16th October 2014 London, UK
Malala and a Big Tent in Cheltenham
I drove to Cheltenham on Saturday – a four hour round trip worth every mile – to hear a former Archbishop of Canterbury deliver a lecture at the Literature Festival. I was there to support a friend, whose organisation – COEXIST – was staging the event. But in the big tent I was as spellbound as any other member of the audience.
Lord Williams argued that our state should be secular in its procedures, not in its programmes, so it was able to stage national debates in which faith communities could bring their moral perspectives to bear. I’ve not done justice here to an hour of cogent musing by one of our greatest theologians. But that was the gist.
Talking it over in the pub afterwards, I discovered that all five of my school friends (it was a bit of a reunion) had taken something slightly different from the lecture. Two of our group were Methodist Ministers (in a pub, yes), and as they weighed the words of a former Archbishop, I wondered whether his proposal might sound too modest for Methodists.
Another friend was representing the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a watchdog body, but – in the terms of Lord Williams’ distinction (between faith communities and state) – closer to the state it watches over than to the religious organisations whose freedom to operate the EHRC is there to protect.
Another of our group is cheerfully atheist, and enjoyed one question tossed at Lord Williams by a humanist in the audience, who took exception to what he saw as a Christian prelate trying to corner the market in “human dignity”.
And I? The lecture’s most resonant passages for me were all to do with the wider world. As one example of how an ethical dimension had enriched our national debates, Lord Williams gave the abolition of the death penalty. I flashed onto events in Geneva the day before, where the UK had supported a Swiss initiative to mark World Day against the Death Penalty; and onto events this coming week in London, where we will mark the 50th anniversary of the last execution in the UK. In both these ways, we hope to increase the number of votes in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a universal moratorium.
Lord Williams spoke about Syria and Iraq, in response to a heartbroken question about the suffering of Christians in the Middle East. My mind jumped to Tuesday’s meeting of the FCO’s advisory group on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). Under Baroness Anelay’s chairmanship, we will grapple with the question: where in the world can the UK make the biggest difference in defence of this beleaguered human right? And how? The interfaith work of organisations like the COEXIST Foundation can make a valuable contribution. But the disgusting worldview of ISIL makes it equally obvious that FoRB needs robust action by both states and religious leaders.
Driving home, the radio provided alternating jolts of good and bad news. In Africa, Ebola continued to rage, and we were staging a national exercise to test emergency procedures in case of an outbreak here. This year’s “Blog Action Day” is all about “inequality”. As the West wakes up to our interconnectedness with public health conditions elsewhere, I comforted myself that the UK really had been at the forefront of efforts in Sierra Leone – long before we felt the first frisson of fear for ourselves.
But the other story was Malala’s Nobel Prize. Her example is all the more powerful for the way her hero status seems to astonish her. To her, it was simply a matter of her faith being stronger than her fear. Now that’s someone who – in Lord Williams’ formula – will enrich our international debates, if states and those who pretend to be states (like ISIL and the Taleban) will only let her speak.