Britain, not the US, is the odd one out All across Europe, politics and religion still go hand in hand Peter Preston Monday November 08 2004 The Guardian
Let us call it "Blair exceptionalism". Our leader is a committed, practising Christian. A priest from Great Missenden arrives at Chequers every available Sunday to hold Blair family communion. Residual public debate does not inquire whether the prime minister is a true believer, but whether - one imminent day - he'll convert from high C of E to join Cherie in RC Towers. That is exceptional. Nobody, of course, can quite penetrate beyond the outward and visible show of premiers past, but overt Christianity hasn't exactly steamed up modern Downing Street's windows. I have no idea how John Major or Jim Callaghan spend their Sabbaths. I always felt Mrs T was happier lecturing Archbishop Runcie than listening to him. ("Who is this Almighty person?") And Harold Wilson wore his Gannex more visibly than his religious convictions. So Tony Blair is different. He is, in a sense, more like George Bush and the millions of evangelicals who voted for the born-again president than he resembles any of his immediate predecessors - or most of us. For we Brits are not a devout nation. Perhaps, at birth, marriage and death times we still go through the motions, but our church attendance record lies far down any European league table. We are a Missing (if not wholly Immoral) Majority once the steeple bells start ringing. What does that mean in everyday life? It means putting fire and brimstone at the back of the coal shed. It means a shrugging, shuffling scepticism of too many preachy certainties. It means that the causes which catch our imagination, like foxhunting or experiments with rats, achieve a headline salience far ahead of the abortion arguments, the human arguments, transfixing middle America. It means that mass religious debate is dead - and you pop out to put the kettle on at 7.48 every Today show morning. There are still racking debates around, to be sure, as gay bishops jostle women priests to the side of the pulpit. But these are ruckuses within the great, amorphous mass of Anglicanism, an established church without an established position. They start in New Hampshire and wend their way towards Lambeth Palace through a smog of introversion. They are all about what should be allowed inside the walls. By definition, they exclude non-participants. Eleven American states voted on gay marriage last week. You didn't need a seat in the synod to have a say. As this litany of differences unfolds, moreover, a second perception sidles into play. Perhaps it isn't just Tony Blair who is exceptional. Perhaps we ought also to be talking about British exceptionalism. I happened to be in Malta last week, discussing the case of Rocco Buttiglione in a university lecture theatre. Malta, number 25 on the EU membership list, not only doesn't have abortion, it doesn't have divorce either. (Its new Brussels commissioner was hugely relieved to get the fisheries brief; he'd probably have taken bread as well.) Not far from the university, on the other side of the Grand Harbour, stand the great bastions where the Knights of St John held sway; and the order's churches seem to dominate every street in Valletta. They are part of all our history, of a crusading Christian Europe militant to defend Jerusalem and spread the word by force of arms. This history hasn't ended. Not, of course, in the great balloon of al-Qaida that dogs every policy. Not in Bosnia or Kosovo, as Islam and Christianity fail to coexist. Not in Cyprus, north and south. Not between faiths in Northern Ireland. Not when Turkey's EU membership is on the table and the opponents talk "Christian Europe". Not when the charge against Buttiglione is led by German MEPs dubbing him "an acolyte of the Pope". Not when mainstream conservatism in Strasbourg - the one that excludes our Tories - is Christian Democrat. Many of these tensions, to be sure, are reflected in mainland Britain. Many of the faiths that live side by side on this island have passion and dynamism to spare. But they do not make us a country where religion much impinges, or can any longer drive, our politics. In the wake of Bush, there's been majority moralising from the Mail, for instance. Melanie Phillips, another true believer, leads that charge. But when such moralising turns to politics on other pages, the dimension swiftly narrows. Broken, dysfunctional families cost £2,500 a month in a B&B (or rather more at a Travelodge). Asylum seekers come to sponge on the NHS. Gypsies are rich enough to buy their own fields. Simon Heffer reprises that old second world war anthem: "Why should our men die for America?" Even gambling, when the gloves come off, comes down to addiction and crime. No good Samaritans there, then, no simple matters of right or wrong. Our homegrown version of the Moral Majority talks taxpayers' cash and envy and fear and profound selfishness. It's a Nimby notion of a non-religion. It is, in fact, just politics as usual. For the fact of the matter is that, rising en masse, we can't get righteously angry any longer. We are as fallible and flawed as any other society, but not because great issues move us. We don't have hospital boats floating in the Baltic offering abortions to desperate Poles. We have the malignity of random gay bashing, but not its tacit sanctification from on high. We are multi-faith and no faith, laid back and complaisant, benignly indifferent in a lager-sodden land. Our leader is not like that. He talks right and wrong. He wants, eyes blazing, to save the world. And we do not trust him, because we no longer trust such terms. He wants to be best friends with George W, too. And we do not trust that either, because we are exceptional. -------------------------------------------------------------- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.