Posted: Mar 13, 2012 6:06 pm
Matthew Shute wrote:It isn't an either-or dichotomy (theocratic or non-theocratic); it's a question of how much you want governance to be based on religion. There a few cases in which the justification for accepting or rejecting a particular policy is that the policy does/doesn't conform to some religious dogma. Cases regarding gay rights and euthenasia are particularly telling; and it's not so long ago that we had to overturn a law against blasphemy.
I agree about the greyness, but those I might be tempted to call militant secularists are those who, echoing to some extent, the religious fundamentalists attitudes to progreesive opinion, see the religious as always the enemy.The role of the bishops and of church schools are 2 examples. If you look at the intervention of bishops in debates in the House of Lords, you will notice that more often than not, they are drawing on their expertise in such areas as the social condition of the poor and the plight of ethnic minorities, due to the parish system. That could be dismissed as dogmatic posturing because of their inheritance of christian social teaching and a naive adherence to the teachings of Jesus! And even their doubts about euthanasia have found them making common cause with disabled rights activists, who are otherwise about as likely to have encouragent as sufferers from mental illness.
And as for the schools, our local C of E comprehensive, has become an object of desire to the local middle class parents, but some are put off because its admissions policy ,giving equal opportunities to church attenders also means that it provides the best chance for children from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds- because of the prevalence of Pentecostalism among their parents- to get a good education. That was an effect by design, not accident. Certainly not a perfect solution, but a lot better than the Academy system and the Free school system, with their potential for generating further inequalities and sectarian mind-sets.