MetaCatholic

As Andrew Sullivan so aptly points out to this anti-Chinese protestor …

Er …

John Hobbins posts on a topic I’ve been meaning to cover for some time and not quite got round to. I too am something of a sceptic, and like him note the range of contradictory evidence around, summed up in the paradox of the rapid calving of the Antarctic ice shelf at the same time as the continental ice cap there is the thickest it has been according to known records. The sheer range of the contradictory evidence, however, makes me sceptical of any overarching theory. Most of what is said on both sides of this argument doesn’t sound to me like a full explanation. So in the interim I make the following observations.

• I find it hard to trust any climate prognosis for the next fifty years when those made for the next week are so inaccurate.
• There is a fairly large amount of money in this field of research, and scare stories tend to help shake the money loose, especially from governments and foundations.
• There is an even larger amount of money around in the businesses who resist environmental expenditure as economically damaging, and they too are paying for research.
• The global climate is such a complex system, that chaos theory should make us suspicious of simple cause and effect explanations.
• We should learn to distrust the media need for simple sound-bite stories. Those that carry the most dramatic illustrations are the ones we need to be most suspicious of. Emotional and graphic depiction easily results in the suspension of reason.
• It would be both foolish and arrogant of humans to assume that they don’t need to pay attention to their environment and accept that carelessness may lead to adverse impacts.
• Christian stewardship and the biblical vision of the human vocation as priests of creation demands that we accept the responsibility to manage the planet for the best advantage of all, and that dismissing environmental issues is as much a heresy as it is anything else.

Christians shouldn’t need scaring into caring for God’s garden.

I am still digesting some of the questions Rowan Williams was trying to open up in his now notorious lecture. (See my previous post) I have sometimes been inclined towards some related notions, but for different reasons. In particular I think there is an ambiguous and confused relationship between the law and morality, and over recent decades there has first been a decoupling of many areas of specifically Christian morality from legislation, and subsequently, particularly in the last decade, a great many morally driven pieces of legislation, whose morality is rather ad hoc and du jour and whose purpose is social engineering: fox-hunting, homosexual law reform, anti-smoking legislation and more.

I can’t help but feel over-legislated, and that whereas once the Church probably (although with a large degree of consent) abused its authority in legislating for its morality, now (again with a large degree of consent) the Church is being ridden rough-shod over in the area it once ruled. A particular case in point, and, I would have thought in every respect entirely unnecessary, was the insistence that Catholic adoption agencies should be willing to place babies with same sex couples. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of this particular cluster of issues, this was the coercive State overriding conscience, which is arguably a more serious wrong.

Chris Dillow has in my view the most significant criticism of Rowan Williams.

In saying that the UK’s adoption of part of Sharia law is inevitable, I suspect the Archbishop of Canterbury is making the same mistake he made in calling for laws against “cruel speech.” He’s failing to see that there should be a (big) space between individuals and the law, a space filled by civil society.
In a free society, consenting adults should be able to settle disputes however they like; this might entail recourse to a coin toss, Sharia, Beth din or whatever. The job of UK law is merely to ensure that consent is free, informed and not too onerous.

Despite his ostensible Marxism, this looks far more like a classic conservative libertarian argument. But it seems to me that in part, the space for aspects of Sharia that the Archbishop was talking about fits far more into this communal space of civil society, than into the realm of law. I’m not sure whether Rowan Williams would agree: some aspects of his lecture make me think he would.

What is astonishing is the degree of hysteria that has greeted the lecture, of which a key point is actually about how the stranger can be made welcome in that common civil society. The comments on some of the news blogs are astonishing. Sorry, wrong word, the bad-tempered and frequently illiterate inanity of many blog comments is the norm, unfortunately. But many of the comments reveal a particularly nasty, racist and fearful willingness to believe anything of Islam as long as it’s bad, combined with a belief that those born white in Britain are somehow automatically Christian. The hysterical monotony of this type of comment is only relieved by the equally hysterical rants against the Archbishop as a theocrat from those “plague on both your houses” atheists.

I suspect the Archbishop is wrong in the proposals and suggestions he offers, but that he puts his finger on a continuing aspect of Britain’s inability welcome those who are different and give them space in civic society is, I think, borne out by the reactions. The British people are currently as unable to respond rationally to Islam as they were once unable to respond rationally to Catholicism.

Given who his enemies appear to be, I would like to defend him more whole-heartedly. I would certainly rather find myself in his company than the many racist bigots who are attacking him. But in fact I think he is in part diagnosing the wrong problem, and that he should turn his powerful and subtle theological mind on the more general question of the place of the law in relation to morality, and how law should actually function with consent in a society where there are widely divergent moral perspectives, both religious and secular. Currently the balance is tipping far too much away from both individuals and communities in favour of the State, and whatever ideology is currently consuming it. In exploring that question, the Archbishop might find a better way through the questions he has raised in this more narrow context.

It’s hard to imagine any other contemporary politician whose speeches can be turned to music. This is will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas with Obama’s “Yes we can” speech. That I have to thank a Tory blogger for pointing favourably to a powerful piece of Democrat publicity says something about Obama also. This video is quite remarkable.

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.

John Redwood, a libertarian right-wing Tory, long suspected by many in the UK to be from the planet Vulcan*, praises Barack Obama. (HT Iain Dale) I suppose, if Tony Blair can love a Republican president, then why can’t a Tory love a Democrat contender? Of course, it quickly turns into the same old Redwood record about Europe and regulation.

I must admit liking the Obama visionary mood music. What’s interesting is that Redwood does too. I suspect that shows the relative lack of policy within the music. Then again, as Obama has acknowledged, if he’s elected, a relatively youthful black man of the post-pretty-much-every historical and cultural shift that’s defined the US internally and externally, may do far more than any policy could to introduce change.

Generally, we expect too much of politicians, and they expect to promise us the earth. The media live on both hyped-up promise stories, and then the hyped-up failure to deliver them. The truth is, I think, that politicians generally have far less power than we all collude in pretending they have when an election comes round. Economics and events, history and individual whims conspire to disempower them. (One of the things I likes about the West Wing was that even in the Bartlett White House, a surprising number of stories focus on the near impossibility of making any real change.)

So perhaps mood music is more important not only to getting elected, but to being effective in power, in which case Obama may be very interesting indeed.

*Note to non-UK visitors: The attribution of Vulcan origins is a mix of his looks, a relatively cold and unemotional exterior, a somewhat (particularly in the early days) robotic voice, and his not very convincing attempt to look as though he was singing the Welsh National Anthem when he was Secretary of State for Wales)

I seem to have annoyed a few pacifists, by spelling out both the thinking of the 39 articles, and the thinking of the mainstream tradition about just war. I seem to have particularly annoyed Peter Kirk who describes himself as “very attracted” to pacifism. Despite this attraction to pacifism, he has retaliated by selecting various quotations from my posts, and extracting them from the argument in which they were embedded to make his point.

By contrast I offer the following observations about Christian pacifism as I have encountered it:

• It is often unutterably smug in claiming the moral high-ground, and implying that it is a superior form of Christianity. I suspect half the annoyance with my posts is that I’ve deliberately put the boot on the other foot.
• It is hermeneutically naive in thinking that you can apply Jesus’ teaching on non-retaliation and non-violent resistance in any direct way to the conduct of government, politics and international relations.
• It is similarly naive in thinking it has proved itself to be traditional Christianity by producing a catena of pre-Nicene quotations, when the pre-Nicene tradition simply didn’t deal with the political relations any more than the New Testament did.
• It appears crypto-Marcionite in the way it sidelines the Old Testament, which does address the concerns of political life, within a particular sense of a national vocation.
• It verges on the immoral by suggesting that any government should say to another country, “you may do what you like to your own citizens, and we will stand by and let you do it. Actually, you can come here and do it to ours as well.” The patterns of non-violent resistance have little to say to international relations. In so far as they have often approved of sanctions, they have acquiesced in punishing the impoverished population of a country, while leaving its tyrannical leadership untouched.
• It seems to me to be increasingly buying into an exclusively Girardian diagnosis of sin and redemption, which is seductive, but in the end fails to take any proper account of alienation from God. Girardian models would work as well if there were no God. I think that makes them an inadequate account.

I can see a place for individual prophetic witness to pacifism as a reminder of the eschatological peace to which we are all summoned, and by which we should measure our own lack of peace today. I do not wish to disrespect the individual, or the monastic community that sees such a witness as their vocation. My complaint is with all of those who try to urge it not only as policy for the whole Church, but who wish to claim it is the only Christian policy at all. In rejecting their views, I have probably gone over the top, but sometimes overstatement makes the point more forcefully, and a blog rant is not a reasoned argument.

Allow me to end the year by stirring things up a little. In a recent comment Stephen appealed to the separation of church and state in the way that many people do: as though it was (almost) self-evident. It’s an obvious mantra of much American political life, and it has often made its way across the pond, as though it was quite normal. I don’t myself have any strongly held views on this topic, but let me offer a few observations and questions to suggest that it’s not quite as straightforward as it seems. I also note, that faced with the Religious Right in the US, I’d personally repeat the mantra as an apotropaic incantation every day.

• The original move towards the separation of Church and State came from those who objected to the English Anglican hegemony. It was as at least as much a religious intention for freedom as a political one, and in its beginnings, ironically, theology and politics were conjoined at the hip.
• In its developed form, it depends on the Enlightenment myth of objectivity. Somehow the state is meant to be religiously neutral. However, as we have come to reject the myth of objective neutrality in every other sphere of knowledge, we have ignored its pretensions in politics. A better justification for the separation of church and state needs to be found if the idea of separation is going to commend itself.
• It is not an obviously successful idea. Despite its privileged role in American political mythology, it is almost impossible for an American politician to describe themselves as an atheist if they wish to get elected. By contrast, in the UK, where there is an established religion enshrined in law and omnipresent at least ceremonially on state occasions, it can be regarded as the death-knell of a politician to be regarded as religious. “We don’t do God” as Tony Blair’s press spokesman Alistair Campbell famously said. The established Church of England seems to do rather better in the UK at creating a multi-faith and no-faith public sphere than the formal separation of church and state does in the US.
• Theologically, there is also an interesting case to be asked about God. Where does the legitimacy of the State come from? There are various answers to that, which can be expressed in philosophical, moral, legal, political and theological terms. Traditionally, however, while by no means excluding philosophical, moral, legal and political analyses, Christian theology has wanted to answer the question with reference to God as the undergirding legitimate authority of everything, including the state. Neither State nor Law are absolute providers of the judgements by which society is organised and maintained, but themselves stand under judgement for what they do. Obviously that can be worked out in practice in very different ways. But the theory that government is to be measured by the kingdom of God, and judged by God is, I think, for the Christian one possible way of distinguishing between democracy on the one hand and ochlocracy or demagoguery on the other. Majorities may deliver power, they do not always confer legitimate authority. Is it theologically possible for Christians to conceive a State that is unrelated to God? If the answer is no, how do Christians think they can conceive a state that is unrelated to God’s people?

These are questions I have no answer to. But like my posts on the fag-end of the 39 articles, they leave me convinced that political theology is an area where we simply have to do better.

In one of the last posts on the thirty-nine articles, I referred briefly to ideas of the just war. The very concept tends to stir up all sorts of sloppy thinking, and I want to clarify my own thoughts a little bit. I’ve also been prompted a bit by this post from John Hobbins. I should start by saying that I don’t regard this as a “theory” despite most everyone’s tendency to refer to “just war theory” and more a set of pragmatic theological ways of thinking about war, justice and the conduct of nations.

At one level, there is very little in the scriptures that offers a secure footing for Christian thinking. One can, however, appeal indirectly to the prophetic witness which sees increasingly sees the wars against Israel of Assyria and Babylon as punishment for the lack of justice in the land. One can also appeal to the passing reference in Romans to the role of the state as promoting virtue and preventing vice. Taken together these suggest with a range of other scattered references, one can see a role of the governing authority as one of establishing justice. (From that point of view, it is less any particular action in Iraq that provides the basis for criticising the current Iraq war, but the blatant and manifest injustice of Guantanamo, where the US government has abrogated the basic tenets of justice.) Behind and beyond this is a constant summons to, and promise of, God’s gift of perfect peace and justice going hand in hand in the eschatological era. The human longing for both (which often seem incompatible in the present) is legitimated and undergirded by God’s promise. But this promise also challenges any perception that peace means an absence of war, achieved by conniving in the turning of a blind eye to injustice.

In many respects the just war tradition begins with Augustine:

Think, then, of this first of all, when you are arming for the battle, that even your bodily strength is a gift of God; for, considering this, you will not employ the gift of God against God. For, when faith is pledged, it is to be kept even with the enemy against whom the war is waged, how much more with the friend for whom the battle is fought! Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace. For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained. Therefore, even in waging war, cherish the spirit of a peacemaker, that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace; for our Lord says:”Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) If, however, peace among men be so sweet as procuring temporal safety, how much sweeter is that peace with God which procures for men the eternal felicity of the angels! Let necessity, therefore, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you. As violence is used towards him who rebels and resists, so mercy is due to the vanquished or the captive, especially in the case in which future troubling of the peace is not to be feared. (Letter 189, to Boniface)

What is particularly notable is that Augustine begins this letter with a reminder of the commandment to love ones neighbour as oneself. War, as a necessity, is to be governed, strange as it may seem, by the commandment to love. That is to say, it is more Christian when it is directed to the aid of another, than when it is exercised only in self-defence. It is about righting injustice, and obtaining peace for the other, not for aggrandizing oneself and one’s cause. This must then govern not only the reason for, and goal of, any war; it must also govern the conduct of the war, and the way in which the enemy is treated.

From these roots arose a tradition of thinking about war, concerned as much with how the human tendency to violence is to be restrained in war as with the reasons for going to war in the first place. It has had various characteristics, which are unfortunately often understood as a series of boxes to be ticked, but are better seen as practical considerations arising out of this overall consideration of how one loves a neighbour, both in rescuing the oppressed neighbour, and in putting right the unjust one. I propose briefly to enumerate and reflect on some of the most important of these practical considerations.

War must be declared by a legitimate authority. This has traditionally been understood to mean a government of some shape or form, since it is to governments that the task of establishing and maintaining justice is given. (One can see that in terms of the kind of divine  ordering Paul talks about in Romans 13, or in less theological terms as the moral purpose and legitimation of government generally.) Then war is the temporary and extraordinary extension into the international arena of that permanent and ordinary role of establishing justice within the national one. In the mediaeval period the papacy in theory could sometimes play the role of a supranational authority and judge, and in the modern world the United Nations has by treaty a somewhat similar role. Unfortunately, in practice both the mediaeval papacy and the modern UN have been hamstrung by the political realities and disputes which often made and make them appear ineffectual, biased and unable to exercise such a role. It might well be desirable to work for, and then with, a more effective UN, but the lessons of history are not entirely encouraging.

The legitimate authority must have a just cause and a good intention. That is, the waging of war must be seen, ultimately as provoked by a particular injustice (the genocide of a whole ethnic group, for example) and the desire to save the victims from that injustice. It has to be seen, even if extraordinary, as a proper extension of the ordinary work of government in promoting justice, and passing judgement on the wrong-doer for the sake of the common good. It is quite easy to see how, in theory at least, just causes can provide excuses for imperialistic and economic intentions. It is less easy to see in practice, how the self-interests of nations can be entirely disengaged from the moral calculus.

It should be a last resort, and have a good chance of success. I bracket these together, because they are where the moral and the practical, the theological and political, judgements become hopelessly entangled. What does a last resort actually mean? Does it mean when there is no other option, which is what many have taken it to mean, or when other reasonable options seem unlikely to meet with success? Those who take the former route make much of “sanctions” but year upon year of sanctions are in fact a war of attrition against a civilian population, carried out by non-military means. “Sanctions” often seem to me to have become a moral vacuum, punishing the innocent citizen to avoid attacking the guilty leader, a substitute for war rather than a last warning before it. Again, when do negotiations become a fruitless option, used by the “enemy” as a means of delaying things until they have placed their forces or their material logistics in a more favourable position to engage in combat? “Last resort” is a hard-headed military and political judgement, and not simply the moral declaration of an armchair theologian.

It might be said that almost the reverse is true of a “good chance of success”. It sounds like a purely pragmatic judgement, but in fact is again rooted in the theological perception of war as love of neighbour, and the establishment of justice. If the drastic means of war, which is always be known to have a serious moral downside in death and destruction is to be in any way seen as promoting justice and righting wrong, government has to be able to be reasonably certain that the result of going to war will in the end be better than that of not going to war. The moral and the pragmatic are inseparable here, which is why the ideas of “just war” can’t be seen as a theory legitimating war, but only as a way of thinking about it that brings some ethical considerations to bear on hard-headed pragmatic judgements.

Finally, there are reflections on the means of waging war, that they should be proportionate and discriminate. The latter of these takes its shape from the act of judgement that is the calling of government. If the purpose of war is fundamentally to prosecute the guilty and liberate the innocent, then it must be carried out in a way that serves that end, as far as lies within the power of the government to do so. The former follows from reflecting on the need to serve justice. A disproportionate response will never be a just one. In both these aims we find ourselves in the odd situation that it is both theoretically possible to be more disproportionate than ever before (the moral problem with any weapon of mass destruction) and pragmatically possible to be more discriminate than ever before (with laser-targeted and satellite-guided weaponry). One of the lesser noted facts of the last two Gulf Wars (whatever their other rights and wrongs) has been the way in which judgements about discrimination and targeting have become part of the ordinary public discourse and strategic prosecution of war.

The just war tradition is far from offering a perfect solution, or even comprehensive guidance to those who have to consider the options of war. It does, however, offer some ways of thinking morally about what governments do that are rooted in the moral and theological discourse about justice, and the human obligation to love the neighbour. As such, I still think it is the best we’ve got, for all its imperfections, if we want to live in the real world.

Well, people say here in England that there’s no major difference between the main political parties, but a new battleground has opened up. In the blue corner¹ is Tory überblogger Iain Dale. He reports from a baby’s baptism on Sunday:

This morning I have been to a Christening. Here is a line from one of the hymns…
“And if I were a fuzzy, wuzzy bear, I’d thank you Lord for my fuzzy wuzzy hair, but I just thank you, Father, for making me ‘me’”
And they wonder why the Church of England is losing its congregation!

In the red corner is (non-New) Labour political pundit Paul Linford:

For a blogger of Iain’s prominence and influence to do this is really a bit like Nancy Banks-Smith giving a critical pasting to In the Night Garden as if she were reviewing the latest Stephen Poliakoff epic.
All that the Butterfly Song is really saying is that God made us as we are, and that we should celebrate our individuality. Somehow, I would have thought that was a sentiment which Iain Dale would have approved of.

I give you the battleground of the next election. It’s so much more interesting than the politics of sleaze. Don’t believe me? This topic collects more comments than any other of Iain Dale’s most recent posts (some of which comments are bizarre in the extreme). Fuzzy-wuzzy bears are the new “clear blue water”.

1. US readers: in the UK blue means right-wing and red means left-wing [↩]