"Blind to Religion & Difference" by Paul Vallely

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This is an edited (by Richard Cussons) extract of an article that originally appeared in The Church Times on 4th June 2010.

On his first day in office as Foreign Secretary, William Hague missed one of his top priorities off his “to do” list. All the usual suspects were there; Afghanistan, Iran, Relations with Europe and America, and emerging superpowers China & India. But the top priority must be the re-establishment of diplomacy, especially after a foreign-office team blundered by publishing a brainstorming document on the Pope’s visit in September, which suggested, among other crass things, that the Pope should open an abortion ward and bless a gay wedding. How could Britain’s diplomats be so undiplomatic?

The Foreign Office changed as part of Labour’s modernisation project after its landslide victory in 1997, and many old hands were retired, fast tracking younger and inexperienced people through their career path faster. Huge numbers of management consultants were brought in to indulge in “blue sky thinking”. The introduction of instant e-mail brought less time for reflection, more coarsening of language. One diplomat said, “You do have to think the unthinkable sometimes, but such thoughts are never made public”. One of the important changes has been a new emphasis on diversity; fine tuning its antennae to avoid displaying prejudice to Jewish & Muslim groups. Yet these are conceived within a racial framework, not a religious one. For example, it was not possible to use the word corruption in a report on Africa, because it would look like anti-African racial stereotyping. Officials insisted that the report be rooted in African culture, until it was pointed out that this must include religion, which shapes many cultural attitudes.

There is a secularist mindset that resists the idea that religion exerts serious influence in the public sphere. This explains why the foreign office lays on frequent Muslim awareness courses for its staff but ignores Britain’s biggest religious minority, Roman Catholics, who make up 9% of the UK population.

MINORITIES ARE AXIOMATICALLY TO BE RESPECTED UNTIL IT COMES TO CHRISTIANS WHOSE CULTURE IT IS DEEMED ACCEPTABLE TO DISREGARD, AND ASSUMES A MORAL SUPERIORITY OF ATHEISM OVER BELIEF.

One former Head of Department said, “It is part of a wider antipathy, in the metropolitan elite, to religion. With Islam & Judaism, they are not allowed to articulate it because of the pre-eminence of the equality, diversity, and race agenda. But with Christianity, it is regarded as an acceptable antagonism, which is partly fed by the increasingly militant Dawkins-ite new atheism, and also by the outrage over the Paedophile priest scandal”.

There are also those from the Dharmic faiths – Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs - who feel the government ignores them because after 9/11 the big issue is Islam.

As a diplomat said, “Throughout the world, religion is clearly increasingly important to how people see their own identity, but here in Britain there is a myopia which says that just because something isn’t important for me, it is not important at all. But that is not what you would expect from a diplomat whose job it is to understand people who are different from them”.

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Comment by Richard Cussons: Now is the time to stand up for our faith by lobbying the politicians whose job it is to make policy, and who influence the civil servants. Write to William Hague about this, and write to your MP. There are too many examples of Christianity being sidelined, a lot of it due to the work of the secularists and the Secular Society, who see their job as aggressively pushing their agenda to the media and policy makers in our society. The perennial issue of “winter lights” is just one small example. But unless we stand up and be counted for our faith, we will see further erosions of Christianity in society.