Religion and Politics

John Sentamu, Archbishop of York

Organised religion is always ambiguous. It can be both an instrument for good or for great evil. When I consider the history of organised religions the world over and look at the present state of our world and the countless acts of violence committed in the name of God, is it any wonder that the third commandment given to Moses on Mount Sinai was not to misuse the name of the Lord?

Such acknowledgements of wickedness give succour to those dogmatic atheists or illiberal secularists for whom any Utopian vision requires the eradication of all religion. Yet we only have to look to the Third Reich, the former Soviet Union and the present regimes of North Korea and Burma to consider that a society without religion rapidly loses faith in humanity. People become essential means of production – except, of course, the ruling classes.

It isn't by accident that every totalitarian movement of the last century sought to eradicate the influence of belief in God prior to imposing its despotic will. In our new century organised religion has become not so much the enemy to be eradicated but the tool to be abused. Whether it be the so called Salafi-Jihadism of Al Qaeda claiming the lives of innocent people perversely in the name of Allah or those narrowly focussed political parties attempting to usurp religious values and heritage, the purveyors of hatred and violence cover their wickedness with a religious cloak, or to use the words of Rabbi Lionel Blue, “the terrorists covering their own inner violence under a fig leaf of faith”. Such abusers of religion lay easy claim to centuries of heritage with their lip service whilst their actions, and in some cases perverse ideologies, twist out of shape the garment of faith woven over centuries by faithful scholars and adherents.

For those who claim the mantle of faith, the ultimate injunction must be for us to know God better, to know God more, and to love and serve our neighbour better. In doing this we fulfil our obligations not only to God but also to the society which we share. Such duties and obligations form the bedrock of a religious approach to politics that extends far beyond the comparatively modern term of “social justice”. Rather the prophets and the law lay the foundation for our primacy of care for the other and in so doing lay down the foundation for the role of religion in politics. As Jim Wallis, of the Sojourners, noted in his foreword to a recent report on the role of Christianity in Britain today: For Christians a commitment to the kingdom mandates that we seek the “common good” of the societies in which we live. Catholic social teaching is rich with the idea of the common good, as are Protestant traditions with their idea of the “public good”. The common good is not simply a concept embedded within the Christian tradition. Jewish concepts of shalom and tikkun are concerned with the common good, and the idea is also rooted deep in the history and theology of Islam. The common good suggests that the good of each individual is necessarily and vitally connected to the good of all.

It is a test for all the key questions that we face: from family values to foreign policy, from the housing we dwell in to the social values that dwell within us, from health care to healing of our national fears and divisions, from the distribution of our resources to determining the things we value most, from the things that make for peace on a global level to the community level, from our definitions of justice to our practice of it, from what we'd like to change to what gives us hope for ever changing it.

One of the many mantras of the New Labour party of a decade ago was that of “rights and responsibilities”: the idea that along with entitlement comes obligation. Unfortunately the combination of a rapacious consumerist appetite upon this mantra has led to the situation where seemingly unfettered rights and entitlements have come to the fore whilst responsibility has not simply gone out of fashion but seems to have fallen off the radar. The language of social justice may ring out in the phraseology of policy makers but it is a hollow call if at the same time our duties to one another, our responsibility to care for and look out for one another is lost. There is a danger that instead of seeing in one another the infinite worth of divine creation, that gives birth to our caring, we instead concentrate on what our own entitlement is and how we can utilise it to the full. This is where religion can act as a corollary as a constant imperative to act not in our own interest but in the interest of others.

Is it any wonder that organisations in Britain such as the Hospice Movement, Amnesty International, Shelter, the Samaritans and countless other organisations and movements have been founded and motivated by those with a religious faith who recognise the responsibility and duty towards the other? More recently the Drop the Debt campaign, and Jubilee campaigns, taking the Biblical idea of Jubilee to reinterpret it as a measure of freeing the most indebted in our world from crippling debt, have demonstrated that such care and concern is not limited to the religious alone but are founded on religious ideas which are adopted by a wider society. The work of Micah Challenge in holding our own Government and others to account over the Millennium Development Goals remains an urgent work.

One of my predecessors in York, Stuart Blanch, told the story of how the Devil was once asked what he missed most after he was cast out of heaven: “He thought for a moment, and replied-”I miss most the sound of the trumpet in the morning.” What did the Devil mean? It is true that he had chosen to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven; he preferred to be a law unto himself instead of an observer of the law of God; he had decided to pursue his own objectives rather than the objectives which God had prescribed for him. In short, he was free. But what did he miss? What was this sound of the trumpet? Like most men who served in the Forces during the second world war I did not relish the early call, the fixed routines, square bashing, seemingly irrational regulations. That trumpet call represented a serious loss of freedom. But at the end of a week's leave I was glad to climb into uniform again and resume my painful servitude. I found it onerous to be free.” I know that many people find the same – that there are tensions between the benefits of law and freedom. And we need to also recognise that there is a growing unease about the erosion of freedom in this country as well as the erosion of law. The trumpet which was once the herald of this nation's greatness was the imperative of moral responsibility, of doing the right thing, where what was right was informed by a faith based understanding.

Now we are told, if we push for the end of religion in the public arena, in our politics and the public square, we will free ourselves from the shackles of an enslaving and moribund moral responsibility. However if this is the direction which will shape our politics moral responsibility will be displaced not by reason, science or ethics but by sheer consumerism. The moral imperative of doing the right thing is in danger of being replaced by the consumerist imperative to buy the right thing. And to buy it now, whatever the cost. Our country's politics is capable of being driven by morals based on improving not only our own economic well-being but also that of our neighbour, of improving society not just our own lot. However the individualism of consumption and the vaunting of individual economic status over our communal well being has led to a politics which has given the market the role of moral guardian. In such a situation it is the weakest who are the first to the wall with the moral outrage of religion against such shabby and unfair treatment being reduced to nothing more than economic commentary.

Our current Government is in danger of sacrificing Liberty in favour of an abused form of equality – not a meaningful equality that enables the excluded to be brought into society, but rather an equality based on dictat and bureaucracy, which overreaches into the realm of personal conscience. Such petty mindedness can be combated with the generosity of the Divine which can be found at the heart of faith and which religion at its best safeguards through the valuing and encouragement not only of the voiceless but of all. Human rights without the safeguarding of a God-reference tends to set up rights which trump others' rights when the mood music changes.

Our society needs once more to rediscover the compassion and service at the heart of religion. With the vision and direction provided by religion politics can renew itself and become once more that which we can all seek to engage not only for the benefit of ourselves but for the benefit of our neighbours.

The words of the prophet Micah that echo through the centuries as we hear his injunction anew to – “To do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord your God”. In practical terms it can be seen in the countless calls throughout the Bible - one part Hebrew and one part Christian - to defend the fatherless, the widow and the orphan. To welcome the stranger and to share what bread we may have with those who have none.

This religious vision needs once more to become a political vision for all to create a more just society and usher in God's rule of justice upon earth. Let us all do it, and let us do it now.

The Most Revd. & Rt. Hon. Dr. John Sentamu has worked as a college chaplain, prison chaplain and parish priest. He has previously served as Bishop of Stepney and Bishop of Birmingham. In 2005 he was appointed Archbishop of York. This is an extract from a speech “The Role of Religion in Politics” delivered to the Institute of Jewish Policy Research.

John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, 10/02/2009