The Multifaith Chapel and Library meets three times a month at the Burngreave Ashram on Spital Hill in Pitsmoor. This eclectic group of 'believers in just about everything (including nothing)' meet to compare notes. The three meetings are on consecutive days and at lunchtime on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I suggested we tackle the topic of 'faith and the state' and of course I have now discovered I will be away for all three meetings. So, I have been asked to prepare something for them to read.
The problem is, of course, I have no recollection of what it was we were discussing when I suggested this topic, so I will raise a few issues and hope the conversation sprouts wings.
My first point is about secularism and I think applies to all faiths. To be secular is not necessarily to be against religion. It is to believe faiths, as institutions, have no business running countries. Generally, throughout history religious people, imposing their morality on the state, have not been terribly successful (sometimes successfully terrible).
The reason for this is the claim that certain actions are ordained by God has a tendency towards infallibility. If God has ordained such and such behaviour, what do we do with those who disagree? They are obviously against God and so cannot be good people.
The issue is one of accountability. People of faith can be involved in legislation because in democracies their beliefs are subject to debate. All is provisional; if we don't like them we can vote them out. To remove a Catholic because we disagree with his or her politics is no attack on the Catholic Church.
So, from a general observation, applicable to all faiths, to a focus upon Christian faith.
What we forget, perhaps because our churches want us to forget it, is that the early church was a political movement. It was a movement against the Roman Empire and was persecuted for that reason.
Christians became church once Christianity was adopted by the Roman Empire. Before that, although perhaps trends were towards institutionalisation, the Christians were more like a movement. People who were identified as opposed to Emperor worship, were united by faith in Jesus, who had shown the way of opposition through the cross.
His conquest of death meant his followers had no fear of death and so had the courage to stand up to Rome in its more tyrannical periods. Their aim was not power but to carve out a place for an alternative to empire.
Since then, there have been many movements of Christians. Some relate to the state by supporting it, some attack it, creat alternatives to it, learn to live within it, contribute ideas to it, become obstacles to progress ...
This may seem random and perhaps it is ... but it is important to see what unifies them all. The Spirit uses churches to introduce what is new into the world not by force but by example. When we complain of secularisation, meaning change, too often we forget the source of those changes. Because Christians have an uneasy relationship with the state, they are pre-eminent amongst those who contribute new ways of doing and being.
It is the conversation between state and church, which leads to change in both institutions - or should do if only people were not so entrenched in their views. Life in a multi-faith nation, introduces new voices to this conversation. As we learn to collaborate, new possibilities will open up for all of us.
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