In his disarmingly honest Theos lecture last Tuesday, former head of the Metropolitan Police Commission, Ian Blair, spoke of his admiration for and frustration with faith communities.
They contribute so very much to the public good, he argued, and yet, at the same time, manage to get tied up in acrimonious knots over issues that are largely irrelevant to everyone else, not to mention having a worrying penchant for the kinds of certainty that merely breeds alienation and social discord.
It was clear that, for Lord Blair himself, admiration won over the frustration. Religions were their own worst enemies, and could also be society’s. But they were also vast and irreplaceable reservoirs for public good and public order, an order without which the police’s job would be far more difficult.
That, however, did not settle the matter. John Humphrys, who chaired the evening, began the questions with typically pointed (and, as it turned out, dogged) specificity. It’s all very well praising religion for its contribution to public order, but what should we do about those Muslims who were loudly protesting during the two minutes silence at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday? What was that if not an egregious mockery of the kind of collective act of memory and honour on which public order ultimately rests?
Lord Blair refused to be drawn on the specific issue, knowing full well that whatever he said would be construed as either criticising the Police for the way they had dealt with the situation or supporting the Muslims for their protest. But the question would not go away and at the end of the evening Humphrys asked the audience for a show of hands on the question what would they have done: allow the protest or move it on?
The fact that there was a roughly even split in audience answers points to the difficulty with this question. Everyone, even the most hysterical anti-theist, recognises that religion is compatible with public order. The question is how much religion and what kind of public order?
To the first question (about religion) the anti-theists answer 'as little as possible and entirely in private’. But the idea of religion as a private opinion or hobby is unrecognisable to anyone who knows anything about the subject. Religions are ways of life. Unless you are allowed to live them, they are not religions.
And this is the sticking point today. What practical, public manifestation of religion is necessary to that religion and what is merely an incidental or disposable accretion?
The argument, floated once or twice in the Q&A session after the lecture, that flying planes into buildings is part of someone’s religion is an obvious and unhelpful nonsense. Such acts of murder may have been inspired by religion, but only the most hyperbolic Islamophobe believes that they are intrinsic to it. No religion alive in the Western world today actively advocates murder.
The problem is subtler. What about the Muslim hijab, or Sikh daggers, or Hindu funeral pyres, or Christian crucifixes, or chastity rings? What about praying for someone? Or seeking to convert them? The permutations are endless.
The anti-theist response is commonly something along the lines of ‘stuff the lot of them. Life would be much more peaceful and simpler if we just banned the lot.’ It is a popular rhetorical device.
It is a tempting response, but a lazy and portentous one. To refuse to engage with the intricacies of the question is not only silently to reverse ideas of toleration that have been growing in British soil since the mid-seventeenth century, but is to attempt to flatten out the cultural landscape that has become more complicated of late.
Addressing the question to what extent is religion compatible with public order will demand wrestling with difficult and confusing questions about the nature of both religion and public order. But it is incumbent on all of us to try.
Nick Spencer is Research Director at Theos.
