Recent religious tensions, particularly after 7/7, are in part a result of these tectonic instabilities. The government knows it needs to create shared ground between religious groups. But it is reluctant to address our historical inheritance, ignoring the structural nature of Anglicanism’s centrality and preferring instead to paper over the fault lines by pursuing two contradictory strategies.
The first argues that, while Christianity remains the official religion, other beliefs must be represented too. As religious groups proliferate and become more vocal, local authorities organise more festivals, religious education eats into the school curriculum, and “consultations” with “faith leaders” become part of every public official’s working day. To read documents produced by the government’s Cohesion and Faiths Unit, the interdepartmental group on faith, and the Institute for Community Cohesion, is to wade through endless talk of “mainstreaming faith issues” and creating “interfaith initiatives”.
The second declares that the “multiculturalist experiment” has been a resounding failure. Gordon Brown repeatedly affirms his commitment to “a distinctive set of shared British values” – tolerance, decency, fairplay and so on – which he’d like to see enshrined in citizenship tests for migrants, the school curriculum, and the establishment of an annual British Day.
Neither of these approaches will create the secular, neutral space needed to accommodate religious difference.
[blockquote] Neither of these approaches will create the secular, neutral space needed to accommodate religious difference. [/blockquote]
What Eliane Glaser thinks is needed to “accommodate religious difference[s]” is of course a secular public square where religion has no participation. And its just a happy coincidence for her that this would give secular presuppositions the place of privilege. You would never know that she is ‘not religious.’ The purpose is never to accommodate religion. The purpose is to neutralize religion lest someone suggest we act upon it.
carl
Nice token tribute to America at the end, but I think the example that appeals most to the chattering classes is closer to home. IIRC, France worked out all these issues of religion between 1789 and 1905. Why reinvent the wheel (or device of your choice)?
If the issue were only to create a space where “everyone felt comfortable” and not to control thinking itself, then Ms. Glaser would have a point. But that’s not true, and so she does not have a case.