The politics of hope in a post secular society

From food banks to education, community enterprise and social welfare, faith-based organisations are playing an increasingly vital role in society. Politicians seem more than happy for this to happen, just as long as the faith which motivates the action remains a private affair. So just how should Christians respond to the secular society which they serve and on which they have such an impact?

There is no doubt that religion is playing a significant role in the political debate running up to the election, particularly at the level of discussion which reflects on the sort of  future society that we want to shape. There is an acknowledgement that we have evolved a form of democracy that enshrines the individual rather than the collective, and an economy that serves this purpose as part of a global market in which we must compete or perish. Our education system is no longer dominated just by national league tables but also by global ones, and as we run ever faster to beat the opposition, any sense of human flourishing in a community is lost. Everything is annexed to the economy – one which, if warnings are not heeded, will apparently lose £4.3trillion over a lifetime as a result of the inefficiencies of our education service.

So now, much of the debate centres on the search for a new, humane brand of politics, with compassion and caring as its core values, and commentators are aware that the Church is raising its voice in this discussion, vis-a-vis the Church of England Bishops’ pastoral letter.  What do we want the public space to look like? Will the secularist desire for neutrality prevail?

Actually, the global evidence suggests that we are living in a post-secular era, even if our local political system suggests otherwise. 84% of the world’s population now describes itself as religious. This doesn’t necessarily involve the practice of a religion, but it does include religion as an integral part of personal identity. From the Iranian revolution of 1979, to Solidarnosc and the eventual disintegration of the Russian empire, religion has played an increasing part in global politics over the last 35 years. Much of Europe today celebrates the religious liberty that independence of Russia has brought and it’s clear that far from dying, religion is flourishing in the public square. It is a long way from the purely private matter that secularism would like it to be. Secularism must learn to reckon with it.

It must also learn to reckon with spiritual capital, not just of people of faith, but in wider society. People are starting to look away from themselves in the search for a set of transformative values on which a sustainable society can be built, and faith groups are already there, offering the answers. In terms of social welfare, faith groups punch well above their weight and what they have created are hubs of spiritual capital to which anyone can contribute for the common good of their community. They offer a value system and a moral vision which stems from their faith, but a faith to which you need not subscribe in order to either benefit from, or contribute to, its activities.

So what does this mean for education? It means that parents will continue to choose faith schools for their children not just because the academic results are good, but because they are offered a community with a value system and a moral vision, whether or not they subscribe to the faith on which the learning community is based. And faith groups, whether liberal secularism likes it or not, are particularly good at filling and nurturing those community spaces left empty by contemporary politics.

The signs are that politicians are beginning to catch on – religion is here to stay and it’s not just religious people who want to talk about it. Maybe we’re entering a post secular era, or maybe this is just a blip as an upcoming general election focuses attention. But whatever the reason, religion is striking a chord and liberal secularism will have, at some point, to listen to it and harmonise with it in a dialogue that permits the free expression of faith in the public square.