Aggressive Secularism, Multiculturalism, and the Islamist Threat
A Lecture by Bishop Michael James Nazir-Ali
October 14, 2009
BISHOP NAZIR-ALI: Well, thank you very much…
Now, my title, as you can see from the sheets thatyou have got with you, is multiculturalism -- well,aggressive secularism, multiculturalism, and Islamist threat, and I shall try and give attention to each ofthese factors in what I have to say.
And, I want to begin with the observation that amoral and spiritual tradition universally stands behindgreat civilizations and societies. So Vedic Hinduism,for instance, produced a particular kind of society inIndia. I will return to that. There were certain values and certain customs that it produced. Similarly, if you look at pre-Monarchy Israel, then theEgalitarianism of early Israelproduced a certain kind of society, which was different again when the Monarchyarose in Israel. And so also we can say of thedifferent Islamic civilizations; that a particular kindof moral and spiritual tradition has produced aparticular kind or kinds of civilization or civilizations.
When you look at Europe of late antiquity, youfind that the vestiges of Roman rule are still there. The gratuitous cruelty of the Roman Empire, in spite ofall its other splendid achievements is there in a veryremarkable way. But, at the same time, you find,particularly in Northern Europe, various kinds of tribes and groups of people moving around often in conflict with one another, and with low levels, I think it is fair to say, of material and intellectualcivilization. And, if you look at Britain, what do youfind? You find mutually hostile groups of peoplewarring with one another, almost perpetually in conflictwith one another. And, the observer then naturallyasks, well what changed the situation; what was thecatalyst that brought about the change that turned acountry like Britain, but you could say that aboutalmost any other country in Europe, that changed thesituation so that a great nation emerged, a greatpeople was formed, and there was a great civilizationthat gave so much to the world? The abortive EuropeanUnion Constitution celebrates what Rome and Greece, in spite of their inequalities and cruelties, gave toEurope, but does not mention Christianity at all.
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This seems to me to be amnesia, or if not amnesia,then a deliberate denial of history. Now, you may say, what qualifications have you gotto speak about these things, and I can only remind you of something that Kipling, who actually wrote for many years in a city where I worked in Lejore, butKipling said something about, how can they knowEngland, who only England know? And, I think there is some value in a perspective that is both from the outside, but also familiar with the inside and that iswhat I want to offer.
The great Cambridge historian, Maurice Cowling, wrote of the history of the influence ofChristian faith on British life, and he identifiedfirst what he called an ascending theme, and then adescending theme in the influence of Christianity. Thedescending theme has to do with nothing less than thedoctrine of God itself in Christianity, of a doctrinethat celebrates both order and mutuality in the God-head; so the Father is not the Son; the Son is not theFather; the Holy Spirit is neither Father nor Son; butalso, that there is this relationship of love, of amutual relationship of love within the God-head. Thisdoctrine of the God-head had an influence on howChristian European institutions emerged, but it wasn’tjust the doctrine of God; there was also the GodlyMagistrate, particular of Romans 13; and the huge influence of the Decalogue of the TenCommandments. I am always very amused to read accountsof attempts in this country to remove the Decalogue,for example, from your courtrooms. And, of course youcan do that, but you can’t thereby deny the formativeinfluence of the Decalogue on law-making in theEuropean tradition, and therefore also to a greater or lesser extent here.
Joan O’Donovan, who is the wife of OliverO’Donovan, just in case you were wondering, has pointedout that this descending theme, this view of divineright or divine justice produced a matrix of naturaldivine and human law, which actually produced a societywhere mutual obligation was recognized; a society wherethere was a recognition of mutual obligation.
Now, if that’s the descending theme in Cowling,the ascending theme had to do with a greaterrecognition of the human person. The discovery of Aristotle, and I mean that itself is a matter for a lecture which, of course, was facilitated by thetranslations of Greek learning from Greek into Syrian, into Arabic, and back to the West mainly carried out by Christian clergy, by the way, in the Islamic world. But, the rediscovery of Aristotle in the West ledpeople, like St. Thomas Aquinas, to read the Bible inthe light of Aristotle, or perhaps we could say, toread Aristotle in the light of the Bible. I don’t know which to say. And, this led first of all, to the recognition that the human person is an agent, and notonly an agent, but a model agent; that is to say, whathuman beings do makes a difference in the world, and not just a physical difference, but a moral andspiritual difference. This naturally led to the ideaof conscience and how conscience is formed by the teaching of the church. And, for the first time in the discourse enters this recognition of the teachingalready in the book of Genesis; that human beings have been made in God’s image. This is a very importantphrase that begins to be used then and has continued to be used where we speak of the human person. I’ll comeback to that in a moment. So, moral agency, the formation of conscience, and then this also led to abelief in the importance of consent. So, whatever wemay say about divine justice in a society that divine justice might produce in terms of Cowling’s descendingtheme, the descending theme leads to the view thatwhatever a view might be about a society ordered inthis way, it also needs the consent of the moral agent of the conscience of human persons.
And so, the descending theme and the ascendingtheme, as it were, in the formation of European society, and certainly of England, and later, ofBritain, they are important balances for one another. This idea of the importance of the human personreceived an impetus at the time of the discovery ofwhat is called the New World. And, I know I amspeaking only a couple of days after Columbus Day, butthe question was raised by missionaries at the time ofthe Spanish and Portuguese expansion about the status of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. There wasan attempt, a very serious attempt, to deny thesepeople fundamental freedom, and even recognition as fully human. But, the Dominicans, who were led byBishop Las Casas, strongly upheld the natural freedomof the indigenous peoples; their right to property;their right to mobility; and this was taken up then in the University of Salamanca (ph.), by people likeFrancesco DiVittoria (ph.) and others, who, I think DiVittoria has been called the Father of International Relations, I think with some justice. But, the point is that this is the origin, if you like, of human rights language, proper human rights language. It hasan identifiable Judeo Christian basis in the creationstory of human beings made in the image of God. Whatthe Dominicans began was picked up by people like JohnLoch (ph.) and the modern enlightenment, which was trying to renew the Christian basis of society. Ithink it is very important for us not to lump theenlightenment as it were together, because there is amoderate enlightenment that was distinctly sympatheticto the Judeo Christian tradition, and the more radicalstream that was distinctly hostile. So, you can haveNewton, Loch and Boyle on the one hand; on the other,you can have from Russo to Ropespear (ph.). You see how that all ended up. But, Loch certainly wasresponsible for this tradition coming into languageabout human rights and the enlightenment taking up thetheme that the Dominicans had addressed.
At this time, in the 18th century, as you know,there was a great evangelical revival, particularly inBritain, and this was, of course, because these people,the Clappem (ph.) Sect, for instance, Wilberforce, Scharfsbury, the Founders of the ChurchMission Society, this was because they were reading theBible. And, as they read the Bible, they began torealize, for example, that you cannot evangelizesomeone and enslave them at the same time, for example. And, this was the reason why the campaign for theabolition of the slave trade and later of slavery itself began, but people like Wilburforce andScharfsbury, and Vann and others were not concernedjust for the abolition of the slave trade, but alsogave a great deal of time to improving workingconditions for men, women and children in Britain tothe creation of universal education. Sometimes when people talk about church schools in Britain, because wehave state-funded church schools, rather negatively, Isay to them, but it was actually the church that began universal education in Britain, not the state. The state was a comparative late-comer to this idea. Butwhilst the evangelicals of course were doing this, because they read the Bible, actually the language that they were using was derived from the enlightenment. And, I have called this the emergence of an evangelicalenlightenment consensus.
This consensus actually brought about many of the social changes with which we have become very familiar;the abolition of slavery; the enfranchisement of menand women; universal education for children; the renewal of the nursing profession; I mean, so many things that can be attributed to this consensus. And,this consensus mutates/mutendes lasted, in Britaincertainly, right up until the 1950s. Now, whathappened to it is the question, and this is relevant for us. Certainly there was a long withdrawing role ofthe sea of faith. There was a long period ofsecularization, if you like; a naturalistic view of theworld; an abandoning of talk about destiny and ends forhuman beings and human societies, and all of this contributed to the secularization of the European mind,as Owen Chadwick has called it. Of course, the secularization of the European mind is not the onlyinstance of secularization. We must not imagine that. Charles Statler identifies a number of ways in whichthere has been secularization in this world. You canthink of the secularization imposed on people bynational socialism, or by Marxism even more clearly. I think of the Chinese and how secularization was imposedon them by the Cultural Revolution. And, it can alsobe said that there are instances of secularization where it was not simply imposed; where, like in Europe, it simply grew. India is clearly a case of a countrythat has consciously adopted a secular policy, in thiscase, at least, that is what they claim; not tomarginalize religion, but to allow religion to have avoice without religion actually being an officialreligion of the country.
However, along with this long, drawn out theory ofsecularization in the West, there is also the suddencalamity theory, and it is held by some people, like Calem Brown and Peter Mullen, that whateveryou may say about the history of the secularization ofthe European mind, some things very significant happened in the 1960s. There was a student revolution.
There was the change in the role of women. Calem Brownclaims, for example, that Christianity ceased to beimportant as a public faith in Britain when mothersstopped passing on the faith to their children. And, Imean, he does say mothers, not fathers, because his claim is that the faith was, over centuries, passedthrough from mother to child. The reason that is often given for this sudden calamity is not that it just happened, but that there was a deliberate attempt toprepare the ground for a political revolution by having a social revolution first. And, people who are included in trying to foster this kind of social revolution are people like Gramsky, Marcusa, Lucarque, I mean, all Marxists of one kindor another, who felt that a revolution would not comein the Western world until the important institutionsof that world were undermined. That included the church, of course, but also the family, parliamentarydemocracy, the Judiciary, and all sorts of things likethat.
Now, the social revolution succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. The political revolution never came. And, a later generation of people represented in theLondon School of Economics perhaps then made the social revolution itself an end, rather than as a means to anend.
The point I suppose that is worth making is thatthis progress of secularization and its suddenpromotion, if you take the sudden calamity view, hascreated a moral and spiritual vacuum in many Europeansocieties, and certainly in Britain. And, the demiseof Judeo Christian discourse in the public place hasoccurred at exactly the same time as society has beenconfronted with a comprehensive ideology, the first,since the demise of Marxism; a comprehensive ideologyin the sense of Islamism that claims to cover everyarea of life; political, economic, social, family andpersonal. And the question must be, for many Europeansocieties and certainly for Britain, can they meet thischallenge with this spiritual and moral vacuum at theirheart? It’s quite a depressing thing to think about.
But also, in addition to the challenge of this ideology, there are other matters that have to be addressed. For example, the promotion by thoseproposing a social revolution, the promotion of freedrelationships, pure relationships, which only lasts as long as people want them to last, has caused devastation for the stability of marriage and the family. The results of this are out on our streets in Britain; lost, young males, who have never had a fatherfigure, and if they have had a male in the house, ithas been someone who has not wanted them in the house.
When I first became Bishop of Rochester, I -- it was,we had moved in winter and I thought I would go toevening prayer to Evensong, and as I was going to thechurch, Rochester has these Dickens lamps still, and underneath these Dickensian lamps were these young people congregated. So, when I arrived at the church Isaid, you know, aren’t these young people cold? Imean, this is January, and why aren’t they at home? And, the people at the church said, well, Bishop, theseyoung people suffer from a curfew in reverse. The newpartners that the mothers have usually do not allowthem back into the house before 10:00 p.m. or 11:00p.m. at night. Now, if you grow up -- you know, this is a recipe for juvenile delinquency, and it is causeddirectly by the challenge to a major institution, abasic unit of society. But, it’s not only that;sometimes people ask whether a Judeo Christiandiscourse can make a comeback in the public sphere, andof course there are many people who have bet their lives against it making a comeback. They have ordered themselves and their lives in such a way that they donot wish to see any return.
But, at the same time, as we look at our situationwe are faced by a number of issues that cannot beaddressed just by utilitarianism of a rather crudekind, nor can they be addressed by public opinionpolls. I said this recently in the presence of Sir Robert Worcester, the founder of the Mori OpinionPoll, and he agreed with me. He said the opinion pollsdon’t settle everything. Well, I mean, politicians maydisagree, I don’t know. We’ll see. Nor, by the yukfactor. I was for six years the Chair of the Ethicsand Law Committee of the Human Fertilization andEmbryology Authority; that’s rather like your President’s Commission on Bioethics, if it still exists, and there was what they called the yuk factor; that is to say what the public would not accept in terms of technological innovation in this area. But, Isoon discovered that the yuk factor was not permanent;that you could soften up the public to accepting more and more of what, at first, it regarded as entirely unacceptable. So, what’s the alternative? And, without reference to the Judeo Christian tradition, it is very difficult to say, because unless you talk about the inherent, the intrinsic dignity of the human person, you cannot make certain decisions even inParliament.
We were discussing some years ago, in Parliament,a bill, which came to be called the Mental CapacityBill. It had originally been called the Mental Incapacity Bill, but then the Government realized thatwas not a facillator’s phrase, so they changed thetitle, but not the content. And, the question clearlythat arises is can a human person lose capacity to such an extent that human dignity does not attach to them?
Now, a very well-known agnostic philosopher, who isresponsible for much of the current fashion in Britain, said, well of course, I mean, in my presence during adiscussion of this Bill, she said, well of course humanbeings can never lose this inherent dignity. And Isaid, well yes, but on what do you base this view? Andshe said, without stopping to think, she said, wellit’s that Judeo Christian idea isn’t it, about being made in God’s image? So, even she had to invoke atranscendental principle on this issue. And, ofcourse, you have to do so when you are talking about the protection of life in its earliest forms of humanlife, and indeed, of the latest, in its latest phases.