What’s Next?

Michael Nazir-Ali (the Bishop of Rochester) has launched a vicious attack on the evils of multiculturalism, which as he defined it:

Required that people should be facilitated in living as separate communities, continuing to communicate in their own languages and having minimum need for building healthy relationships with the majority.

Well, when you put it like that, I don’t like it much either. Naturally we then have the backlash and the counter backlash. I’m going to ignore the issue of how bad the problem is or isn’t and hone in on something the Bishop said about the cause:

Much of this has come about because of a “neutral” secularist approach which refuses to privilege any faith. In fact, secularism has its own agenda and it is certainly not neutral. It is perfectly possible for Britain to welcome people on the basis of its Christian heritage.

In the same article, he’s denounced multiculturalism and secularism, missing the point that the approach best to tackle the negative aspects of multi-culturalism IS the secular approach. Far from secularism being the cause of the problem, it’s the best way out.

The idea that Britain is a ‘Christian Country’ is the mindset that makes multiculturalism sound attractive. The desire to keep it that way and yet welcome non-Christian immigrants leads to the idea of separate spaces, that over here we can be Christians and over there you can be Muslims. This is tolerance of you living in Britain, not acceptance that you are British. As long as being a Christian is promoted as being a key part of British identity, creating a workable single culture is impossible.

If we look at the fuss in the US over placing ‘Under God’ in the pledge of allegiance only fifty years ago, we can see that it has ruined the point of the line. ‘One nation, indivisible’ is a strong, secular statement of unity, ‘One nation under God, indivisible’ has created division. We are stronger and more welcoming as a group when we don’t needlessly divide ourselves. As religion remains a core part of many people’s identity, when looking for a national idenity for all it makes sense to take that most divisive question off the table. We want an identity that speaks of inclusion and acceptance instead of separation and tolerance.

A secular basis for society allows us to create a big tent we can all feel comfortable sitting inside. We naturally need our tested foundations such as democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech, etc to underpin the society. These aren’t simply justifiable because they’re part of our heritage (and it’s worth remembering some of them are quite recent additions) but because they’re fundamentally good ideas. There was a lot in the comments of that article about how Christians wouldn’t be granted the same freedoms in the Middle East that Muslims are granted here. That misses the point: We shouldn’t aspire to be different from countries like Saudi Arabia, we should aspire to be better.

Much as I enjoy watching the Bishop argue with the dictionary, secularism is by definition neutral. If it has an agenda, it is one I hope the Bishop can share: Making it so neither of us has to sacrifice our principles to exist in the same culture in peace.