Religion and Belief: British Public Life

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I need to declare an interest in that I am a trustee of the Woolf Institute for the study of relations between the Abrahamic faiths, and I gave evidence to the commission chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

In the few minutes that I have, I want to talk about ignorance, starting with ignorance of the Christian heritage in the UK. Last week that was reinforced for me by a recent commentary by an education correspondent in a very reputable newspaper, which I shall not name, about government proposals for the religious studies GCSE that it must include the study of two faiths. The example given by the journalist was that schools would now have to teach Judaism and Islam and another school would now have to teach Christianity, including Catholicism. Until recently, my concerns about this have been about the loss of civic identity and education. I read English literature at university and I just do not understand how anybody could read Milton, Herbert, Hopkins or Eliot without an understanding of Christian history or theology. That does not seem to me to be really the point.

Since 9/11 and all that has followed, that ignorance has become much more dangerous. While the kind of exclusively narrow religious education described by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is shocking and needs action to stop it, we should also be concerned with the basic lack of knowledge about not only Christianity but so many religions in many mainstream schools. Many children appear to be brought up in a world in which religion equates with danger, with Islam equalling mad-eyed bearded men acting with great cruelty, Christianity being something taught by Koran-burners in Florida, and Judaism being synonymous with the actions of the Jewish state.

As we all know, great evil has been done in the name of religion, but worse has been done in the name of the secularist creeds of left and right. We need to recapture and re-emphasise the essential compassion that lies at the heart of all great religions. If—and as a number of noble Lords have said, I think that it is an if—faith schools are to continue to exist, we should insist on all faith schools teaching comparative religion and emphasising their common compassion.

Imam Monawar Hussain recently addressed the Oxford diocesan synod. He pointed to extremist Muslim sects as having three characteristics: literalism of interpretation; the use of so-called “proof texts” without context; and the stated desire to set themselves apart by being more holy, faithful and certain than other coreligionists. Those of us from other faith traditions will recognise that analysis.

Tom Holland, the historian, wrote this August in the Sunday Times that the success of the Islamic State on the battlefield must be counterbalanced by defeat in the mosques, in churches and in seminars in schools of theology by emphasising commonality and compassion between religions. For the UK and much of Europe, that much is now urgent, and I hope that the work of the Woolf Institute in producing this report will be helpful to that end. I commend it to the House.