Cameron’s Description of Britain as ‘Christian Country’ Draws an Angry Response

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/world/europe/camerons-description-of-britain-as-christian-country-draws-an-angry-response.html?_r=0

By STEVEN ERLANGER
APRIL 21, 2014

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron’s effort to describe his own Christian faith at Easter has backfired, with some critics accusing him of fostering “alienation and division” by characterizing Britain as a “Christian country.”

The fuss over the remarks fit into the debates on national identity that are going on all over Western Europe, in the face of increasing immigration, especially from non-Christian societies. The debate is particularly striking in Britain, an ancient kingdom that is also asking other fundamental questions: whether Scotland wants to remain within it, and whether it wants to remain within the European Union.

Mr. Cameron wrote an article for a weekly Anglican publication called Church Times, explaining that his own faith is deep, if “a bit vague” on the “more difficult parts of the faith,” and that his attendance in church is “not that regular.” He said he wanted to “infuse politics” with Christian values such as “responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility and love.”

That much seemed to pass muster. But he also wrote: “I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more ambitious about expanding the role of faith-based organizations, and, frankly, more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives.” Britain has an established church, the Church of England, which is Christian and whose “supreme governor” is the queen; Mr. Cameron is a member.

more at link

[chervilant]

1. He's just spouting the "Party Line,"

playing the "opiate for the masses" card to keep the Hoi Polloi complacent and self-congratulatory about their piety. Doesn't seem to be working as well these days...

[cbayer]

4. Doesn't seem to be working out that well at all.

Hope he can see the writing on the wall.

[xfundy]

2. “responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility and love”--

don't require religion of any stripe. In fact, in the USA, many modern "christians" show the exact opposite. "Ye shall know them by their fruits," which are rotten and full of worms.

[cbayer]

5. I agree that religion is not needed for any of those things.

Discerning individuals should look at groups of believers and individuals in terms of their deeds, not their beliefs.

Inability to distinguish the rotten fruit from the healthy can be a problem.

[trotsky]

7. What's also a problem is the people who don't understand...

that even the notion of what constitutes a "rotten fruit" is up for debate.

After all, if it is someone's religious belief that a fetus is a human being, then anyone who supports abortion rights would, in their mind, be bearing "rotten fruit" (i.e., condoning "murder&quot . Thus they would simply be perfectly following your logic of picking the good fruit but rejecting the rotten - from their perspective, which is just as valid as yours.

[LeftishBrit]

3. I think he's trying to appeal to the Tory base and also win back potential UKIP voters..

by a bit of pandering, and a dog-whistle or two. Not that all Tories and UKIPpers are particularly religious; but many of them don't care for same-sex marriage, which is one of the few sensible things that Cameron introduced so they're cross with him; and even more of them don't care for immigrants, including Muslims and all those other furrin religions.

On the other hand, the Tories are not too keen on Christian clergy preaching 'compassion' and trying to 'make a difference to people's lives', when it involves any attack on policies that favour the rich over the poor:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609202/Stop-preaching-politics-Tories-tell-bishops-Fury-church-leaders-use-Easter-speeches-attack-governments-sinful-cuts.html

(I very rarely quote the Daily Mail, but they do reflect right-wing attitudes rather starkly.)

[cbayer]

6. For a country and society with a relatively low percentage of believers,

I find the religion/politics interplay in Britain really fascinating.

No 1st amendment? The Queen is also the head of the official church?

This all seems really bizarre to this outsider.

It seems that religion is almost always more political than religious.

[justhanginon]

8. I cannot understand how

any conservative can use the words compassion and charity with a straight face and not be struck dead by a bolt of lightning. It seems like that would be only just and possibly a good lesson for others.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Clegg calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England - and he's right

Britain may or may not be a "Christian country" (depending on your metric of choice) but should it be a Christian state? One person who thinks not is Nick Clegg. On his LBC show this morning, the self-described atheist called for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

He said:

More generally speaking, about the separation of religion and politics. As it happens, my personal view - I’m not pretending this is something that’s discussed in the pubs and kitchen tables of Britain - but my personal view is that, in the long-run, having the state and the church basically bound up with each other, as we do in this country, is, in the long run...I actually think it would be better for the church and better for people of faith, and better for Anglicans, if the church and the state were to, over time, stand on their own two separate feet, so to speak. But that’s not going to happen overnight, for sure.

Religious believers who oppose such a move should look to the US, where faith has flourished alongside the country's secular constitution. Indeed, in an interview with the New Statesman in 2008, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, (who went on to famously guest-edit the magazine) suggested that the church might benefit from such a move: "I can see that it's by no means the end of the world if the establishment disappears. The strength of it is that the last vestiges of state sanction disappeared, so when you took a vote at the Welsh synod, it didn't have to be nodded through by parliament afterwards. There is a certain integrity to that."

In an increasingly atheistic and multi-faith society, a secular state, which protects all religions and privileges none, is a model to embrace. As the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey showed, 48 per cent do not belong to a religion, up from 32 per cent in 1983, and just 20 per cent describe themselves as belonging to the Church of England, down from 40 per cent in 1983. The UK is home to nearly three million Muslims, a million Hindus and over 250,000 Jews.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/clegg-calls-disestablishment-church-england-and-hes-right

(Clegg is the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister)