MetaCatholic

Thanks to Justin for an email alerting me to this story about the Bishop of Rochester’s views and asking what I think. A few more general comments first, especially for non UK readers.

• The Telegraph is the most right-wing of the British broadsheet press, and its Sunday edition more right-wing than its weekday edition. It is particularly fond of anti-immigration stories, and likes to portray itself as a defender of Christian values. So this is a typical story, reporting as news what the bishop writes in an op-ed piece for the same paper. One must presume that choosing to write for the paper both reveals something of the bishop’s views and shapes the way he has expressed them.
• The Bishop of Rochester has a particular view of Islam, shaped by his experiences in Pakistan, where he has experienced it as a persecuting religion. That may help him see some things more clearly than those who have only known it as a cultural minority, but it might also prevent him seeing other aspects of it clearly.
• As far as I can tell, the poll of General Synod members garnered 102 responses. (There’s a little more about the poll here, here and here.) That is about one fifth. I do not know if everyone was invited to respond and only a fifth did, or if a sample was selected, but this must raise suspicions of serious bias in any figure quoted. It does, however, mean that one percent pretty much equals one person. One always has to read these polls carefully: when the Telegraph reports that: “more than one in three believe that a mass influx of people of other faiths is diluting the Christian nature of Britain” it obviously means that nearly two-thirds don’t believe immigration is diluting it: that is a rather different headline. More than one in three people means, of course, at least thirty-five people.

All that is not to discredit either the bishop’s views, or the story, but is to offer some cautions about reading it with some care. With that background information I turn not to the story, but to the bishop’s own article. I think there are some real problems with it, mainly in the way it construes the history of a complex and difficult matter.

• The principal original reason for segregated communities was the racism of the host communities, which led to increasing white flight from the inner cities in particular. I think the bishop’s view fails to take account of the inability of “Christian Britain” to be welcoming. This was not just about other faiths: the development of many black-led churches was because the mainstream churches were unable to welcome black Christians as much as Asian Muslims.
• Britain was not interested in integration, not for the ideological reasons of “multiculturalism”, but for cultural reasons of not wanting very much to do with these different people. “Multiculturalism”, as I see it, grew initially as a justification for a general attitude of racist segregation, and only later flowered as a more positive ideology in its own right. This means that segregation is much more a cause of “multiculturalism”, rather than an effect. I agree entirely with the bishop that segregation is a problem to be addressed.
• The bishop is right to note that Britain was rapidly losing confidence in the Christian faith. That, however, was a problem that long ante-dated mass immigration, and it needs addressing in quite separate ways. Addressing immigration needs to be separated from ideas that somehow Britain is a Christian country. It is strange that an Asian-origin bishop should seem (unintentionally) to give credence to views that identify Christianity with white Britishness.
• The bishop is right, I think, to say that Britain largely has the forms rather than the substance of church establishment. I am unconvinced that this has much to do with immigration. Nor, in my view, is this a recent development, but one which has been ongoing for centuries, albeit speeded up dramatically in the 20th century. Establishment is elided in the bishop’s article with being a “Christian” country. Legally, it means being an Anglican country, and the early dismantling of elements of establishment were demanded and achieved not by Muslims, but first by Protestant dissenters, and then by Roman Catholics. The bishop forgets also that large areas of, say, Liverpool, were more-or-less no-go areas for English Protestants because of Irish Catholic immigration long before the period of Commonwealth immigration.
• He is right to identify problems of Islamic assertiveness, and the import of widely growing extremism, much of it Wahabi, and funded by the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia. Curiously he fails to note that latter connection or its political ramifications.
• He notes, but almost glosses over the idea of learning English as a key element in identification in his hurry to make the point that Britain needs to recapture a Christian and biblical vision. Well, the latter, his proposal, seems to me to be one for the Church to address rather than government. How can a largely secular government restore biblical vision, and why, politically or culturally should government see anything persuasive in the bishop’s argument?
• By contrast, I regard the emphasis on learning English as more important in the short term. It is not, however, a panacea. Many of the extremists so far arrested have been quite fluent, second or third generation English speakers. But what I hope it will do is allow the disempowered older generations, as well as new arrivals, to a greater participation. I suspect that, especially by empowering women, and treating them as citizens, more will be done to challenge those aspects of Asian and Arab culture which prevent integration and assimilation.
• Most disappointing, however, in the bishop’s remarks is no attempt to distinguish between extremists and other Muslims. The larger question of how the majority may be empowered for integration as a means of dealing with extremism (often from a younger generation disillusioned with their parents) is thereby neglected.
• I agree with the bishop in finding “multiculturalism” both extremely poorly thought out, sometimes a disguise for an aggressively secularising agenda, but sometimes simply a mistaken buzzword for tolerance and welcome. It has, in practice, often become an ideology that has both permitted and driven an unacceptable separate development, or practical apartheid. But I am unconvinced that anything the bishop suggests constitutes a remedy.

The real problem with the ill-thought-out argument of the bishop’s article is not any specific thing he says, but with the cumulative effect and tone of it which can easily be seen as identifying Christianity with Britishness, and giving encouragement to racists. If you don’t believe me, check the website for the far-right and fascist British National Party (and I am not as a matter of principle going to link to it, but a quick Google will help you find it if you wish to). As of the time and date of this posting, the bishop’s attack is their lead story in support of their views. If he is not careful, some unkind people might start calling him Bishop Nazi-Ally.