(ABC Aus.) After Brexit? 4 prominent theologians weigh in

One who is asked is Rowan Williams, who responds in part as follows:

A campaign fought on both sides without a clear vision of either national or international identity, reverting again and again to manipulative, irrelevant anecdotal appeals to self-interest, is a poor advertisement for the democratic process as currently operating.

The challenge is how to restore the possibility of genuinely educated debate; which is a substantial challenge given the overwhelming dominance of populist rhetoric in most of the British press, whose effect on the debate has for the most part been corrosive. Grass roots political literacy has to be built; the voices of properly independent civil society (frequently silenced by warnings from regulators and the like in this debate) – from churches to local citizens’ groups, from NGO’s to universities (if they can ever free themselves from their present servitude to functionalist ideology) – have to be liberated. Above all, class and regional divisions have to be addressed without colluding with reactive, anxiety-driven populism.

Read the whole thing.