A win on points for the Archbishop – indeed anything short of a knockout punch from his opponent – throws serious doubt on Dawkins’ position. Dawkins doesn’t just hold that atheism is, on balance, correct.  His position is that religion is irrational nonsense.  Rowan Williams has never made such dismissive noises about atheism.  The Archbishop admits that there are also intellectual challenges for theism (especially around the problem of evil). Nothing less than a clear win for Dawkins would justify his claim that religion is obvious, demonstrable nonsense. For something to be demonstrable you have to be able to demonstrate it.

So last night represented a significant loss of ground for Dawkins’ polemical brand of atheism. It modelled a very different conversation between these incompatible worldviews – not based on woolly relativism but on rigorous and mutually respectful dialogue.

As I have argued before, Dawkins’ crusade against religion in public life, and his repeated claims that religious people ‘indoctrinate’ children only make sense if belief in God is palpably ludicrous. And whatever else one thinks of last night’s debate, Dawkins failed to justify that claim.

By Canon Dr Angus Ritchie, Director of the Contextual Theology Centre

Bideford Council

Mr Justice Ouseley ruled that Bideford town council acted unlawfully by allowing prayers to be said at formal meetings.  Eric Pickles was among those quick to criticise the move, and the point was made by several commentators including Jonathan Chaplin that the ruling was in fact a setback for secularism rather than a success.  As Elizabeth Hunter of Theos suggests, the judgement perhaps showed more confusion about the nature of secularism than an enforcement of it.

Baroness Warsi and Militant Secularism

As Baroness Warsi embarked on a ministerial visit to the Vatican, she wrote robustly in The Telegraph that “a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies”.  It was perceived as a counterblast to the  programmatic secularism which many believe to be gaining ground in British politics, legal opinion, and wider society.  George Pitcher was enthusiastic, although that was the high watermark of support for Warsi’s intervention.  As Andrew Brown argued several days later, it is often ‘militant secularists’ who themselves do not understand secularism and, in so doing, make themselves an ideal polemical target for people like Baroness Warsi.

Richard Dawkins and Giles Fraser

Richard Dawkins was invited onto the Today programme on Radio 4 to discuss findings by his Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, which used polling data to claim that Christians opposed any special role for religion in public policy.  His testy exchange with Giles Fraser was a defining moment of the week, when Dawkins was unable to remember the full name of the Origin of Species.  Fraser’s point was eloquently made by Dawkins himself, albeit inadvertently by stumbling over his memory, that being unable to remember which book of the New Testament was first did render your Christianity false, any more than being unable to remember the full title of Darwin’s book meant you couldn’t believe in evolution.  More telling perhaps was Dawkins view that opinion polls offered a window into the souls of men; perhaps that comment alone is reason to be cautious of his prescriptions for public policy.  Nick Spencer offered an insightful response, citing his own research into ‘nominal’ Christianity.  Linda Woodhead’s contribution is also worth reading, as she gives her views on why Richard Dawkins has uncovered a very British form of Christianity.

Giles Fraser later offered a characteristically nuanced reflection on both Dawkins and Warsi, reminding them and others of what the settlement following the Civil War was meant to achieve. There are good historical reasons why the state shouldn’t try and look too closely through windows into souls.

Trevor Phillips

Speaking at the first Westminster Faith Debate, the controversial head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips, grabbed headlines by likening Christians seeking religious accommodation from equalities legislation to Muslims seeking the incorporation of sharia law into the British legal system.  This debate actually took place on 8th February, but a debate over it has rumbled on over the ensuring days.  You can watch the video here.  As The Week has suggested, imputing an entire argument to Phillips on the basis of a point made ‘off the cuff’ during the debate is perhaps unfair.  Nevertheless, Archbishop Cranmer offered a typically robust rebuttal arguing that the liberal secularism of Philips is itself deeply intolerant.

In conclusion

Of course, it doesn’t do public discourse any favours to collapse secularism and atheism, and assume that the former is necessarily antithetical to Christian values and belief.  Indeed, few Christians support anything approaching a theocratic state.  Yet what we might mean by ‘Christian secularism’ is often misunderstood, and poorly articulated, by both those who might support it and those who would oppose it.  Now more than ever Christians need to understand their political and social context, and acquire theological resources for making sense of both the current terrain and future trajectory of church and state relations.

Those interested would do well to start with the excellent God and Government book, as well as Theos pamphlets by Jonathan Chaplin and Nick Spencer.  If Christians are more confident about what they are calling for, then they might be less defensive when aggressive secularists wield straw man arguments, or when shrill Christians cry persecution.

Answering this question is the burden of Jonathan Chaplin’s recent Theos booklet entitled ‘Multiculturalism: a Christian retrieval’. In less than a hundred pages, Jonathan explains what multiculturalism is and what it is interpreted to be, and discusses how, and why, Christians can and should retrieve it. His argument is more than a liberal plea for a thin conception of ‘tolerance’, and is predicated on an affirmation of multicultural justice rooted in concrete policies and a deeper definition of shared citizenship.

CTC and PEN was pleased to welcome Jonathan Chaplin to East London recently for a seminar to discuss his essay with local clergy and members of the PEN Network. We met at the Hurtado Jesuit Centre, the UK headquarters of the Jesuit Refugee Service, in Wapping. A diverse group including academics, parish clergy, community organisers and friends of CTC listened as Jonathan outlined his argument and put forward the case for a Christian vision of multiculturalism.

The seminar was received well, and generated a great deal of discussion. Clergy working in the very diverse neighbourhoods of inner-city London reflected on how they felt out of place when returning to predominantly white British areas when on holiday or conference. Different understandings of secularism, and the appropriateness of religious language when negotiating divergent identities, were debated and the legitimacy of different uses of the word ‘multiculturalism’ assessed. Afterwards, those attending said how valuable it had been to have the space to think about and discuss this topic away from the day-to-day practice of mission and ministry in a multicultural, multiethnic context.

The success of this seminar format, and the fruitfulness of the discussion, means that CTC and PEN will be exploring the possibility of making this a more regular programme. If you’d like more details of future events like this, please contact the PEN administrator, Susanne Mitchell, on pen(at)theology-centre.org.

Dear Professor Dawkins

Merry Christmas to you too! I hope the authorship of this letter isn’t too big a disappointment. When you write to the P.M., you don’t expect the reply to be written by a cleric.

(Just to be clear, I have no authority – or desire – to speak on behalf of David Cameron. The views here are very much my own.)

Time is short.  It seems we both have carol services to attend! So let me cut to the chase. Your letter to calls for “state neutrality” on matters of religion, and an end to any government support for faith schools.  I think your position is anything but neutral.

You imply that the “neutral” way to bring up children is to avoid religious practice until they can decide for themselves. Hence your analogy with economics. We don’t bring up children as Keynesians or monetarists; we let them decide which to be when they are old enough to grasp the arguments. You think we should do the same with religion.

But you can’t bring up children “neutrally”. The economics analogy doesn’t really work. Long before they are able to evaluate the arguments for and against our view of the world, we have to bring children up according to some norms. We teach them by word and deed, what kinds of things are right and wrong, what they should value and what they should dismiss. Some of those norms will have religious, or atheistic, implications. We either bring them up as if God is a living reality, worthy of gratitude and worship, or we don’t. If (as I believe) there is a God, then it is the most natural and right thing in the world to pray to him from the earliest age. If (as you believe) there isn’t, then such a practice is worse than a waste of time.  Neither choice is “neutral”.

“Neutral” parenting cannot be expected of anyone. Some parents will pray with their children, and will also take them to church, and even send them to religious schools.  While we can’t demand “neutrality” from parents or from schools, there are some things we should expect. Every parent and school should bring children up with an openness to other worldviews – and, as they get older, the freedom to draw their own conclusions.

Let’s turn to the wider issue of governmental “neutrality” on matters of religion. You and I agree that the state should not impose atheism or religion on its citizens. But government policy is inevitably, and rightly, shaped by values. That’s something we need more of – now more than ever.

Politics is about how we build a common life, and discern a common good. You can’t expect me to participate in that without bringing my faith to bear. It is the foundation of my convictions about what is good and just. You will have different foundations (a matter to which we must return if this correspondence continues).

Christianity is a holistic view of the world, not a detachable set of private convictions. For a Christian, the nature of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ have implications for economic policy as much as ‘private’ ethical choices. The recent statements by the Vatican and the Archbishop of Canterbury on the financial crisis are a case in point.  That’s why churches are at the forefront of both the Jubilee 2000 campaign (on international debt), and Citizens UK’s Nehemiah 5 Campaign (against exploitative lending). The very names of the campaigns are revealing.

Of course, if Christians are to turn their ideas into reality, they need to win support from others. This involves making arguments that appeal to non-Christians. There’s nothing underhand about that; building coalitions across differences is central to all democratic politics. Whatever your worldview, turning your convictions into government policy involves two things.  Firstly, you try to persuade people of the truth of your worldview. Secondly, you build alliances with those who remain unconvinced. So, in the Nehemiah 5 Challenge, churches advance some reasons for public policy which are distinctively Christian, and some which are not. As part of Citizens UK, they work with mosques and trade unions, tenants associations and student unions, on this and many other issues. (These include the Living Wage Campaign – with deep roots in Catholic Social Teaching – which has now won £70 million for low-paid workers in London alone.)

Of course, Christians disagree amongst themselves – on economics as much as anything else. How to understand and apply the teachings of Scripture and Church is a matter for discussion. That’s one reason we have departments of Theology as well as Religious Studies in our universities (just as we have departments which reflect on moral and political issues without reference to God).

You may ask: “Why should I be forced to live with an economic system shaped by your religious views?” A good question! To which I would answer: “That’s the price of living in a pluralist democracy. I’m forced to live with a system shaped in part by the moral convictions of atheists, and you’re forced to live with a system shaped in part by the convictions of Christians.”  Neither of us is “imposing” our worldview on the other.  What we’re doing is negotiating a common life in the midst of deep ethical and religious disagreement. That’s the challenge, and the joy, of politics.

The elephant in the room – in your letter and in my reply - is whether religious views can ever be reasoned and reasonable.  In the end, your desire to relegate religion to the private sphere is anything but neutral.  It only makes sense if you believe religion has no rational foundations.

If you are willing to engage in this correspondence, I’d love to move on to a more detailed examination of this elephant. There’s a lot more to be said.

In the meantime, this comes with my best wishes to you and your family for a happy Christmas,

Angus Ritchie

The Children’s Society invite you to join us and the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, in a presentation of our groundbreaking Good Childhood Report 2012 on 12 January 2012 in Church House, Westminster SW1P 3NZ.

The Good Childhood Report, based on the views of 25,000 children and young people, contains compelling evidence on the factors that affect the well-being of children.

 The evening will be an engaging exploration of the ingredients of a happy childhood, consisting of a presentation of the report followed by a lecture by the Archbishop of York, who has been an outspoken advocate for young people in the UK for many years.

 The writers of the report as well as the Archbishop will interact with the audience in a Q&A session following the lecture. Registration opens at 5.30 pm and all are invited to the post-lecture reception lasting until 8.30 pm.

To attend, please email conferences@childrenssociety.org.uk or telephone The Children’s Society’s Supporter Care Team on 0300-303-7000.

‘The world as it should be’ preoccupies many of us.  It can be a distraction as well as an inspiration.  Our contexts is Bethnal Green, aka ‘the world as it is’.  If you stand on the steps of our parish strip club on Hackney Road and pointed out a mile radius – the context of that area is not just cultural creatives, Tec city entrepreneurs, boutiques and nightlife.  It is also 40% unemployment and 54% child poverty.

As Anglican priests in Bethnal Green we are living, working and praying for transformation: for the spiritual, social and cultural transformation that the Gospel brings, as the Kingdom of God comes near in the person of Jesus.  We lead an institution that is trying to love God and love neighbour, faithfully and effectively.

Soon after arriving as yet another immigrant to East London (albeit a new-wave middle class one), Adam was introduced to a community organiser.  They spoke about addressing the social need of the city and the organiser asked Adam why he was here.  Adam replied: ‘To be a voice for the voiceless.’  The organiser shot back “Why do they need you to speak for them?  How about helping them to have a voice?’

The voice of the poor has to be at the heart of social transformation.  This Consultation has explored the gap between rhetoric and reality on issues of poverty and inequality.  We hear a great many words – from politicians of all stripes – about the excessive gap between rich and poor.  Indeed, we have an unprecedented political consensus on the urgency of tackling domestic as well as global poverty.  And yet the gap between rich and poor gets wider.  This isn’t a party political point: both the last government and this one fall short of the agreed targets for cutting child poverty.  Lots of edifying words: but few of them becoming flesh in Bethnal Green.

Time and again, we find the redistribution of power is the essential prelude to real change.  ‘Being a voice for the voiceless’ is not enough.  Is the voiceless who feel the urgency of poverty most keenly. It is when they find their voice and build their power that change becomes possible. That’s why The Children’s Society is so committed to including young people in this conversation.  It is also why community organising – the systematic building of power among the poor – has a crucial role to play in closing the gap between rhetoric and reality on the issue of child poverty.

What is power?  The best definition we know is this: ‘the ability to act’.  Power is not good or bad.  That depends on how you use it, and to what ends. We are familiar with different types of power: Positional power – where a leader operates through the mandate given to them by an office of some sort, a Mayor, a Bishop, a boss in an office hierarchy.  Often people with such positions of power confess that they don’t feel that they really do have much power.  Ironically people without positional power often assume that they need to achieve the position before they can really affect change for the better.

There’s financial power – we’d all quite like more of that.  Indeed the ebbing tide of financial power in families as well as in governments is causing much anguish.  A growing – and painful – inability to act.

As Christians, we share a real and dynamic notion of spiritual power.  We pray, things happen.  It is borne out by our experience and by that of the church.
 There is also such a thing as relational power.  Indeed, relational power when combined with any of the above renders them especially potent.  But it is potent on its own.  Relational power is what community organizing works with.  Relational power really is powerful, it is also something we all need but it happens to be freely available.

 At its heart community organising is about the building of these relationships.  Relationships within and between ‘institutions’: organizations of free association, places that have a life of their own where people gather such as churches, schools, mosques, TRAs, community groups.  These institutions then decide to work together for the common good.

Relational power – sometimes referred to as ‘relational capacity’ – is built through one-to-one conversations.  If I want to build relational power I need to create, develop and keep good relationships.  Again, this is an astonishingly simple idea but often more honoured in the breach that in the observance. 
 A simple personal calendar test will suffice to see if this is something we really do prioritise.  Ask how I spent my time in the last week or month and you will get a fairly clear idea of my priorities.  How many times did I meet with people simply to get to know them, to find out what makes them tick, to build a relationship?

A Catholic priest friend of ours has put three one to one conversations in his calendar every week for the last three years.  As a consequence he can say that he has built a relational culture, where people have followed his lead and carried out one-to-ones themselves, where he certainly knows and is known as a person not just as the parish priest, and where people’s gifts and passions are uncovered and therefore stand more of a chance of being fulfilled.

‘Community organising’ sounds like something new.  With the rise of Barack Obama, it has come (no doubt fleetingly) into fashion.  In fact, it calls us back to some traditions the church has forgotten, as it has followed the wider culture in becoming more project-driven and less relational.  The importance of relationships to young people’s wellbeing, and the pressures in modern life which lead less time to be invested in them, is well documented The Children’s Society’s own Good Childhood Inquiry.  As John Milbank has reminded us, the Church is called to embody – as well as to promote – true reciprocity and society.  And as he suggests, practicing what we preach is central to authentic and effective evangelism.

Community organising is not a distraction from the church’s central task.  Rather, it recalls to a more faithful embodiment and proclamation of the Gospel.  In so doing, it builds the power of our poorest neighbourhoods: enabling the vision of society we have shared at this Consultation to move from the ‘world as it should be’ into the ‘world as it is’.

Michael Ipgrave’s paper opened the discussion, setting out some conceptual and existential questions relating to poverty and inequality.  It is an excellent starting-point for theological reflection on these issues.

John Milbank’s paper argues for a distinctive Christian commitment to  ’the social’ as distinct from the State and the market.  He explores the implications of this for effective ways to address child poverty.  The paper is a powerful example of the distinctive contribution theology can make to these debates; providing far more than a religious gloss on pre-existing political positions and commitments.

He outlines the project as follows:

How do migrant communities with diverse religious and cultural identities shape a common life? Professor Vincent D. Rougeau has argued for the possibility of a “new cosmopolitanism,” rooted in a faith and culture and also committed to the dignity of all human beings — and, in consequence, willing to work with neighbours of other faiths and cultures to negotiate and pursue a shared vision of the common good…

The east London project will consider the relevance of such a “cosmopolitan” vision to migrant communities in our local context. Catholic and Muslim migrants have historically both been treated with some suspicion in the UK — in part because their faith involves loyalties that reach beyond the nation-state, to an avowedly international Church or Ummah.

The experience of Catholic and Muslim engagement in broad-based community organizing runs counter to such suspicions. Community organizing harnesses precisely the “problematic” quality of these faiths — above all their loyalty to a truth that transcends the nation-state, and a “critical distance” from the status quo — as a means of working for justice in the local area.

You can read the full post here

In the next few weeks, we will  be adding new blog posts on the issues raised.  Today, Dr Sam Royston (The Children’s Society Policy Advisor on Poverty and Early Years) blogs on the Welfare Reform Bill.

Now is a time of enormous upheaval for families living in poverty.   A number of cuts to financial support, and services for the most disadvantaged families have already been made in the emergency Budget and the Comprehensive Spending Review last year.  These cuts are part of the Government’s wider deficit reduction plan and their impact is just starting to be felt.  Looking forwards, the Welfare Reform Bill currently going through the House of Lords has been referred to as “rewriting Beveridge” – a fundamental overhaul of the very foundations of the welfare system providing support to millions of children living in poverty.

Some of the reforms in the Bill are to be warmly welcomed.  The introduction of the Universal Credit is intended to simplify the complicated Benefits and Tax Credit systems, and to improve work incentives to help families to “make work pay”.  However, many of the provisions for families are much less progressive.  Cuts to support with housing costs, cuts in support for families with disabled children and young carers, and a punitive benefit cap for out of work households are all going to contribute to what the outgoing Chief Executive of The Children’s Society has warned will become a “decade of disadvantage”.

Because of our commitment to ensuring that children have a good childhood and fair life chances, The Children’s Society will continue to work hard to ensure that children do not lose out as a result of the changes coming down the line – our work in collaboration with other organisations has already helped to ensure £300 million of additional investment in help with childcare costs.  There is clearly still a huge amount to be done.

And the Church has been a crucial partner for these debates.  Christian and other religious groups, helped to bring attention to our petition against cuts to support for disabled children, which now has around six and a half thousand signatures.

Most recently, eighteen bishops signed an open letter to the Observer about the impact of the Benefit Cap on more than 200,000 disadvantaged children, potentially making as many as 80,000 homeless.  The letter, which was supported by both Archbishops, emphasised that “The Church of England has a commitment and moral obligation to speak up for those who have no voice. As such, we feel compelled to speak for children who might be faced with severe poverty and potentially homelessness, as a result of the choices or circumstances of their parents. Such an impact is profoundly unjust.”

We supported Bishop John Packer in presenting amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill which would mitigate the impact of the cap, for instance, removing Child Benefit from household income for the purposes of the cap, and introducing a twelve month “grace period” following the loss of employment, where the cap would not apply.  We will continue to work together closely to get these amendments accepted as the Bill moves through Parliament, in order to avoid the most regressive impacts of the policy.

However, it will take more than action on one reform, or one Bill, to ensure that the most disadvantaged children get a fair deal.  We must not forget that the government has pledged to end child poverty by 2020 – a commitment taken so seriously that it is enshrined in law through the Child Poverty Act.  But current policy is heading directly in the wrong direction – for example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently estimated that on the basis of current policy 800,000 more children would be living in poverty by 2020.  Turning this freight train around, particularly in the current economy, is a huge challenge but is one that neither the children’s sector or the Church can look away from.

The Children’s Society will continue to work closely with the Church to express our shared concern for the most disadvantaged children in our society.  We know that economic times are tough, we know that this is a period where the government is committed to making savings, not spending – but this simply must not be done at a cost to children and families living in poverty.   Getting this message across is the biggest challenge we all face in coming years and is one that can only be achieved through shared moral and practical commitment to the cause.

The Occupy camp has appeared at a time of huge economic uncertainty and fear.  There is an increasing disquiet with the financial system – a sense that it shapes and controls us rather than being held accountable to any notion of the common good.

In the messages pinned to their fabric and in their sheer impermanence the tents speak of a people on the move.  The readings, prayers and feasts we celebrate in November remind us that Christians are also a pilgrim people; citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem… These themes of eternal hope and earthly transformation grow in intensity as we enter Advent.

Ritchie concludes by arguing that engagement with other worldviews – including other faiths – can enable a more, not less, faithful Christian witness.  (This is a key theme in the Contextual Theology Centre’s research - and in particularly its new Contending Modernities project with the University of Notre Dame.)

Engagement with those outside the church need not lead on to a watering down of the Christian message.  Such encounters can force us to attend to Biblical texts we have ignored or neutered.

This has certainly been the experience of Christians involved in Citizens UK.  This community organising alliance brings churches together with mosques and synagogues, schools and tenants’ associations to act on issues of common concern. Since 2009, Citizens UK has been developing a grassroots response to the financial crisis.  It has been salutary to work on this with Muslims and Jews; people of faith for whom scriptural admonitions against usury have very practical implications.  Far from diluting our faithfulness to Christian orthodoxy this engagement with other faiths has forced us to ask how to be faithful to the Bible today.  It has highlighted the disparity between the attention we pay to Biblical texts on sex and the rather larger number on money and possessions.

The full article is here