining from trying to define what a religion is or isn’t or from having a legal framework in which religious groups must register in order to be able to have some kind of legal recognition and thus to function at all).
One of the issues that the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission is giving close attention to is the possibility of conflict between different equality “strands” (of which there are 6 defined in the Equality Act 2006). Of these, conflicts between the religion and belief strand and the sexual orientation strand are of particular concern. This may well be something to write about in a future post in the series, as will be the increasing need for dialogue between religious and non-religious/secular belief groups, such as the Humanists.
> Of these, conflicts between the religion and belief strand and the sexual orientation strand are of particular concern.
One of the ways to reduce the conflict is to make a clear distinction in political theory and in theologies, between civil marriage and religious marriage. Civil marriage creates a presumption of rights and obligations in matters such as child custody, pension transferral, inheritance and the obligation to provide care. Religious marriage may be regarded as a sacrament, as in most Christian theologies, or as a private contract, as in Islamic law. It is usually relevant to a concept of sin, as well as to obligations to a particular religious community and its obligation to the couple and their children. However religious marriage is constructed, the state has had no say in defining it, and need not have anything to say about it. The state’s interest is in care for the weak: it cannot sanction forced marriages or allow children to be abused, but it should have no concern with whether a marriage is homosexual or heterosexual.
The conflicts arise when religious people, in the political sphere, confuse the state’s marriage and its purposes with their concept of religious marriage. It would clarify matters if we used the term civil union or civil partnership for the relationship that the state recognises and administers, and leave ‘marriage’ to religious and ethnic communities
Sen
What an interesting and thought-provoking thread!
The difficulty I see with this relationship between the spheres of government and religion, is where religion inspires its followers to challenge an unjust government. For example, the Muslims challenging apartheid in South Africa, or the Baha’is challenging the Iranian state for freedom of belief. Even in Australia, the government tried to censure the Christian churches for challenging the Howard neo-liberal government’s industrial relations laws as being harmful to working families.
Conversely, when the government steps in to prevent abuses at the hands of religion (paedophile priests, terrorist Islamist cells etc.) or even less spectacularly making sure (or unfortunately not as the case may be) that the Brethren employees have the right to join unions.
It is at this juncture that the relationship between politics and the power of the state, and religion gets a tad hairy.
Some of my Christian friends sometimes refer to the “prophetic voice” that religion (and they are thinking particularly of Christianity) must on occasion use in challenging unjust government policies. The Church of England, for instance, published a report in 1985 – “Faith in the City” – which was very critical of what the Thatcher government was doing and of the then government’s highly individualistic philosophy. The government’s response was to tell the Church that it should stick to praying.
That does seem to me to be a proper thing for religious bodies to do, provided such criticism is not self-interested. At the same time, yes, I think governments must protect people against abuses that may be committed by churches and other religious organizations, particularly where religious bodies attempt to abrogate the human rights of their members.
The point about the UK equalities legislation is to ensure that people are not discriminated against on six grounds: race, gender, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation, and age. Challenges arise when, for example, an individual considers that a religious organization (for example) is discriminating against them on the grounds that they are a woman or they are gay. The religious organization may then respond that it is essential to the manifestation of their religion that only men can be priests or they do not allow homosexual relationships. Or humanists may (and do in the UK) claim that their children are discriminated against in the educational field because so many schools are church schools which promote a Christian ethos. The schools respond that promoting a Christian ethos is an essential part of their activity as church schools and that they need to employ only Christians in order to maintain this ethos.
And so on!
There’s plenty of material for lawyers to be working on here, but there are some serious underlying questions about what is a “proper” relationship between the state and religion. And these questions are rapidly becoming more pressing for all sorts of reasons. It is these questions that interest me and that demand some really serious thought.
As Umm Yasmin says, this is an interesting and thought-provoking thread. Further discussion will follow, I’ve no doubt. However, I’m going to be away from my blog for a week while I’m in Haifa for International Convention.
God speed! See you when you get back insha’Allah.
Thanks, Umm Yasmin.
Thanks for the excellent post, Barney, which outlined the issues very well. Best wishes and sincere prayers for the International Convention next week!
Can I clarify one of your assertions, however. You said “we live in an era of identity politics, a time when people campaign and vote on the basis of presumed group identities and interests”
My understanding is that this – in Britain – is by and large becoming less and less the case. Identity politics (mostly class based) used to be very strong in Britain with most voters loyal to a single party for their entire life. Today, the electorate is far more likely to “float” from one party to another depending on the issues of the day.
I agree that the sectional interests-based approach to politics is still very deeply ingrained in our political culture, but wouldn’t you agree that this is becoming more and more challenged?
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