Mary Honeyball’s post on religion is demeaning to religion – and to politics

By VoteRedGoGreen

I’m afraid I take issue with Mary Honeyball’s tone and conclusions in her post, Tony Blair’s Aggressive Christianity.

This isn’t just because I am a Christian, and she is not. It’s for two reasons: first, because she ignores the heritage of Christian Socialism that runs through our party’s veins; and secondly, her proposed solution hinges on repressing opposing views, rather than facing them head on.

The Labour Party always has been a coalition between different forces with broadly similar aims. Many of our founders – from both the working and middle class strands of the party in its infancy – were Christian Socialists: Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden, R. H. Tawney and George Lansbury, to name but a few. More recently, Tony Blair (as Mary points out) is a Christian, as is Australian Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The view that – as well as all of the economic and social imperatives Mary, I and other comrades share – there is an additional, religious calling to treat people equally, and to promote justice and solidarity, is one which Mary ought to tolerate, and even celebrate.

Mary instead chooses to judge Christians entirely on their Churches’ stances on certain niche issues. For example, she talks about the attempts of the Roman Catholic Church “and other extreme Christian organisations” to defeat the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill.

Fair enough – she disagrees (as, incidentally, do I, as a practicing Catholic) with the Church’s stance. But she goes to far when she says:

“Activities such as these are not the mark of an aggressively secular society. There has, in fact, been a marked increase in political lobbying by Christian organisations over the last ten years. We are getting more of it in the public square not less.”
She forgets that, for all of the lobbying by religious organizations, our side won that fight. It was a fair fight, where both sides – and there were Christians on both sides of that debate – argued the case, and the case for scientific progress beat the case against.

Mary’s article seems to imply that the presence of Christian lobby groups is a malign influence on our politics. How can this be, when she is still able to beat them, fair and square, whenever she comes into conflict with them?

Whilst Christianity may be more of a minority persuit than before, the fact remains that millions of British people are religious adherents. I’m not suggesting that we need, or want, any special privileges over the non-religious. But like all other sectional lobby groups – like charitable organizations, or Trade Unions – there ought to be a place for religious views in our public debate. Mary Honeyball’s sneering caricature of religion, and her obvious desire to expel Christians even from debate about politics does not enhance the quality of our politics – it demeans it.