Religion and Belief: British Public Life

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth for initiating this debate on such an important range of topics.

I want to say something about the importance of the ways in which we think about and approach differences in religion and belief in public life. An obvious starting point is to turn to the relevant rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and to consider how these differ from the much more frequently discussed rights to freedom of expression. I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is doing detailed work on these rights and their implementation in law and in institutional life, but nothing that I shall say here draws on that work. What I shall try to say will be more elementary.

Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights is very closely modelled on Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance”.

As with most other rights proclaimed in the European Convention and in other fundamental documents, Article 9 is not an unqualified right. The second part of the article lists ways in which this right may legitimately be limited specifically in order to respect other rights and matters of public interest. It runs:

“Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”.

Nevertheless, Article 9 articulates a profoundly important and distinctive right that matters for addressing religion and belief in public life.

I want to make three points. First, this right is the successor to the great traditions that established the importance of religious toleration in north-western Europe, above all in Britain and the Low Countries in and following the Reformation. Today, toleration is often interpreted in a tepid way as no more than a matter of putting up with something, so as to demand no more than mere indifference. Unlike my noble friend Lord Hastings I take a more radical and classical view of toleration. Nothing could have been further from the view of the early protagonists of religious toleration than the thought that it was something tepid or mere indifference. They thought of it as a profoundly, excruciatingly difficult virtue—a duty not to repress belief or to persecute others, even when their beliefs were taken to be profoundly wrong and subversive.

When Oliver Cromwell famously wrote in 1650 to the Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland with the words:

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken”,

he was acknowledging that tolerating others’ beliefs can be enormously hard because we may find it impossible to imagine that our own beliefs could be mistaken. Toleration became central to the history of Europe and, subsequently, of human rights, not because it was a matter of indifference but because it was profoundly difficult and yet a duty.

I suggest that this is something that we forget at our peril. When we need to engage with others, whether their beliefs are religious or secularist, it is not enough to refrain from persecuting them or to be indifferent to them. Toleration demands more. It is incompatible with dismissing or deriding others’ beliefs or treating them with condescension. Genuine toleration requires respect for others and the effort of intellect and imagination to grasp what they say.

Article 9 is important for two further reasons. It is not merely a right of self-expression. That is Article 10—a right to freedom of expression that includes the freedom to hold and impart opinions, which is a familiar part of our public culture and protects individual and press freedoms. However, it does not address the right to protect and manifest religion or belief,

“alone or in community with others and in public or private”.

Such manifestations, both shared and private acts of worship and ceremonies, are central to religious observance. So Article 9 is not a right that protects the expression of just any belief or opinion that a person may happen to hold and want to express. For that, Article 10 would be enough. Article 9 is narrower in its scope. It is intended to protect life-orienting systems of belief rather than mere opinion, however idiosyncratic or objectionable. Those who hold highly controversial views on matters such as sexual activity with children, or the desirability of various sorts of revolution, may appeal to Article 10. Their mere holding of those views will not in itself be prohibited, but manifestation alone or with others often is criminalised.

Article 9 is demanding in a final way. It protects the freedom of each person to change his or her religion, a right that is far from secure in many parts of the world where apostasy is still treated as a crime and barbarous treatment is inflicted in the name of religious orthodoxy. We think of the persecution and suffering of Christians in parts of the Middle East and elsewhere. Much blood was shed to achieve toleration, and we should not forget that.