Olympic Games 2012: Olympic Truce

Lord Chartres Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of London]

Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, both for introducing this subject and for the way in which he introduced it, as well as the very practical menu that he has drawn up for government comment. I join those who have talked about the role of sport and art in the ancient Olympic Games. Of course, those noble Lords who actually know the site of ancient Olympia will know that it was a combination of Wembley Stadium and Westminster Abbey. There was constant reference to the temple of Zeus and the sacred truce, which the noble Lord, Lord Bates, recalled, was believed to be policed by Zeus himself, protecting travellers to the sacred territory of Elis for the seven-day period before and after the Games.

There is a beautiful Greek word for the truce—ekecheiria. It meant a holding of hands. That was the vision extended to people. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, remarked, we should not be bemused by, or too idealistic about, these ancient precedents. The terms were somewhat limited, as he suggested. The ancient Greeks were notably pugnacious. Aristophanes made his point about “trousered barbarians” in his play, “Lysistrata”, which describes a sex strike by the women of ancient Athens in a “make love, not war” campaign. The women say:

“In no uncertain terms I must reproach you

Both sides and rightly. Don’t you share

A common cup at common altars

For common gods like brothers

At the Olympic Games?

The world is full of foreigners you could fight

But it’s Greek men and cities you destroy”.

So there was very definitely a limitation on people’s sympathies. That in some way should be an enormous encouragement to us, because there has been an expansion of idealism in connection with the Olympic Games, and we should not cease to underline that point. In the medieval West in the 10th and 11th centuries, there was a “truce of God” movement in the area of modern Europe that includes France and Germany in an attempt to curb the endemic warfare among feudal barons. In some form or other, that truce lasted for nearly three centuries. The modern truce movement has already been described by other noble Lords and, inspired by those precedents, More Than Gold—the ecumenical body which brings together all the Christian churches concerned with making the London Olympics a success—has already pledged itself to support the initiative of a truce. Led by a member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, it has pushed out that message to some of the bodies with which it co-operates. LOCOG, for example, has already set up an interfaith reference group and this is a major item on its agenda.

Speaking as Bishop of London, I am chairman of London Church Leaders; that group represents the 650,000 Christians who worship at least once a week in more than 4,000 churches in the Greater London area. It includes the Archbishop of Westminster and leaders of free and black-led churches. We have already discussed ways of applying the truce to London, where—I make this point particularly—with experience of street-level work and street pastors spreading in various forms throughout the capital, we see the truce as potentially very significant in assembling the enthusiasm and commitment of young people to combat gun and knife crime. We already have bodies working on that, so we have a network which could make a substantial contribution.

Noble Lords have, absolutely rightly, talked of the international dimension. We are focusing on what can be done in the environs of the Olympic stadium itself and looking for ways of co-operating with other agencies to make the truce effective. Internationally, when your Lordships look at the reach and influence of the great world religions, it will be vital to get them on board very soon. I think of the recent visit of Benedict XVI, in the margins of which was an attempt to see how we could work effectively with Vatican agencies internationally, to push some of the agendas in climate change and development which have been promoted to that important sphere of questions and policies which are beyond the partisan battles in which we all participate. It seems to me that this is another candidate for the kind of co-operation with international faith networks that the Pope was talking about.

The ancient truce was proclaimed throughout Greece by three heralds; we shall need rather more. We will need credible heralds to carry the message to every community in the street around the stadium, and will want to proclaim the Olympic Truce and make our small contribution to the general effort. At St Paul’s Cathedral, we intend to organise an event bringing together not only Christians but supporters of all the nine major, recognised religions in London to proclaim the truce. It seems that we will have to work out very carefully a process of commending this and penetrating the community at depth. We hope that the truce will be proclaimed in every one of those 4,000 churches of Greater London and, because we already have solid interfaith relations, we will be working with friends in mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and temples to ensure that this really exemplifies one of the things which sold the Games to London—our extraordinary cultural diversity and extraordinary experience of cultural and religious harmony. In that spirit, I once again thank the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for initiating this important debate.