ACTORS SHOULD NEVER appear with dogs or children. Politicians should never appear with God. Such props are notoriously unpredictable. Yet God has elbowed his way into the election campaign. Yesterday Tony Blair felt obliged to pay obeisance to His evangelical wing, the Faithworks Movement. Its leader, Steve Chalke, wants religion to be “hotly contested” in the election. Let’s contest it.
I have long assumed that British politics “does not do God”, in Alastair Campbell’s celebrated phrase, and for good reason. Fewer Britons profess an active interest in religion, barely 10 per cent, than anywhere in the Western world. Of those who do, it is hard to ascribe belief to party loyalty. Activating the church vote, as the Republicans did in America last November, would not benefit any one British party. The message from the focus groups is thus to stick to schools and hospitals, crime and taxes.
Why then have the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster been hard at work this past week? The answer is that Michael Howard dipped his toe in abortion law reform in Cosmopolitan magazine. The Church suddenly saw leverage. The media is full of euthanasia, hate speech, faith academies and stem-cell research. All are alive with ethical controversy. Where ethics breaks cover, the flapping surplices and dented mitres of religion are never far behind.
In Anthony Seldon’s new biography of Mr Blair, the list of “Tony’s cronies” has a bizarre and ghostly presence. “God” is sandwiched between Anji Hunter and Charlie Falconer. The Almighty is somehow squeezed on to the Downing Street sofa, as if with Leo’s mug of decaffeinated latte in His hand. Phil Gould turns to Him occasionally and asks what He thinks of the latest waiting list task force or whether “Forward not Backwards” will have them rolling in the aisles.
God’s appearance in the Blair iconography is intriguing. Of the Prime Minister’s sincerity there is no doubt. Nor is there doubt of the hands-on role he envisages for religion in his politics, repeated yesterday. Like his family, religion is always on call when needed. In a speech in 2000 Mr Blair strongly espoused Hans Küng’s (and George Bush’s) concept of “a globalisation of ethics”. It sits happily with his crusading foreign policy. He wanted to end one of his Iraq television addresses with “God bless you”, until aides stopped him.
Iraq reinforces Mr Blair’s tendency to self-beatification. Unlike Mr Bush, he does not sleep well on the war. He is like a holy-roller defence lawyer who slowly realises that his client is not innocent after all. Yet that makes the Blair cause all the more saintly. His apologists protest that Iraq may not have been legal but at least it was “good”. If Mr Blair can only detach goodness from legality he can attain nirvana. Who needs to tell the truth or obey the law when he is about God’s business?
Mr Blair’s excursions into Christian exegesis suggest a serious confusion between religious belief and public ethics. Politics is never morality-lite. Arguments over abortion, stem-cell research and faith schools are shot through with normative values. Without them politics would be a crude battle of interests. But it is a strength of British democracy that such debates are rooted in a rationalist consensus. They are lit by tolerance, courtesy and a respect for individual conscience. They do not flee to the backwoods of religious dogma, of texts and teachings. Britain has not, since the 16th century, been ruled by bishops or mullahs and has been the better for it.
Not so America. This week has seen the amazing spectacle of the President and Congress rushing back from holiday to stop a man from letting his brain-damaged wife end her life in dignity. It was a triumph for the Religious Right, which claimed that turning off a life-support machine was murder, as was abortion or embryo research (though not apparently capital punishment). This applies even if the person were brain dead and merely an adjunct of a machine. The issue turned on a 15-year-long argument within the woman’s family. What was astonishing was to see the entire federal apparatus respond to religious lobbying by overruling states’ rights and imposing its beliefs on one individual.
This fundamentalism was not a matter of ethics. The ethics had long been thrashed out and resolved by the Florida state courts. They adjudicated on a balance between the “vegetative” quality of life of the victim, her assumed wishes and the wishes of her family, all conditioned by advances in medical science. The West’s concept of human life has changed radically over the centuries. Ethicists have sought to tailor a respect for life itself to the need to regulate the offerings that science lays at its door.
Religious fundamentalism seeks to sweep away this debate in favour of received dogma. Similar dogmatism, allied to direct action, is seeing the emergence of extremist Christian groups in Britain, attacking charities and academics of whom they disapprove. These people may deny comparison with Muslim fundamentalists in Iraq and elsewhere. The latter may not appreciate the difference, especially when the West wages war on them for what they see as their beliefs.
The message that British election strategists have drawn from Mr Bush’s victory is that these groups matter, however small they may be. Modern electorates are no longer loyal to party. They are pluralist and fragmented. Political messages need to be targeted at marginal voters, possibly “singleissue” ones, in marginal constituencies. All else is a waste of money.
Hence the Tories’ exploitation of a woman’s broken shoulder, a refused school place, a policeman buried in paperwork, a gypsy encampment. Hence the suggestion to reduce the abortion limit to 20 weeks, somehow to counter “abortion on demand”. Hence the flirtation by both parties with religion. Never mind the apathetic masses. Can we get the Catholic Church to approve Michael Howard’s suggested toughening on abortion? Can we get Rowan Williams on board?
In the politics of group interest, weak is strong. It is the lobby that simplifies and shouts loudest that gets heard, not those espousing the complexities of the general good. It takes only a few thousand voters to change sides in the right places to make a difference. A quarter of the electorate has yet to make up its mind. Last week’s pre-election Budget indulged drinkers, drivers, airlines and elderly ratepayers. Perhaps now is the time to flatter the faith groups.
I would leave religion out of politics. As Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian, remarked: “The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values . . . is the source of all fanaticism.” When Mr Howard calls on politicians to “acknowledge the legitimacy of faith communities” I do not know what he means. Is he thinking of Northern Ireland, reductio ad horrendum of faith politics?
The Thatcherite ethos held that minority interests must not be indulged. The nation must accept a collective discipline for its long-term benefit. She drove her reforms through on the back of party loyalty, and nearly destroyed it. But a retreat from collective responsibility in favour of reactionary à la carte platforms and “boutique” politics would be a step backwards.
Fundamentalist lobbies are the curse of American politics. But America has checks and balances. One such check — an independent federal judiciary — appeared yesterday to undermine Mr Bush’s anti-euthanasia zeal. American politics is still pluralist. The constitutional freedoms of subsidiary communities may yet prove a bulwark against the Religious Right’s attempt to “nationalise” its moral beliefs, whether against euthanasia, abortion, medical research or homosexuality.
Britain has no such bastions, no checks and balances. The Prime Minister’s concept of tolerance does not extend to civil rights. He is ready to tear up international law one day, habeas corpus the next and judicial independence the day after. The colours of religious rectitude are now nailed to new Labour’s mast, at home and abroad. There is no knowing what Mr Blair might do with a Bible in one hand and Lord Falconer in the other.
simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk
