Moral relativism is not enough...

Everyone will, like the Dalai Lama, find the death of Osama Bin Laden “understandable.” They will think his demise broadly desirable, and hope it draws a line under a particular strand of Fundamentalist militancy. But the manner of it, which is not entirely clear, raises disturbing questions for many people alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Given that Osama was more effective and dangerous totemically than operationally, have we, in fact, seen the last of him? Treating him as a warrior rather than a criminal could play dangerously into his followers’ fantasies about him. In a world where people deny the moon landings, 9/11, and the death of the Princess of Wales, we can look forward to a rich flourishing of conspiracy theories about it.

Nobody who was not in Osama’s bunker this time last week knows exactly what actually happened — indeed those who were present must have been in a state of mind very different from judge and jury. The troops themselves had to calculate their risks in real time, reacting to all the circumstances they found. The rest of us will be profoundly grateful we didn't have to make that call.

What the debate about Osama's death has revealed is a startling moral relativism in many reactionary journalists and a few of the politicians they phoned around as they strung together a story out of this.

We must respect humanity because it is an absolute created by God. He made human beings in his image and likeness. Humanity is not a privilege accorded by other creatures, but the Maker's Mark. My own sense of moral reference is a basic way of honouring God. My respect for the humanity of someone else is not a privilege for me to play God and give them, nor a reward for good behaviour. Furthermore, people are capable of all kinds of evil, all of us, Christians (Adam and Eve) believe. The Church calls realism about this the doctrine of the Fall, and it is the context of all human behaviour to a greater or lesser extent. This doctrine carefully preserves the truth that nobody is, in any simple sense, evil, although they can do massively evil things. God saw all that he had made and it was good.

It follows from this basic theology from page 1 of the Bible, that if I commit an act, like a lynching, that denies the image of God in another human being I not only act out my own fallen nature (thus losing the moral high ground), but I also behave in a way that compromises my own humanity — thank God he gave it as an absolute that no human being can take away, not even me.

The moral relativism of some journalists about this (“Normally, of course, we should respect life, but he didn't so we don't have to”) is a real slippery slope, morally. It betokens not Conservatism, but Pelagianism — one of the oldest heresies in the book. They must not be surprised if bishops, including the Archbishop, do not collude with their Pelagian views.

MP expenses Chocolate Bunny Rage

Amidst a storm of understandable public anger about MP’s expenses, I think we need to remember that all these Spanish practices have been going on for years; their real heyday was probably under Thatcher, Major and Blair. When the roll is called up yonder we will doubtless discover far more heinous activity than 59p chocolate bunny allowance...
Perhaps we need to triage these scandalous revelations.

(1) Stuff that isn't really bent (but involves prominenti).
Was Gordon Brown sharing a cleaner with his brother then paying for his half actually wrong? I have met journalists claiming far more bizarre things... not to mention owners of the Daily Telegraph. That such revelations should emanate from Fleet Street, home of Spanish Practices, proves at any rate that it takes one to know one, though some will detect a faint whiff of hypocrisy.

(2) Makes a good story, but trivial.
Manure is funny stuff but people do actually use it to maintain gardens. Honestly. If I went to see an MP in their official home I'd expect it to be furnished to a decent standard, and this might indeed include a Laura Ashley Sofa.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about some of the colourful minor stuff people are expostulating about. Envy is also a sin.

(3) Second homes juggling
Furnishing properties when you're leaving parliament anyway soon, redesignating properties twice a year, etc. This sort of activity is just obviously completely bent, and the sums involved would get you sacked from any other job. As we discover people who already owned three houses in London juggling the system to maximise their values, for example, the scope of what we are talking about financially really is that of major fraud.

What's interesting is that some MP's have obviously interpreted the rules using tuned moral instinct about what it was right or wrong to claim, whilst others have had no scruples about anything, however bizarre, as long as it didn't actually contravene the rules. The “What I did wasn't against the rules” response sounds completely different from those who did have a moral compass than it does from those who didn’t.

Speaking as a voter, the remedy surely lies in our own hands. If we don't like the MP's we’ve got because they seem grasping and amoral, why don’t we all just vote for others who are less selfish and have better adjusted moral compasses? Easy. In a way the gap between what the rules allowed and what was moral helps us voters decide who’s who. When we've all stopped huffing and puffing, next election, we can take the responsiblity that belongs to us all as voters to put in people we believe in as our representatives... democracy depends on that, at least as much as it depends on robust parliamentary expenses rules.

Middle Class whining from Dystopolis

Time was an Englishman could only get another Englishman to despise him by opening his mouth. Nowadays you can just give him your postcode. I got star billing in David Aaronovitch’s Times column yesterday. Sadly it wasn’t me David was interested in, or anything I had to say, but where I live. He was spanking bishops for being middle class and whining, and the cliché doesn’t really work when the bishop you really want to spank lives in Manchester — God! Manchester! — so you have to wheel on another one from somewhere that sounds posher. I’ve always really enjoyed David’s stuff, and I’m delighted to lend him my postcode.

Apparently David was just tucking into a late night kebab with his chums in Toxteth, or wherever he lives, and an American friend said “The British are a nation of hysterics masquerading as stoics.” I wish I had said that, Oscar. A major aphorism is born, and I salute it.

Whatever David’s postcode, I think his point is very helpful and worth pondering. To what extent is this report about middle class entitlement? Lots of members of the Church of England are middle class and some of them feel undervalued. Bears-in-the-wood fans will notice that the word “middle class” is still enough, in itself, to curl the lip of Hampstead Man with scorn and contempt.

Most public comments on David’s column say sensible things, especially when you ignore the 85% that are obviously generated by machine for every newspaper comment box about religion (“God is (or is not) a nasty imaginary sky fairy” etc. etc). Yes, we are all middle class now; even David. But his middle class whining is OK, of course. It’s his column, after all, so he’s entitled. Yes, lots of religious people are, in fact, anything but middle class. Yes, middle class people pay the taxes that fund this lot. I buy all that. I think, however, David’s isolated a small but helpful element in this matter, about which it’s worth trying to be self aware. The key critical question is always “for whose benefit?” It’s good to be reminded of that and bear it in mind.

That said, when you actually read this report, it is not in fact trying to secure extra seats in the house of Lords, or even funding. Its point applies to all mainline religious bodies equally, indeed everybody, although its particular evidence base was about the Church of England. It calls for two simple things:

1. Government to have more rigorous and comprehensive information about what goes on at street level to inform its oversight of social care.
   
   
2. Church to be more strategically and tactically aware and self-aware about its work for the common good.

I don’t understand how either of those things, were they to happen, would disproportionately favour David’s middle class dinner guests. Quite the reverse. Surely everyone would benefit from a better informed and fairer third sector process, but especially the poor and marginalised. One Balliol man to another, what’s driving your middle class whining, David?

Moral but no compass?

This morning’s report from the Cambridge Von Hugel Foundation, excellently summarized with extracts by Ruth Gledhill, raises key questions about how the Church of England serves everybody in this country, and the assumptions political elites often make about it.

In the course of our research for this report, we have encountered a Church of England that, proportionate to its size, makes extensive contributions to the civic health of the nation. Bishops engage in countless activities ranging from involvement in fundraising appeals, to regeneration, to sitting on governing bodies of local schools or colleges, to community leadership. Cathedrals serve a dual role of being centres of prayer and of great potential for social action, education and regeneration – all within a rich Christian narrative of ‘hospitality’ and ‘openness’. Dioceses contain significant resources, both financial and human, that could enable them to become meaningful players in welfare provision and the strengthening of community foundations. Congregations, with their unique ability to know and understand the situation locally, have shown a true spirit of innovation in their quest to meet the needs presented (i.e. opening a post office in church) and to raise funds for wider Christian social innovations in housing, addiction, family support and anti-poverty campaigning. In this sense, it is no wonder that Anglican organisations and institutions have been pioneers and leaders in development work, children’s needs, and every area of civil society. All in all, the Church of England has proven itself to have the conviction, institutional capacity, innovative spirit and skills to extend its current reach even more widely, should it so wish. This will be a moment for leadership in the Church. Yet, despite this immense and longstanding involvement by the Anglican Church, the government, with notable exceptions, has consistently failed to pay more than enthusiastic lip service to its role in society generally and in the third sector in particular. In turn this means that Government is being experienced at the local and national level in negative ways. Its perceived discrimination against the Christian Church and other religious bodies, coupled with the relative downgrading of regional and other
local actors, suggests a policy-making environment that has essentially excluded, or pushed to the margins, social voices (not just religious ones) that are vital to civic debate. Those whom we met felt that the social welfare contracting regime as presently constituted must be reshaped in light of these concerns.
It is clear that the Conservatives have, at the least, a rhetorical desire to address many of these issues. In the case of the Labour Government, that intention is not so clear despite, as we have said, the outstanding efforts of a few Ministers and MPs. The prevailing culture of the government seems to flow against these principled pioneers.

In this, as in other areas of English life, the story from the top down is very different from the bottom up one. Many top-down politicos habitually see the Church of England as a quaint part of the infrastructure, oft taken for granted or patronised. Our ruling cliques are polite enough, but are essentially dismissive — thus Tony Blair’s holy terror about his chums thinking the party “did God.” Politicians’ default operating modes are often instumentalist (what they can get away with), knee jerk, or spin doctored (“I have my principles, but if you don’t like them here are some others”). They haven’t, by and large got a clue about majority religions in this country on the ground. They don’t even know, or apparently care, how many people and buildings there are, let alone what they do! Inviting the odd token bishop along to a press launch is apparently a good enough substitute for any hard knowledge of what’s happening on the streets. It’s pathetic.

Out on the streets, the story is different. The local vicar is just about the last professional to live where they serve. S/he’s the person who came to see you when your mum died, who often as not had time for you and in collaboration with the long-suffering but much-maligned funeral director tried to bring a bit of kindness, respect and faith into a situation where nobody quite knew what to do. S/he’s the person you could cry with when your baby died, who wasn’t working to the NHS standard target of under ten minutes a go. S/he’s the person who your kids laugh at in assembly or playgroup. You may not understand or share all of his or her faith, but it’s good there’s someone like that around. Bottom up, most people like the local holy man or woman — the church on the corner people seldom use weekly but fight to keep open for everybody — sometimes the only public space left in the village. Remember Priest Idol? An ex-mining community in Yorkshire was shown coming to life through the sometimes halting but faithful service of a parish priest with a sense of humour who was willing to be part of the place and believe in it a bit.

And that’s just the vicars. Go to any gathering of people who energise and service real needs on the ground, heave a brick and you’ll probably hit a dozen churchwardens. I remember the launch of the Bucks Voluntary Sector compact — non religious voluntary organisations, brownies, meals on wheels, hospital friends, children’s and youth groups. I was amazed, but about two thirds of those people had strong church connections. Ask who cares about the environment? Human trafficking? Overseas Debt? Fair trade? get them in a room, and you’ll have a very similar experience. A third of the nation’s children go to Church schools of one sort or another. Instead of wondering why parents fight to get their children into them, powerful voices in politics and the media sneer cynically at others’ motives. Who made them the judge over these? This is also pathetic.

The Christian churches reflect and articulate positively, imperfectly but surprisingly clearly at times, the core values and convictions of almost 80% of the population about right and wrong, family life, loving thy neighbour, etc. Yet they embarrass our rulers, who are ashamed to be caught doing God. Surprisingly perhaps, the few politicians who have the courage of their convictions are respected for it — many people are longing for authenticity, roots, courage, and a bit of faith in place of cynicism, despair and materialism.

All UK public service provision has to be delivered according to exclusively secularist assumptions — motives well underground and privatised. Why? In Australia, for example, they have a characteristically more pragmatic and less elitist attitude. Services aren’t imposed on people according to the assumptions of the governing classes, but grown within communities themselves according to their identity and core values. There’s no particular privilege for faith groups, but neither is the local secularism all pervasive like ours. To win back much needed respect, this report suggests, our leaders need, not PR, but a grounding for their morals, concern for public truth, and a compass by which to steer that transcends vapid secularism or media hysteria.

So how do we help our ruling elites to get real about the Church of England and, for that matter, other mainline Christian Churches? All this report is doing is asking our rulers to understand and respect, rather than belittle and patronise, the core values of three quarters of the population. In most democracies this wouldn’t be too tall an order, but perhaps in Britain it is.

Perhaps the Churches have been too lily livered in the public square. Perhaps they could find new and creative ways to be transparent about their activities and quantify them in forms that are accessible to outsiders. I look forward to an interesting and more down to earth public debate in future...