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.
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