Let your gentleness be evident to all

Earlier this week a report was published entitled  Religion, Security and Global Uncertainties It called, among other things, for an increase in religious literacy and a wider vocabulary among us all, in order to overcome the current simplistic response to religious violence as a purely religious issue. But is this the answer?

The report acknowledged that the embedded understanding of most people is restricted to the ‘radicalised fringes’ of religion – the extreme area which politicians and media often choose to inhabit. This compromises understanding of what religion is and creates a culture in which heaping invective on religious belief is a popular past time. The response of the UK government is, in part, to make everyone working with children responsible for reporting those at risk of radicalisation, requiring teachers to break carefully built trust relationships with families and become spies. But this assumes an overly simplistic cause and effect – that exposure to dangerous ideas leads to radical extremism. The reality is that violence, branded with religion, is an outcome of many social forces and personal disaffections working in combination.  Not least is a lack of willingness to accept the way mature democracy works, a determination to impose a single ideology on everyone within that democracy, and a belief that the religious law of that ideology can supersede the law of a democratic country.

The events in Paris during this last week have, quite rightly, caused an outpouring of grief, outrage and many column inches defending press freedom  and the right to speak, write and act in ways which may cause offence without  being murdered.  But while we are all shocked by what happened, and while many have protested silently or by taking to social media, I wonder how many of us have looked inside ourselves?  Protest against such outrage is natural, but will our own views be changed by what has happened? Or will we protest, and then move on, expecting governments to find solutions to intractable problems while we continue to blame religion?

Let me explain what I mean. The report collected a range of definitions of religion, describing it variously as:

• a set of explanatory beliefs
• devotional practices
• symbolic ritual vested with moral significance
• culturally enforced accountability to something beyond other human beings
• belief in spiritual being beyond material existence
• a set of rituals to which particular groups then require beliefs to be attached in order to validate identity.

This isn’t what I understand my faith to be.  Some things in the list are outcomes of my belief in a God beyond material existence – most are a secular reduction of the nature of belief. What really matters is the impact that my belief has on my life. When writing to the church in Philippi, the apostle Paul urged people to ‘Let your gentleness be evident to all.’ If I am to live by that, then I have a responsibility not to willingly cause offence to others by my words and actions. And that raises a question which hasn’t been asked much in the last few days. We have a right, in a democracy, to speak with freedom. But how about the corresponding responsibility to consider the impact on others when we exercise that freedom?

Teachers spend a lot of time creating cohesive communities within their schools; communities which nurture empathy. They are places where students can safely explore the views and values of others; where they can learn to respect not only that others think and believe differently from them, but also that it hurts to be criticised for what they believe.  But respect and tolerance are a two-way street. We should care enough about others not to cause offence, but we must also accept, with a measure of grace, that others are sometimes going to offend us. We teach children to navigate this street by articulating offence and the distress it causes without resort to physical violence.

Yet what do these children see in their wider society?  A denial of all that they hear in school. They see trolls busy and active on social media; they see common values of respect and courtesy abandoned; they are surrounded by media commentators that blame religion.  Increasingly, religion is becoming the stalking horse for every social ill. I see it regularly on my blog sites and social media accounts – people full of incoherent rage, who, knowing nothing about me, focus their anger on the fact that I am a Christian.

Religion isn’t the problem – each individual person in a society and the state of their heart is the root of the problem. That means that religion might offer part of the solution. And while each individual exercises the right to speak as they please, careless of the offence caused, the work which we do as teachers will be wasted. Tolerance and respect aren’t virtues to be learnt just by terrorists. They are virtues that we all need to practise, in our every day interaction with those around us.  Blaming religion is a convenient way to avoid accountability – accountability for the health of our society which rests with each and every one of us.