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INTRODUCTION TO THE SECONDEDITION

The first edition of this book was driven by four factors. First, thelow esteem in which politicians are held and the general alienationfrom, or at least indifference to, the democratic political process inthis country.

Secondly, a conviction that this was very unhealthy, and thatthe political system under which we live could and should berobustly defended, and we should all be encouraged to makeit work. Because of those two factors the book was entitledFaith in Politics? with a question mark at the end, onewhich was sometimes overlooked when people referred to thebook. In short, given the low reputation of politicians and thegeneral disenchantment with the political process, can we stillhave confidence in the system?

The third factor was a belief that the fundamental values andunderstanding of life on which our democracy is based have theirroots in the Christian faith.That is why the second part of the titleread Rediscovering the Christian roots of our political values. Thisreference to Christian values was not meant in an exclusive sense,for clearly our system is also in part the result of Enlightenmentphilosophers and nineteenth-century Utilitarian reformers.

The fourth factor was the recognition by some of our mostrespected thinkers that the combination of market and socialliberalism which has drivenWestern society for the last thirty yearshas revealed a gaping void in our public life, and that something isseriously wrong with the way we live now.

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The Way We Live Now is the title of Anthony Trollopes 1875novel about financial scandals. When Trollope returned fromabroad he was appalled by the greed and dishonesty that thesescandals revealed.This reminds us that the present discontent withpolitics is nothing new, nor is the low esteem in which politiciansare held. In his great dictionary Dr Johnson defined a politician asA man of artifice; one of deep contrivance and Boswell recordshim saying that

Politicks are now nothing more than means of rising in theworld. With this sole view do men engage in politicks, andtheir whole conduct proceeds upon it.1

Whatever view we take on whether the political scene in thenineteenth or eighteenth centuries was worse than it is now, ourresponsibility is with the present, and we cannot be anything lessthan seriously disturbed, not just by the Westminster bubble, butthe whole global politico-economic system and the corruptionthat seems so endemic in the world today.

FAITH IN POLITICS EVEN LESS FAITHTHAN BEFORE?

As we approach the 2015 General Election these four factors areeven more marked now than they were in 2010.

The first edition of this book was written in the light of thescandal over MPs expenses. Not surprisingly, surveys showed thatMPs in parliament were held in particularly low esteem at thetime. More serious still, such surveys revealed widespread aliena-tion from the political system as a whole, as indicated by lowturnout in elections and a dramatic fall in political party member-ship.

The latest survey of public attitudes towards conduct in publiclife carried out in 2012 showed a slight upturn in positive attitudesto MPs from 2010 2012 as MPs tightened up the expensessystem; nevertheless there has been a serious overall decline since2004.2

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For example, in 2004, 31 per cent of respondents believed thatall or most MPs told the truth. In 2012 this had dropped to20 per cent. In 2004, 50 per cent of respondents believed that all ormost MPs did not use their power for personal gain, but in 2012this had dropped to 33 per cent. Over the whole period from20042012 the average level of trust in Judges was over80 per cent, that of MPs less than 30 per cent.

The report also shows that some 40 per cent of respondentswere in effect disconnected or alienated from the political system.As it said:

This alienated group of citizens just sees no party that couldsufficiently express their political views or represent theirinterests, and is overwhelmingly sceptical or deeply scepticalabout public life. Moreover they are particularly located inthe younger age groups, with 46 per cent of the under 30sfalling into this category.3

Amongst this exceedingly gloomy data two bright spots appear.First, people are much more positive about their local MP thanthey are about MPs in general. The average level of trust in apersons local MP over the period 200412 is about 45 per cent(compared to less than 30 per cent for MPs in general), which ishigher than for top civil servants Then amongst people from anethnic minority background in the age group 3044 in loweroccupational grades 79 per cent hold one of the two most positiveattitudes to standards and trust in public life. Despite those twotiny lights, it is clear that the challenge facing anyone who wants toconvince the electorate of the importance of the political process isstill a huge one.

A new factor in the political process, whose full effect is still tobe gauged, is the rise of campaigning groups using digital commu-nication.This was brought home to me in connection with Part IIof the lobbying bill. Part II of this bill emerged in the summer of2013 without any consultation and without any convincingrationale, though the Government said that it was in order to keepbig money from distorting election results by using third party

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campaigners as had happened in the United States. Charities andother campaigning groups believed that that bill would severelycurtail their democratic right to campaign in election year andimmediately dubbed it the gagging bill. They then formed aCommission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagementwhich I was asked to chair. Through intense campaigning thegovernment was first of all forced to delay the passage of the bill toconsult, and eventually to amend the bill in a number of significantareas, though not in all that was required.The pertinent point hereis not the flawed bill itself, now an Act, but the power ofcampaigning to bring public pressure to bear. For example at onestage in the passage of the bill the Commission set up a petition.Only four days later I was able to stand up in the Lords with apetition containing 160,000 signatures. The old style politics maybe tired, but this new style politics enables anyone to have a voiceon the issues that matter to them. Some MPs, who feel threatenedby this new style of politics, rightly point out that in the end it isthey who have to carry responsibility for decisions that are made,and as often as not decisions are a matter of balancing one claimagainst another. However, MPs are there to represent their elec-torate. Although as representatives rather than delegates they arerequired to use their own judgement, as Edmund Burke classicallyargued, it is fundamental to the democratic process that peopleshould be able to bring their views before them, especially duringan election period. Campaigning groups like 38 degrees with 2million members, and a policy of campaigning on a range of issuesthat concern their members, is one of these organisations thatenable the ordinary public to feel that they have a say.

What has also emerged with some starkness over the last threeyears is that the crisis in the political system is part of a widespreadloss of confidence in many of our major institutions and a sense ofmoral decline in society as a whole.

In 2004 those rating standards in public life quite or very highwere 46 per cent of those questioned, but by 2002 this has fallen to35 per cent.Those rating them quite or very low rose in the same

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period from 11 per cent to 28 per cent.This is a serious situation,even accounting for the particular scandals of those years.

Some comfort can be had from the fact that although there wasan overall decline in standards from 2004 12 this hides fluctua-tions in that period. Standards rose from 2004 8 and then fellsharply in response to the scandals concerning MPs and the press.As they began to respond to the crisis, confidence in them roseslightly. So, as the report notes, if trust can be lost, it can also beregained. This is an important point. It would be quite wrong tothink that we are on a slippery slope taking us ever downwards.What goes down, can go up. Standards may fall, but they can alsobe raised. Confidence in the political system and public life moregenerally, could be regained.This is also pertinent to the press, forthe newspaper hacking scandal has undoubtedly contributed tothe general loss of trust over the last decade.

Investigations into phone hacking by the News of theWorld andother News International publications which began in 2005resulted in high profile sackings, criminal charges and culminatedin the closure of the News of the World in 2011. The LevesonInquiry into the behaviour of the press and the police was set up inthe same year. Despite strong opposition from sections of the pressan independent system of press regulation under Royal Charterwas in principle put in place in late 2013. Unfortunately themajority of the press were not prepared to sign up for this, and theyhave set up their own regulator IPSO, the Independent PressStandards Organisation. This has been heavily criticised as failingto meet the essential requirements for an independent regulator setout by the Leveson Inquiry. So this is an issue that will need to bewatched very carefully.

In the light of this scandal it is not surprising that the averagelevel of trust in tabloid journalists from 2004 12 was about11 per cent, much lower than any other profession, thoughTV andnews journalists rated 52 per cent and broadsheet journalists39 per cent. People will draw their own conclusions from this,being encouraged by the continuing trust put in TV and newsjournalists, and to a lesser extent broadsheet journalists, or dis-

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mayed by the behaviour of tabloid journalists. Apart from this, thepress is under huge financial pressure because of alternative ways inwhich people now access the news, and readership of newspapersis falling fast.

Although the press is not dealt with in detail in this book, aflourishing, free press is fundamental to democracy, and a capacityto investigate an issue persistently and in depth is a healthy, indeedessential, feature. In an ideal world no doubt there would be novested interests that distort the truth but in the world as we know itpartiality is inevitable, and the only way in which the truth can beserved in such a world is to ensure that there is multiple ownership,so that what one set of vested interests wants concealed it is in theinterests of others to reveal. As they may all be in it together, as wesay, all bound up with commercial interests of one kind or another,it is also good to have publications that so far as possible standoutside the system altogether to report what goes on inside itwithout fear or favour. Sometimes one feels that it is only in PrivateEye that one discovers what is really going on in the world, andlearns what has been concealed in mainstream reporting.

Freedom within the law to express ones views, and to publishthose views, is fundamental to that liberty which is discussed in thefirst section of Chapter 4.We take it for granted in the UK, but anyconversation with someone who has escaped from a regime wheresuch freedom is denied, will quickly bring out what a preciousfeature of our society this is. It has to be strictly guarded even in ademocratic country; if not, it can quickly be lost or curtailed. InIndia, in 2014, Penguin pulped all copies of a scholarly book onthe history of Hinduism because the Hindu nationalist BJP partypressured them to do so. It was a very sinister development in acountry that prides itself on being the worlds largest democracy,and a development which has not yet received the publicity that itshould have done.

An even greater crisis in recent years, one with wide reachingand long lasting consequences, has been the banking scandal.Beginning in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it wastouched on briefly in the first edition of the book, and not only

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did this collapse trigger the biggest recession in 80 years, but whathas become apparent is that its effects have been devastating inmany other ways. Adding to this, a further series of near criminalpolicies by the banks continues to be revealed.The average citizenhas been seized with a mixture of disbelief and outrage at thisbehaviour. The distinguished columnist Sir Simon Jenkins, anotable champion of the free market even in areas which are themoment are protected, ended one column by stating that all thosebankers and financiers involved in the near collapse of the systemshould be taken out at dawn and shot.Yet bankers remain shame-less. Profits can go down, and still vast bonuses are paid.Thousandscan be made redundant, yet it seems that money can always befound for such undeserved sums.

The banking crisis was not an accident waiting to happen. It wasbrought about by human beings acting with criminal irresponsi-bility. In one way we are all involved. As a society we have beenliving with far too high levels of debt for too long. Governmentstoo are to blame both for the extent of deregulation in the firstplace and a failure to have strong enough financial watchdogs inplace. But the key players are the bankers whose ratio of debt toreal assets was far too high, and who thought they could controlthe future by eliminating risk with ever more complicated finan-cial packaging.

Since then we have seen huge fines, sometimes running into thebillions, for financial wrong doing. By March 2013 major banks inAmerica had received penalties of $100 billion for wrongdoingwith an estimated $151 billion still to come.Yet as was reported byone insider, many treat even such massive fines as the cost of doingbusiness which can be absorbed and which will have no realinfluence in changing behaviour.4 In the UK amongst otherscandals there have been fines for fixing the Libor rate and theforeign currency rate as well as for misselling insurance andpensions on a massive scale. A world ruthlessly driven to maximis-ing profit at any price has been exposed.When the film TheWolf ofWall Street was shown in the Wall Street area of New York inDecember 2013 the outrageous immoral behaviour of the preda-

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tory financial wolf of the film was cheered by many of those whowere watching those who were not from the financial worldwho were watching found it a very disturbing experience, notleast because of all the talk about Wall Street having changed sincethe crisis.

A very simple story sums up the fundamental change of ethosthat has taken place in our times. At a party I found myself talkingto a man who had retired from his bank surprisingly early. When Ienquired why, he said it was at the time of the big bang in 1986,when the combination of financial deregulation and big bankstaking over many smaller institutions resulted in a huge surge infinancial activity. He said he had prepared a financial specificationfor a particular client on the basis of what he judged to be in thebest interests of the client.The new owners examined this and toldhim to scrap it and shape up another deal which would gain moreprofit for the bank. He decided it was time to leave. There hadbeen a fundamental change of outlook from what was in theinterest of the client to what would maximise profit for the bank.Profit is not a dirty word. But the mission statement of DaytonHudson the America retailing group sets this in its proper place.This says:

The business of business is serving society, not just makingmoney. Profit is our reward for serving society well. Indeed,profit is the means and measure of our service not an endin itself.

That, I think gets it right. Profit is the means and measure of theservice. But the purpose is the service of society, whether it isthrough manufacture, retailing or financial services. In so much ofour life, that is what has been lost or was never there in the firstplace.5

Even apart from that however, it was argued byAdam Smith andhas been repeated by insiders in the financial world many timessince, that a good ethical environment is fundamental to thesuccess of the whole market economy.6 One aspect of this is aconcern for the broader social context in which the market

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operates. Matthew Carney, the new Governor of the Bank ofEngland warned at a City dinner that capitalism was at risk ofdestroying itself.

Just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked marketfundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for thelong-term dynamism of capitalism itself.7

Fundamental to the good ordering of a democratic society is theprobity of the police, and it is good that in the survey on publicstandards from 2004 2012 senior police officers were secondonly to judges with 69 per cent of respondents trusting them.(There was no survey in relation to junior officers.) However, verysadly, all is far from well in the area of policing.

In 1989 the Hillsborough tragedy left 96 people dead and 766injured in the worst stadium disaster in British history. Theirfamilies were never happy with the official story, but it was onlyafter 23 years with the report of an independent panel that the realtruth of what caused the crush began to emerge, with evidencethat the original account was skewed.

On 12 February 2014 the Home Secretary reported to Parlia-ment on where the enquiries had got to. As reported in Hansard,she said:

Around 400 witnesses have made requests to theIndependent Police Complaints Commission to see theiroriginal statements. In addition, the IPCC has recoveredaround 2,500 police pocket notebooks. These pocket bookshad not been made available to previous investigations andare now being analysed. The IPCC has also conductedfurther analysis of the 242 police accounts now believed tohave been amended.

What has emerged, and is continuing to be revealed, about theMetropolitan Police is even more serious, not least the evidence oflying and corruption in the investigation into the murderedteenager Stephen Lawrence.

All this is very disquieting. Desmond Tutu tells the story ofbeing a student at Kings College, London in the 1960s when he

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liked to go out in the street simply to look at and talk to apoliceman because he did not cease to marvel at the fact that thepolice were on his side and not against him. It would be terrible ifthat were no longer true.

Despite a succession of scandals involving the police there is alsosome encouragement to be had from the fact that, after howeverlong a period of time and as a result of persistent courageouscampaigning by individuals, successive governments have beenwilling to try to get at the truth. For truth matters. Indeed publiclife depends on the assumption that the truth is being told, whichis why lying to parliament, or falsifying evidence, have alwaysrightly been regarded as such serious offences.

I am not someone who thinks that everything has gone to thedogs and that all standards of behaviour have fallen. Clearly inmany areas of life standards have improved, and some forms ofbehaviour which previous generations took for granted, we nowfind morally intolerable. Nor on the other hand do I think thatoverall we are morally better than our forebears. Indeed the debateas to whether things have got better or worse is perhaps best metby the remark of R. H. Tawney, the leading economic historianand Christian Socialist of his generation, who might have beenthought to belong to those who thought that there had been someimprovement. However, when he was asked if he had noted anyprogress in the world in his lifetime, he replied laconically, Yes, inthe deportment of dogs. Dogs today seem much better behavedthan the unruly creatures I knew in my boyhood.

One positive point which needs to be underlined from thesurveys quoted earlier is that the public has been quite consistent inexpecting office holders to abide by the seven principles of publiclife, especially honesty, being committed to the public interestrather than their own, making objective decisions and account-ability. Measured by these principles the public may think thatstandards have fallen, but the fact that we consistently think thatthere are standards which remain essential, and which should beobserved, is important and gives grounds for hope. We need to

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continue to press home their indispensability in all areas of ourpublic life.

THE FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS

The first chapter on Speaking for God in a Secular Age examinesthe basis on which the Church claims to speak in and to thepolitical arena. In the text a distinction made by Rowan Williamsbetween programmatic and procedural secularism is referred to.Since the first edition of my book the lecture in which RowanWilliams made that distinction has been printed, along with arange of other illuminating essays that relate to the role of religionin public life.8 Particularly worth noting are the early chapters ofhis book in which he outlines his understanding of a pluralist state.In such a state both Christians and Muslims, who have widerloyalties and who acknowledge a higher authority, can participatein the democratic process and live with the consequences, even ifsome policies are enacted to which their religion is opposed.

Also published since the first edition is a book by Nigel Biggarin which he argues that the anxiety of many Christians to offersomething distinctive in the public sphere is misplaced. Whatmatters, he argues, is not that a view is distinctive but that it hasintegrity, and by this he means that it is derived in a serious andintegrated way from Christian foundations.9This is relevant to myargument that Christians may very well participate in a process ofbuilding up an overlapping consensus on some issue withouthaving to bring their underlying world view into the public frame.

The second chapter, on Law and Morality, considers the basis oflaw, and argues that it has both a moral and a theological founda-tion. Law is a far less modish subject than democracy, for example,but it is in fact more fundamental to our way of life than evenparliament. Wise commentators rightly remarked that one of themany mistakes made in Iraq was the idea that democracy consistedmainly of getting an electoral system going, whereas in fact therule of law is much more basic. Law is rooted in morality, andunderstanding the correct relationship between the two is vital tothe health of a democracy.That relationship has changed in recent

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years, but it does not mean there is no relationship.That relation-ship remains vital for all areas of our political life.

The integral nature of this relationship between law and moral-ity has recently been championed by one of the most distinguishedlegal philosophers of our time, Ronald Dworkin. In Justice forHedgehogs he argues for a value holism in which fundamentalvalues, our understanding of law and our approach to politics areseen as an integral whole.10 Beginning with the values of integrityand personal responsibility he argues that a state must treat all itscitizens with equal respect and concern. He then shows theoutworking of this in both law and politics. Dworkin believes thatthe realm of value and what follows from it politically and legallyconstitutes a self-enclosed circle of reasoning which cannot beundermined by science or justified by any religious or metaphysi-cal point of view. It is valid in its own right. In a further book,ReligionWithout God11, he argues that values such as beauty andgoodness constitute an objective realm existing in its own right.Dworkin does not believe in God, but for him this realm of valueand beauty is what religion is all about, and it is in relation to thisthat a persons life has meaning and significance.

Dworkins argument is an important one in combating bothethical relativism and legal positivism. As indicated above, he is anexample of how you do not need to have a conventional religiousfaith to see that law must be grounded in, and integrally related to,fundamental moral values.12

The third chapter on What makes us think God wants Democ-racy? has a deliberately sceptical title because it is so easy to claimthat a particular political system has religious backing, as was donefor so long by advocates of the divine right of kings. But, aware ofthis, it is nevertheless maintained that Democracy is the worstsystem in the world except for all the others.13 At the same timeit is argued that it is above all a Christian understanding of what itis to be a human being in society that enables us to see importanceof democracy in its totality, both as an expression of a desire to livewell together, and as a check on our tendency to pursue our owninterests at the expense of others.

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The fourth chapter on Liberty, Equality and Life in Commu-nity looks at the three political values enshrined in the slogan ofthe French Revolution and argues that all three are absolutelyfundamental to the Christian faith.Although they may be champi-oned by a whole range of political philosophers, the Christianfaith offers a sure grounding for them; one which others may notbe able to share, but which they can recognise as undergirdingvalues that have a Christian basis as well as a secular justification.The case is even stronger than may have been apparent at the timeof the first edition of my book as a result of Larry SiedentopsInventing the Individual. In this book he sets out to change ourwhole, taken for granted, understanding of the origins of liberalegalitarianism.14 He argues that Renaissance scholars and thosewho have followed them fundamentally misunderstood the natureof the classical world. For him it is St Paul who is the key figure inaffirming the worth of the individual as such, and in a detailedintellectual history tracing this through the Christian Middle Agesshows how the value of the individual was continually reaffirmedin different ways. One respected academic reviewing the book in asecular journal wrote:

In the course of this journey, he explodes many (perhapseven most) of the preconceptions that run through thepublic culture of our day and that I took for grantedbefore reading this book.15

The book is a much needed corrective which provides a solidhistorical basis for The Christian roots of our political values, thesubtitle of my book. Perhaps the only thing that is surprising is thatthe Christian basis of liberal egalitarianism has been ignored for solong.As Siedentop argues, If we in theWest do not understand themoral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape theconversation of mankind?16

The fifth chapter on Does God believe in Human Rights?again has a sceptical tone to it because a cursory reading of someparts of the bible might give the impression that God doesnt.Further, in some periods of its history the church has in fact been

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an opponent of the rights which we now take for granted.Nevertheless, it is maintained that, properly understood, theChristian faith again offers a sure foundation for rights, and it is noaccident that the prime movers to bring the UN Declaration onHuman Rights into existence after World War II were someprominent Christian statesmen.

CHAPTER 6 ISSUES OF IDENTITY

The final chapter on Who do we think we are? discusses thosequestions of identity which are so crucial to understanding theworld in which we live today. There is a very close connectionbetween identity and religion and this is the major reason whyreligion is such a potent factor in the world. The Christian faithoffers some distinctive insights about the issue of identity, castinglight on the question of who we think we are, and which hasimplications for one of the major political concerns of our time.

National identity is not something that is fixed and unchanging.On the contrary, it is in a state of continuing flux depending on thenature of the polity and the circumstances that a country faces atthe time. Linda Colley, for example, has shown how the conceptof Britishness was forged between 1707 and 1837 by a set of ideassuch as Britain as an island and a bastion of liberty, and as aProtestant nation with a powerful navy in contradistinction toFrance, a despotic Catholic country.17 More recently she hasstressed that all the identities in the British Isles, whether Scottish,English, Welsh or Irish have been shaped by their relationship notonly with one another but in relation to the Empire and Europe,and that these identities have varied greatly depending on thehistorical circumstances of the time.18

Since the first edition of this book I have been privileged to be amember of a new Commission on Religion and Belief in BritishPublic Life, convened by the Woolf Institution. This went out topublic consultation in the summer of 2014 and is due to publish itsfinal report after the 2015 Election. This has enabled me to thinkfurther about the relationship between religion and identity notonly from a Christian point of view, but from the perspective of

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living in a multi-faith society, albeit one still with an EstablishedChurch. From about 2000 to 2008 there was a fair amount ofanxiety and debate about the concept of Britishness. If it is not somuch to the fore now, this is because we are much more at homewith the concept of multi-identities than when Norman Tebbittfirst proposed his question about which cricket team we support(quoted later in this book). One sign of this was the openingceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in which a story of Britishhistory was told which people in Britain felt comfortable with,even though to avoid controversy it did not go very deep and wasnot recognised as the Britain they knew by Americans.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, in exploringconcepts of Britishness, many attempts were made to go beyondcivic identity, which is concerned primarily with institutions, toinclude a range of values which were thought of as particularlyBritish. Gordon Brown, for example, in an article written inMarch 2008 wrote that what matters are:

The common values we share across the United Kingdom:values we have developed together over the years that arerooted in liberty, in fairness and tolerance, in enterprise, incivic initiative and internationalism.

He went on to suggest that these values live in the popularity ofour common institutions from the NHS and the BBC through tothe Olympics and such movements as Make Poverty History.

This kind of list has been criticised in two ways. First, forsuggesting that these are distinctively British values. But it can beargued that these are values which have been developed in oursociety, and which are fundamental to our life now, so they areBritish in that sense, without claiming that British society has amonopoly on them. The same values may be present in othersocieties, perhaps taking a different institutional form.

I would suggest three of these values are fundamental to our lifetogether. Fairness, tolerance and openness to the world. Since theCivilWar of the seventeenth century the English (leaving aside theWelsh, Irish and Scots for the moment) have on the whole been

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reticent about their religious beliefs. Scratch an Englishman anddeep down you will probably find that some residual belief is infact there, but even stronger will be a moral conviction that thingsought to be fair, a conviction which has come to be part of themoral ethos of all the constituent nations of the United Kingdom.One obvious manifestation of this is the idea of fair play in sport,but it goes much deeper than this. It is difficult to see where thehistoric roots of this conviction about fairness lie. This is not thecase with tolerance, for the roots of this can be clearly seen in thecult of liberty that characterised the British identity forged from1707 to 1837 as traced by Linda Colley. Openness to the worldalso has historic roots. These are to do with having been a greatempire, the transatlantic alliance and the fact that, like it or not, wehave been bound up with the rest of Europe. This means that incontrast to the United States a policy of isolationism has neverbeen a serious option for the British. The loss of empire and theweakening of the transatlantic alliance may have taken place, but itshealthy legacy is a sense that we should play a constructive andresponsible role in relation to the rest of the world. So, fairness,tolerance and an openness to the world may be British values thatgo beyond the civic ones, even though they are clearly related tothem.

Lord Parekh has been critical of the stress on values by GordonBrown and others. He suggests that it is a sense of commonidentity that is needed, and that if we had that we could live withdifferent values. He thought it more important to identify theinterests, projects and loves that we have in common, for it is thesethat have shaped our identity.The problem is that we are a nationmade up of a whole variety of subcultures, not just ones formed byreligion or ethnicity, but by tastes in entertainment and music, byeducation and class, by wealth and poverty. Even mass popularentertainment only unites a small part of the population. Twelvemillion people may watch a TV series, but that means that 50million are not doing so. The fact is that the number of factorswhich give the country a common sense of belonging togethertoday are very few. When asked what they love about their

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country, people are likely to give very different answers. When,much to the surprise of his friends, the poet Edward Thomas,volunteered in his forties to fight in World War I, and they askedhim the reason, he simply bent down and picked up some soil. Forthis, he said. It was the landscape, over which he had walked for somany hundreds of miles that he cared for, as well as all that it stoodfor.That is not an answer everyone will give. So it is important totry to identify those fundamental features of our life togetherwhich are not just a matter of personal preference but which aresymbolic of our shared life.

First among them, of course, is the Sovereign, not simply as theapex of our political system, but as a focus of identity for thenation. One of the features of the monarchy, at least since Victo-rian times, is that it has not been racist.Victoria as Queen Empressinsisted that there should be no discrimination on the grounds ofrace with her imperial subjects.This tradition has continued to ourown times and is a marked feature of the rule of present Queen.

The case has been similar in the case of religion. In 1809 all theplaces of worship were open to celebrate the Jubilee, includingsynagogues. The sons of George III made a point of visiting themore fashionable synagogues.This was no doubt due in part to thefact that the war debt was being financed by Jewish bankers, butwhatever the motive, official visits took place.19 In our own timethe Queen has not only visited many places of worship of religionsother than her own, she has strongly supported events like themulti-faith Commonwealth Observance inWestminsterAbbey, inwhich leaders of all the main religions take part. It was an aspect ofher role she emphasised in her speech to Church of Englandbishops on 15 February 2012.The Queen said:

Here at Lambeth Palace we should remind ourselves of thesignificant position of the Church of England in our nationslife. The concept of our established church is occasionallymisunderstood and, I believe, commonly under-appreciated.Its role is not to defend Anglicanism to the exclusion of

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other religions. Instead, the church has a duty to protect thefree practise of all faiths in this country.

It certainly provides an identity and spiritual dimension for its ownmany adherents. But also, gently and assuredly, the Church ofEngland has created an environment for other faith communitiesand indeed people of no faith to live freely. Woven into the fabricof this country, the church has helped to build a better society more and more in active co-operation for the common good withthose of other faiths.

One important consideration in relation to the monarch will bethe next Coronation service, which will assuredly be differentfrom the last one and reflect that fact that we are a multi-faithsociety. In respect of this it is important to note that there isnothing fixed and final about the service or even the oath, whichhas sometimes been reformulated to respond to the circumstancesof the time. After the experience of James II and the fear of aCatholic monarch coming to the throne, the oath for William andMary in 1689 was rewritten so that they had to promise to ruleaccording to the profession of the Gospel and the Protestantreligion established by law. They were handed a bible with thewordsto put you in mind of this rule and that you may follow it.Afew years later, in 1702, Anne had to make a declaration againsttransubstantiation.20

Beyond the monarch, however, it is important to identify civicevents in which the country can give public expression to its owndistinctive character and sense of itself. In the same way that afamily will have certain events when it expresses and celebrates itslife, so do nations. In the United States this is Thanksgiving Day,which succeeds in a remarkable way at bringing the nation to ahalt, so that members of families can gather together from hun-dreds of miles away to express what it is to be American. ForAmericans too, the flag has an almost sacred quality as a sign ofmultiple races, religions and communities belonging to one polity.After 9/11 there was hardly a house in the United States that didnot have the flag flying outside.

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Some have suggested that in Britain we too should have anational day, but at the present juncture this would only be anartificial creation with no hope of taking off. Much more positive,from the point of view of national solidarity, is the evolution ofChristian festivals, especially Christmas, to become periods ofcelebration for everyone, regardless of their religion.The loss of adistinctive Christian message may be distressing for Christians, butin terms of social solidarity it is a gain. Jonathan Freedland, writingfrom a Jewish point of view, says that when he grew up his familystudiously avoided anything to do with Christmas, with a greataunt not even allowing the word to pass on her lips. Now, he says,It is a kind of collective Sabbath for his family, with turkey,seasonal music and all.21 It is another example of the evolutionaryapproach, so characteristic of British life, of osmosis and cross-cultural fertilisation.

This process has in fact been going on for many years. Not justevents like the Commonwealth Service already mentioned, but inmany acts of practical co-operation. During recent decades thepublic good has been served by initiatives, usually taken by theChurch of England and working through the good relationshipsbuilt up with other faith leaders. For example it was such relation-ships that helped to quieten the unrest in Northern cities in 2001.

Civic authorities have a role in this evolution by ensuring thatall faiths are properly represented on civic occasions, but becauseof its historic position, so does the Church of England. TheMayoral service for example, in most communities, still takes placein the major Anglican Church, and this can be so designed as toreflect the religious makeup of the area.

In the autumn of 2013 I had to preach at the service markingthe beginning of the legal year for the Western Division in BristolCathedral. A similar service for judges, lawyers, magistrates andcivic authorities takes place in every part of the country at this timeof the year. In Bristol both the High Sheriff and the Mayor wereMuslims, the High Sheriff being very devout. She asked thatpassages from the Quran be read, including the opening verse.The Bishop of Bristol acceded to her request, and it was arranged

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that they be read in the Cathedral, when everyone had been seatedand welcomed but before the actual Christian service began. Itwas a brilliant decision that made the Muslim High Sheriff feel, asshe said, embraced, but did not alienate the core congregation orindeed Muslims, by any blurring of boundaries.

I believe that starting where we are, but seeing how this canevolve in an ever more inclusive way, is the one best suited to ournation, and the one most likely to achieve the goal we desire.Thedifficulty with starting again from scratch is illustrated in a tiny wayby the prayers that are said in the House of Lords every day, prayerswhich are voluntary but which are in fact attended by believersfrom all the main faiths.These are highly traditional prayers for theQueen, the Royal Family and the work of parliament not prayersanyone would say in their personal life. From time to time the callhas come to update them, or to include other subjects, or to letpeople other than Bishops in the Church of England say them.Every time this happens, the Procedure Committee of the Lords,before whom such requests comes, resists them.Tiny changes havebeen agreed, a greater choice of psalms and Prayer Book collects,but nothing fundamental because as the committee knows, itreally would be a Pandoras Box, and nothing would be agreed.That is a situation of stasis, but there are other contexts wheregreater development and latitude is I believe possible.

It has been argued that being British is one of the mostsuccessful examples of inclusive civic nationalism in the world.22

This is borne out by opinion polls in which people are asked aboutthe importance of different aspects of being British. The repliesindicate that to speak English, being a British citizen and respectfor law and institutions associated with it are key, all scoring over80 per cent. Sharing customs and traditions rated only 52 per centand being Christian a mere 31 per cent.23This suggests that beingBritish is indeed primarily a civic identity, and that people are veryhappy for this to co-exist with a variety of religions, customs andtraditions. In so far as being British involves more than this, itmeans fleshing out those values of fair mindedness, tolerance andopenness, which are implicit in our institutions and common life

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with a multi-faith undergirding. It also means identifying, affirm-ing and developing the unifying symbols connected with ournational institutions in a multi-faith direction. Beyond this, what itmeans to be British is a matter of organic growth, and this cannotbe forced. I believe that the Church of England (but not only theChurch of England) is helping to facilitate that evolution in aninclusive way.

At the moment in England we have an established Church,which as many leaders of other faiths have said, is a help to them intaking their place in public life. Perhaps we should see the Churchof England as a gnarled old oak, maybe no longer with the strengthand vigour of its youth, but still standing and able to support therambling roses growing up all over its leaves and branches. Cut theoak down, and what do you have?Vigorous growth perhaps, but ascramble for the light, and nothing to hold on to. Like all analogiesthis one is not exact. But my point is that a broadly tolerantreligious body like the Church of England can play a significantrole in shaping an evolving narrative for our society that is moreinclusive of other faiths. My vision for our society from this pointof view is of a society at ease with itself. A society in whichindividuals and communities:

Feel part of an ongoing national story In which they are free to practise their religion and express

their beliefs

In which they are treated with equal concern and respectby the state

In which their culture and religion are respected as part of acontinuing process of mutual enrichment

In which their contribution to the texture of our commonlife is valued

In which they are confident in helping to shape publicpolicy

In which they are challenged to respond to the manymanifest ills in the society itself and the world as a whole.

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In short, a society in which they feel at home and to whichthey want to contribute.

During 2014 the underlying alienation of so many from ourpolitical system came together with issues of identity in twodramatic ways.The first was the European elections in May. UKIPcame out top with 27 per cent beating Labour on 25 per cent, theConservatives on 24 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on7 per cent. It was the first time in our lifetime that neither Labournor Conservative topped a national election. Commenting on thisresult Sir Anthony Seldon wrote:

When the earthquake subsides, what will be left is a deep distrustin Britain and across Europe of the EU, and a reassertion ofnational interest. This question of national sovereignty has beenthe biggest question in British politics for the past 50 years.24

This is part of the truth. But the vote for UKIP is not just aboutnational sovereignty; it is the expression of disenchantment withthe prevailing political order, a feeling that the major parties are allpart of an establishment which is not taking into account thefeelings and interests of ordinary working people.

This was further reinforced with the result of the bye-electionheld on 9 October 2014. Clapton, a formerly safe Conservativeseat, fell to UKIP, who achieved a majority of nearly 60 per cent ofthose voting. No less significant was the result of the otherbye-election on that day, the former safe Labour seat of Heywoodand Middleton. Labour retained the seat by only 617 votes,indicating that a number of Labour seats in the North of Englandwill be vulnerable in the General Election. Overall it was predictedthat in the light of these results UKIP are likely to win 5 seats at theGeneral Election with another 25 possible.

The second focus for this combination of nationalism anddiscontent was the Scottish Referendum on independence on18 September, an event which aroused more genuine politicalpassion than any other in living memory.

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Although the Scottish people voted 55 per cent to 45 per centagainst independence and agreed that it was better to stay part ofthe United Kingdom, everyone is agreed that the referendum willact as a catalyst for the political reform which is so necessary for thewhole of the UK. It will of course lead first to more devolvedpowers to Scotland and then to Wales. But in England there is ahuge imbalance between London and the regions which needs tobe addressed, as well as the issue of England itself in an increasinglyfederal United Kingdom. Not least there is the issue of localgovernment whose powers have become increasingly attenuatedover the years.All this will be difficult and controversial, but for themoment anyway, politics has come alive for many though not forall. In Scotland although the turnout as a whole was a substantial85 per cent there was the familiar contrast between areas where itwas much higher and others where it was much lower, revealing asubclass still disenchanted even over a major issue like independ-ence.

As a result of the promises made to the Scottish people by allmajor parties before the vote on the referendum, and the wide-spread realisation that this has huge implications not just for thefour nations but for the whole political structure of the UK there islikely to be a Commission on the Constitution in 2015.The kneejerk response to the referendum result has been to call for Englishvotes for English laws (Evel). However the prospective imbalanceof Scottish MPs being able to vote on English Laws whilst at thesame time English MPs would not be able to vote on onesdevolved to the Scottish Parliament is only one aspect of a muchwider imbalance. This is caused by the fact that England provides84 per cent of UK MPs, reflecting the size of the population,Scotland 8 per cent, Wales 5 per cent and Northern Ireland3 per cent. If the UK is to remain united with those elected as MPsall having equal powers and status it will be necessary to considersomething similar to that which operates in a number of countrieswhere voting power does not simply reflect the size of theconstituency. For example California has 2 members of the USsenate to represent its 38 million citizens, the same number as

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Wyoming, which only has 583,000 people. A similar principleoperates in Australia regarding the relation between New SouthWales andTasmania.To achieve lasting unity special arrangementshave been made to recognise the needs of minorities.

One key reason why many people believe it is crucial forScotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to stay together, and for thewhole of the United Kingdom to be a strong player in Europe, isbecause of the devastating power of globalisation, especially itseconomic consequences. Individual nations are increasingly help-less before an international financial elite who can move moneyand industry round the world at will. The only way in whichinternational capitalism can be ordered for the good of both theindividual nation and the whole is by intensive cooperationbetween states and the building of strong continental and world-wide institutions. As Gordon Brown put it in an article before theScottish referendum:

In years to come getting control of your economic destinywill involve new, more intense relationships with yourneighbours, your geographical region, your continent andthe wider world, and will inevitably mean layer on layer ofcooperation with regional and global institutions,recognising that there are global problems such as climatechange, open trade and development that need globalsolutions. One example suffices: no country today cansecure its tax base without international cooperation to rootout tax havens.25

One implication of this is that the euro scepticism so favoured insome quarters needs to be resisted. A stronger Europe, not aweaker one, is the only way the individual nations of Europe maketheir proper contribution in a globalised world. This applies inevery area of life, not just the economic sphere, but no less onclimate change and foreign policy.The case for a more, rather thana less, integrated Europe has recently been powerfully restated byAnthony Giddens.26 In all the forthcoming talk about a newconstitutional settlement in the United Kingdom this European

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dimension must not be lost sight of. We need a federal Britain in aconfederal Europe to useTimothy Garton Ashs phrase.27

Whilst there are compelling economic arguments for thisfuture, I believe it also carries a moral and Christian imperative.For nationalism, on a Christian perspective, and even when notdistorted, is only a partial, limited, and finite good. From aChristian point of view we find our identity first and foremost asmembers of the body of Christ and within the family of humanity.Other identities are subordinate to these. The emergence ofnationalism, racism and right wing policies seen all over Europe inrecent years is a reflection of the alienation felt by so many with thepolitical process, and this is in turn fuelled by the economicconsequences of globalisation. Globalisation is a fundamentalfeature of our time, and if it is to serve and not just devastate localand national economies, active co-operation between nations iscrucial. A book which made huge waves in 2014 was Capital in theTwenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty which analysed thegrowth of inequality in our times. He wrote, If democracy is someday to regain control of capitalism, it must start by recognising thatthe concrete institutions in which democracy and capitalism areembodied need to be reinvented again and again.28 This for mepoints to the desperate need not just for political reform within theUK but for much stronger intergovernmental institutions andorganisations working across continents and internationally. Idont see how else the money now rapidly circulating round theglobe can be controlled and channelled to serve people as a whole,and make the world more a reflection of that universal banquet inwhich everyone has a place.

CHAPTER 6 FURTHERING THECOMMON GOOD

The Common Good is a fundamental category of Catholic socialteaching which came to prominence in the United Kingdom witha thoughtful document issued by the Roman Catholic Bishops ofEngland and Wales in 1996, prior to the election. More recentlythere has been an attempt to carry this forward with a new

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approach to politics which has included other Christians and thoseof other faiths.29

In Western society today it is generally held that there is noshared understanding of the common good; rather, each indi-vidual will have their own ideas about this. There are also manyinfluential thinkers who argue that this is not just what societyhappens to be like at the moment, but what it should be like.Whatwe share is the rule of law, and providing we act lawfully eachindividual should be free to make their own choices about thenature of the good life. Apart from the law there are certain publicgoods, such as the provision of clean air, which the normal marketmechanisms cannot control and which therefore the state provideson the basis of taxation. Such public goods include a basic securityprovided by the police and the armed services. This view ofsociety, a nomocracy (from the Greek word for law), is oftencontrasted with a telocracy (from the Greek word for goal orpurpose), in which a society is united by a common understandingof what life together is about.30 Britain before the Reformationwas a telocracy, with its common goal provided by a widely sharedunderstanding of the Christian faith which was imposed by thestate.The problem with telocracies, as we see in the world today, isthat the scope for individual freedom can be non-existent ormarginal, especially the freedom to practise a religion or ideologydifferent from the one imposed by the state. For this reason manyreligious people, for whom belief is fundamental to their wholebeing, have often placed freedom to practise the religion of theirchoice above a shared understanding of the common good, as wesee in the foundation and history of the United States. However,no less significant from a Christian perspective is the convictionthat we belong together and that a shared common life rooted injustice is fundamental to human wellbeing.

I noted in the 2010 edition of this book that there were somesigns that the tectonic plates of our society were beginning to shift,that the ideology which put the individual pursuit of gain andpleasure above the well-being of society as a whole, and which haddominatedWestern society for thirty or more years, was beginning

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to be questioned. In 2009 for example we saw some majorchallenges to this by Michael Sandel and Amartya Sen. Since thenthis challenge has become even more insistent.

In his Reith Lectures and subsequent book based on themMichael Sandel showed in a range of examples that neithereconomic liberalism nor social liberalism is enough.31 We need tofind other values, in addition to free choice, for society to functionas, in our better moments, we want it to. So why have we beenreluctant to admit to this for the last fifty years? The first reason isthat we all have such different ideas of the good that it would seemimpossible for society as a whole to agree on any commonnotions. Secondly, we fear that if there was a societal notion of thegood, it would be one dominated by fundamentalists. But asSandel pertinently remarked fundamentalists rush in where liber-als fear to tread.

Liberals stress the notion of each to their own understanding ofthe good, indeed it has come to be seen as one of the definingcharacteristics of a neo-liberal. But Sandel rightly points out that ifthey do not engage in the debate about a common good theground will be occupied by others.

Michael Sandel has since then worked out his thesis in anotherimportant book, What Money Cant Buy: The Moral Limits ofMarkets.32 In a serious of vivid examples he shows how we havegone from using the market as an efficient mechanism for thedistribution of goods and services, to being a market society wherealmost everything can be bought. He shows how in some areas thisnot only fails to work from an economic point of view, but how itcrowds out precious non-market values.To take just one example:in Israel on a designated donation day students go from door todoor collecting money for good causes. An experiment wasconducted by two economists. One group of students was given ashort motivational speech about the good causes. The secondgroup were given the speech and promised a 1 per cent personalbonus on what they collected. The third group were given thespeech and a 10 per cent bonus. The bonuses were not deductedfrom the amount collected. It turned out that the unpaid students

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collected 55 per cent more in donations than those who received a1 per cent reward and 9 per cent more than those who received10 per cent. Overall Sandel argues that if we believe in non-marketvalues we will have to champion them in the public sphere.Economics is not neutral and we cannot leave everything tofinancial incentives. At the moment many of the values that wecherished thirty years ago are being undermined and crowded out.

Michael Sandels work is just one example of an intense disquietwith the underlying philosophy ofWestern society today.Another,mentioned in the first edition, is the work of the Nobel Prizewinner Amartya Sen.33 Similarly, shortly before he died the muchrespected thinkerTony Judt wrote a book called Ill Fares the Land.He begins, Something is profoundly wrong with the way we livetoday.34 He then points to the growing inequalities in wealth,health and life expectancy in almost every country in the world,and the world as a whole. He notices how in recent decades therehas been a preoccupation with the pursuit of wealth combinedwith an excessive individualism. Everything has been seen ineconomic terms. We cannot go on like this he says. We cannotcontinue to evaluate our world and the choices we make in amoral vacuum.35

As many have done before he points out that markets needvalues such as trust, honesty, and restraint and that, Far frominhering in the nature of capitalism itself, values such as thesederived from long standing religious or communitarian prac-tises.36

Judt laments the unbearable lightness of politics, dominated asit is by the ideas of self-expression and freedom of the individual.

What we lack is a moral narrative: an internally coherentaccount that ascribes purposes to our actions in a way thattranscends them37

A no less striking example of something shifting in the secularworld is the work of the German Sociologist, Jurgen Habermas.What is remarkable about his work is not only his stress on the debthe thinks European society owes to religion in the past for its most

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fundamental public values but his thesis that religion still has anindispensable role to play.

There is a profound underlying anxiety in Habermas which isexpressed in the title of his book An Awareness ofWhat is Missing.For all its achievements, he argues, the modern secular state cannotof itself arouse in people a sense of solidarity with all humanity,motivate people to act for the common good, or even giveundergirding reasons why a people should feel loyalty to a politicalcommunity. Here, clearly, faith communities have a role to play,not least because, he suggests, they encourage community action,whereas secular morality is primarily directed towards the indi-vidual as such.

All this, however welcome, might seem obvious enough. ButHabermas wants more from religion, as expressed by his referenceto the unexhausted force (das Unabgegoltene) of religious tradi-tions. By this he does not just mean the contribution of faithcommunities to the tasks indicated in the above paragraph, but thepossibility of secular reason assimilating, in its own terms, more ofwhat was once thought of in exclusively religious ways.

Habermas readily affirms that concepts like person, freedom,community and solidarity are infused with experiences and con-notations which stem from the biblical teaching and tradition.38

He then argues that this process needs to continue, becausesomething crucial is now missing in secular discourse. There is ofcourse a qualification. What counts is the persuasiveness whichtranslations of religious concepts have for the secular environment.

Does this understanding of religion put forward by Habermasimply that its future is to be fully assimilated in secular terms untilit is totally attenuated? In short, is it being treated in purelyinstrumental terms? Habermas strongly denies this, for he main-tains that despite the process of assimilation, the basic truth claimsof religion will quite properly remain strange and other to secularreasoning. Faith remains opaque for knowledge in a way whichmay neither be denied nor simply accepted.39

More recently Robert Skidelsky and William Skidelsky haveoffered another powerful critique of the assumptions underlying

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our present economic policies.40 They begin by criticising thenotion of a liberal state held by people like John Rawls, arguingthat it rests on a misconception of liberalism as being neutral anddevoid of any positive purpose. Classic liberalism took it forgranted that upholding civilisation was among the functions of thestate. In any case, neutrality is a fiction. A neutral state simplyhands power to the guardians of capital to manipulate public tastein their own interests.41 They argue that neither money norincreasing the GDP are ends in themselves. The state exists forsomething. Nor is it enough just to say that we need variousprimary goods which are necessary for any choice about thenature of the good life.The state itself should be characterised by arange of goods, without which it is seriously lacking. These arebasic goods, defined as those which are universal, that is funda-mental to any conceivable society; final, that is, an end in them-selves and not just a means to an end; sui generis, that is, not just partof some other good and indispensable. The authors select sevengoods which they argue meet these criteria, health, security,respect, personality, harmony with nature, friendship and leisure.

These seven could be argued about. For example, a moreAristotelian view was held by T. S. Eliot, one which I discuss,namely that the purpose or goal of humanity is virtue andwell-being in community. There is, however, a fundamentalagreement that we need goods other than a respect for free choiceabove all others.

Given these pleas by highly distinguished secular thinkers likeSandel, Judt,Amartya Sen, Habermas and the Skidelskys, to whichcould be added others such asWill Hutton and David Marquand, Ibelieve that people of Christian and other faiths should work moreclosely with secular thinkers to build up a much thicker moralframework for our public and economic life, one that includes butgoes beyond a simple emphasis on the free choice of the indi-vidual. We need to work at what John Rawls calls an overlappingconsensus. Rawls believed that we have to keep our overall worldviews out of this consensus, we have to proceed by public reason-ing. As is made clear in this book, there is no problem with the

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concept of public reasoning in principle. It is entirely congruouswith what the Christian church has taught about our capacitysimply as human beings to agree on certain basic moral truths.That said, the concept of public reasoning is not as neutral as itmight at first suggest. We bring our world view into publicreasoning whether we are aware of it or not, (and we ought to beaware of it), by how we select the evidence and how we weight thearguments.

But whether or not there is total agreement about the telos ofsociety, we need to co-operate in the goal of achieving anoverlapping consensus for a much more robust framework for oureconomic and public life than we have at the moment. For what isclear from the cri de coeur of these leading secular thinkers that havebeen quoted is that there is an emptiness at the heart of our publiclife in the West. However important freedom of choice might be,it is not the only value, nor should it always be the overriding one.We need a much richer concept of the common good. Religiouspeople and institutions of all faiths have an important role to playin thickening and deepening that concept.

What has gone wrong, as we might suspect, is in the end areflection of what has gone wrong with our whole understandingof what it is to be a human being in society. Since the seventeenthcentury our culture has been dominated and shaped by an exces-sively individualistic view of what it is to be a human being. Butmind is a social reality. We are persons only in and through ourrelationships with other persons. The Africans have a good wordfor it: Ubuntu. Christianity, Judaism and Islam, in their differentways, share this essentially inter-relational understanding of what itis to be human.

Before we are isolated individuals, making our lonely existentialchoices, we belong together in a common life, a life characterisedby interdependence, a changing mixture of dependence andindependence; of helping and being helped. Life in families,communities and societies is fundamental to who we are. Thismeans there is a common good and a public good which is not justthe sum of our individual preferences. So also there are civic values

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and virtues which reflect this belonging together; a societal soli-darity giving rise to non-market norms. These are norms andvalues that need to be struggled for in a world increasinglydominated by a market trying to crowd them out. Faith commu-nities are rooted in these values.We need to stand by them, and wecan do so not only with one another, but with serious-mindedsecular thinkers.

If those outside the church too often have a false view ofreligion as something that is only to do with the individual, thereare those within faith communities who fail to understand thatbeing religious is not just about going back to the source docu-ments, usually in a highly selective manner, but is about inhabitinga tradition, to use a phrase of Rowan Williams. It is out of theirrespective traditions of shared habit and wisdom that religiouscommunities have the resources to contribute to an ongoingdebate about the common good. From these traditions they willmake their contribution in an argumentative democracy.

Richard HarriesKings College,London

October 2014

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