Britain always keeps religion out of politics – and for good reason
After the Rees-mogg furore, let us hope that a new bigotry could never replace religious tolerance
No one expects the secular inquisition. Poor Tim Farron didn’t during the general election campaign: never mind Brexit, he was asked, what his views on homosexuality were. Sex and sin? His embarrassed spluttering lasted for weeks and eclipsed anything else the Liberal Democrats had to say.
Even Jacob Rees-mogg was surprised when Piers Morgan turned on him on the television sofa. Against abortion, is he? Even in truly grim circumstances? The response was a stutter, and a confession: “I’m afraid so.” Life is sacred, he said, so abortion is morally indefensible. Bingo! A heretic, exposed.
The sentence was passed a few hours later by Yvette Cooper, herself a would-be Labour leader. It’s all right for him to believe such things, she said, but the idea of someone with these views as party leader – or, worse, prime minister – is shocking.
An interesting line was drawn. If you are openly Catholic today and refuse, when asked, to disavow trickier elements of the faith then you can enter parliament. But to Ms Cooper at least, you ought not be allowed to get too far. The politically unclean should be marked, and kept in their place.
Being out of touch with the modern world is an accusation often levelled at Tories, but the irony here is that Mr Rees-mogg is in fact all too much in touch. As far as Pew surveys can establish, most people in most countries consider abortion morally wrong. Being religious, too, is rather popular worldwide – in fact, rapidly-secularising Europe is the anomaly. And even here, about a quarter of us think that abortion is morally wrong. So the traditional views of Mr Reesmogg are not unusual. What is unusual was the reaction, and the rigour with which the new liberal orthodoxy is being policed.
If you stand for election, people will want to know what you think, so politicians ought to expect such questions – especially in an age where moral issues are often far more interesting than political ones and, now and again, you’ll be presented as a moral outcast. British politicians regularly try to import Us-style culture wars for their own advantage: to get people worked up, denounce the other side as bigots. Done properly, it can be devastatingly potent.
My own training in the identity wars came while working in a bar in Rosyth that was popular with dockyard workers. The manager asked if I was Catholic, and I confessed that I was. It’s OK, he told me, I disguised it well. No visible crucifix, no giveaway surname (ie, Mc- something). So if I kept quiet, all would be fine. The regulars were a good bunch but there were house rules: no talking about football or religion (the two often overlapped). When talk turned to identity, I was told, things could get out of hand. People suddenly saw each other as the enemy. After a few drinks, things could get messy. So best keep faith private and avoid the topic.
I’ve tended to keep by the Rosyth rules ever since. When I was growing up in the Highlands, no one cared about religion. When I moved to Glasgow, the city’s sectarianism baffled me: best stay out of it. When I moved to London, a Catholic boss advised me to follow the same tactics. There was no sectarian bigotry, he said, but Catholics can arouse suspicion because we’re seen as Christians who aren’t even embarrassed about it. The general rule was that no good can come of anyone knowing about your faith.
I have since found many Christians in Westminster who stick to this rule – fearful of the hounding that might follow, especially if they become moderately successful. Not many MPS talk about it in public but they fear the old discrimination – against various churches – has given way to a new one, against those who demur in any significant way from the prevailing liberal creed.
When John F Kennedy ran for president, he made a long speech about why a Catholic could be fit for the White House. If he ever felt torn between conscience and duty, he said, he’d resign. His election was seen, at the time, as a milestone for Catholics being accepted as normal, patriotic citizens. Even in Britain, the old anti-catholic laws took a while to disappear. Catholic Emancipation came in 1829 but Prince George is the first royal in three centuries born with the right to marry a Catholic. So my four-year-old daughter is in with a chance.
When I was younger, I’d be told about various Catholics in high places – as if their example showed that young Catholics can aim high. It never occurred to me that we couldn’t: this kind of discrimination died out long ago. But I’m not too sure what a young Christian (or Muslim) listening to the Rees-mogg furore would think about their prospects now. Might religion seriously damage your career or social standing? Might it be best to learn ways of disguising traces of your faith, lest you be denounced as a bigot? Or, if you’re religious, best stay out of politics altogether?
All of this is uncomfortable for churchgoers, but it certainly doesn’t amount to persecution. Sharoon Masih, the only Christian in his class, was killed by a mob in Pakistan last month. That’s persecution. Being given a hard time in an interview studio is not. Britain is an Eden of religious freedom, and if you can’t withstand a bit of turbulence then your faith can’t be very strong. To raise children in any religion, now, is to send them swimming against a current – but that’s a fact of Western life. The question is how strong the current might become, and whether a new bigotry might be emerging in the name of tolerance.
But the various attempts to goad Christian politicians usually go nowhere for a simple reason: American-style inquisitions and culture wars don’t work here because our tradition is one of open-mindedness.
Ms Cooper might well find out that there is not much appetite for a crusade to find the heretics: we tend to accept that people have all sorts of views about life, faith and culture – and that the trick is accept it, not to fight each other over it. It might make for more boring politics. But this is, more than anything else, the British way.