A major issue in debates about religion and public life is how to encourage different religions to relate constructively. Anxieties about religious intolerance, aggressive proselytism, and inter-religious conflict abound. Behind these lurk historical memories of the seventeenth century wars of religion and the assumption that religious differences inevitably lead to violent conflict. In recent years anxieties about Islam have been a catalyst for these fears. All of which raises the question of how, in a multi-faith society, should different religions relate to each other? And related to this question is the following: are faith and citizenships friends or enemies?
The UK government is increasingly focusing on these questions. The main framework of policy in this area is set out in the white paper: Face to Face and Side by Side: A Framework for Partnership in our Multi Faith Society (2008), the central idea of which received a direct echo in Barack Obama’s recent Cairo speech. The policy advocates the need for dialogue and side-by-side common action and emphasises the importance of social cohesion. Yet what it lacks is any scope for genuinely political relationships or any account of how inter-faith relations are affected by the market and the state.
Instead, the ideal upheld is not for different faith groups to develop constructive political relationships but for them to promote ‘social cohesion’. But social cohesion is a strange, apolitical term. It is a term that suggests that real differences and disagreement, conflict and critique, are the enemies of healthy political relations. The term ‘social cohesion’ has no place for the institutions and traditions with which real inter-faith relations must contend.
Within many current policy documents the term ‘social cohesion’ indicates not only that what government wants is an undifferentiated mass of relationships, but that the only purpose of these cohesive relations is not democratic participation but cooperation with the state. This would simply be a case of an inadequate category if it were not for its use in conjunction with current policies in counter-terrorism. The implication, whether intended or not, is that lack of cohesive relationships and cooperation with the state seems to make of any dissenter an ‘extremist’ in need of ‘de-radicalisation.’
In place of ‘social cohesion’ I want to urge use of the old-fashioned term ‘civil society,’ a contested but rich term that envisages the housing of social relationships within institutions. Such institutions, in particular religious institutions, embody traditions of belief and practice that are themselves on-going arguments about what life is for. The term civil society upholds the importance of institutions in mediating between the individual, the state and the market and holds that such mediatory structures are crucial not only for the health of social relationships but also for the health of the state and market as well. Without institutions that are independent of the state and the market and which can call both to account, both the state and the market seek to subordinate everything to their own immediate demands – and we have seen in recent months the disastrous consequences of that!
We need to move beyond advocacy of dialogue and of working side-by-side to produce social cohesion. Instead, we must talk of what it means for religious groups to be part of a robust civil society. In part this means religious groups undertaking shared political action in defence and pursuit of common goods such as stopping school playing fields being sold off by the local council. Such action may well involve conflict with the priorities and policies of government and business corporations, yet such joint civic action will be part of a wider, constructive, if at times critical relationship with both.
Such a shift is not antithetical to the spirit of current policy. As the recent white paper Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power argues, there is a need to empower communities and enable active citizenship. So my suggestion of a shift of focus from social cohesion to civil society is reparative rather than revolutionary, one aimed at helping policy makers think more clearly about what they are trying to achieve.
Real encounter, dialogue and understanding is best generated as a by-product of shared civic action. In such shared civic action the focus is neither on face-to-face encounter nor even on simply working side by side, rather, it is on the pursuit and protection of common goods. Or, to put it another way, it is in the relationships that emerge between people of different faiths and none as they identify and uphold the things they all love and hold dear, that something genuinely worthwhile emerges.
Such common, public action and civic association is part of what it means to participate in civil society and to be a good citizen. Indeed, such common action is the best way to relate faith and citizenship. An excellent example of this in practice is the work of London Citizens. Now 12 years old, London Citizens is a form of broad-based community organising that was first developed by Saul Alinsky in 1940s Chicago. It was just such an organisation that set Barack Obama on the road to his political career. London Citizens brings faith and secular organisations into alliances to pursue common political interests such as better schools, street safety and a living wage. It currently involves over 100 different faith and secular organisations, including Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Pentecostals, Buddhists, Muslims, trade union branches, schools, colleges and community centres.
Religious institutions, especially in poor urban areas where few other institutions exist, and common action between them, are crucial to invigorating a robust civil society and stopping the market and state subordinating everything to their own demands. In the light of the recent economic and Parliamentary crises, it is the locating of inter-faith relations within the context of invigorating civil society and establishing limits to the market and the state, rather than as a response to a security threat, fear of violence or the need to generate social cohesion, that gives real urgency and meaning to inter-faith relations.
Luke Bretherton is Senior Lecture in Theology & Politics, King’s College London and Convenor of the Faith & Public Policy Forum. This is an excerpt from the Lambeth Inter-faith Lecture he gave at Lambeth Palace, 4 June 2009. The full lecture can be read here.
