Multiculturalism: Interfaith Dialogue

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, for this debate and I very much appreciated what other noble Lords have said. I have been involved in interfaith work for some 40 years now and have been hugely enriched by that experience. In this short debate, I want to approach the subject in a slightly oblique way. My starting point is the positive attitude by both the previous Government and this present one to faith communities. I very much want to affirm that stance and outline why it is of such importance at present.

Michael Sandel, in his Reith lectures and writings, has shown decisively that the combination of social and market liberalism which has dominated the West in recent decades, if taken by itself, totally fails to reflect our deepest convictions as human beings. Furthermore, a number of secular academic thinkers such as the late Tony Judt have argued passionately for a much stronger ethical framework for our economic, political and social life. More than this, the distinguished German sociologist Jürgen Habermas entitled a recent book An Awareness of What is Missing. In this, he argued that all our most fundamental concepts such as community, person, and solidarity are rooted in religion and, more than this, he refers to what he calls “the unexhausted force” of religion to continue to nourish and help shape the values and life of our society.

In drawing attention to this, I do not want in any way to underplay the contribution of secular thinkers to our society or ignore the huge contribution to the common good made by people who have no religious faith. I do not think that religious bodies have any claim to the high moral ground; indeed, as we all know, their record is a mixed one. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore a range of distinguished secular thinkers, with no religious axe to grind, who are worried not just about the actual state of our society but about the total lack of a coherent and consistent overriding moral framework for it. Seamus Heaney, the Nobel prize-winning poet, wrote that he thought that our society was running on an unconscious provided by religion. He went on to say that he thought his grandchildren would not have that.

We have already heard of the deeply moving attitude of Mr Tariq Jahan after the death of his son in the riots in Birmingham. It has been pointed out to us that this was not an isolated reaction. In Southall, I understand that the Sikhs and Muslims guarded each others’ place of worship at times of prayer during the riots. If religion sometimes leads people to take up extreme attitudes, infinitely more it motivates ordinary people to live out their highest ideals, sometimes with great courage. It might interest noble Lords that Mr Tariq Jahan has already indicated his intention of coming to speak under the auspices of the All-Party Interfaith Group, which I have the privilege of chairing, to talk about constructive reactions to the riots—as has a reading Sikh.

In contributing to this debate, I want to emphasise not just what the Government can do in relation to interfaith dialogue but their whole stance towards faith communities in every aspect of government policy.

The fact is that there is a huge amount of interfaith dialogue going on at every level from universities to neighbours in streets. However, this is only one aspect of what faith communities do. It is the attitude of the Government, not least in education, that is so important. There are a number of strident secular voices in our society that like to erase religion from life altogether and banish it from the public sphere. Therefore, we cannot take the positive attitude of the Government for granted. We should very much welcome it. I particularly look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in particular in relation to interfaith work.