POLITICS
The inherent justice of taking occasional pot-shots at the clergy
NOEL MALCOLM
There was a time when the denuncia- tion of a major government policy by the Church of England would have sent shock- waves rippling through the political con- sciousness of the nation. Nowadays these things happen as a matter of course, and no one takes much notice. When the Right Revd Stanley Booth-Clibborn, Bishop of Manchester, attacked the poll tax as 'in- herently unjust' this week, it made a small news item on page seven of the Daily Telegraph, sandwiched between 'Man cuts off his own ear' and 'Dearer cheese'.
The Bishop was only repeating the phrase used by the General Synod last year, so that news was a trifle stale. He was joined, however, by the president of the Baptist Union, who said that the tax was `against Biblical teaching', and by the president of the Methodist Conference, who said it was 'contrary to Gospel values'. But somehow one feels that the only way for a churchman of any denomination to hit the headlines these days would be to preach a sermon exhorting people to ren- der unto Thatcher the things that are Thatcher's. That really would make the front page.
The Government's reactions to clerical criticism are so tried and tested that there is little newsworthiness to be found in them either. The public response from Mrs Thatcher is invariably to trump them with a higher card of anguished indignation. How dare they preach to her about 'caring' for the poor, when more funds are made available for the relief of pOverty under Conservatism than was ever possible under socialism? And in private, the reaction in the Tory Party can vary from irritation to barely concealed glee. Having an excuse to take pot-shots at the clergy from time to time is a pleasure to be relished, rather like being allowed an occasional open season on a protected species: thCse rare, slow- flying birds seem so unworldly and vulner- able, and one expects to hear a piteous fluttering of lawn sleeves as they drop out of the sky. .
When preachers attempt to match gov- ernment policies ,against Gospel values, they start with a tremendous disadvantage. The policies are concrete, detailed, and tied up with the social and economic conditions of life here and now. The guidance supplied by Scripture, on the other hand, is necessarily unspecific and timeless. The Bible may tell us to love our neighbours, but it does not tell us in detail how to do this — whether, for example, to do it by giving them enterprise allowances or employing them in nationalised indus- tries. Even when specific examples are given (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc), a good deal of further inter- pretation is still required. How literally are these examples to be taken? If they are not intended as an exhaustive list, how do we extend the same principles to yield further examples? And so on. The general princi- ples may be there, but in order to bring them down to the level of detailed applica- tions, a mass of further assumptions must be brought into play, assumptions which cannot be founded with anything like the same degree of confidence on Scripture itself.
Take abortion, for instance. 'Thou shalt not kill' seems clear enough as a general rule — although most Christian churches, in most periods, have happily reconciled this with capital punishment and the killing of enemy soldiers. But how do we decide at what point the destruction of a potential human life becomes the killing of a human being? The Bible, unfortunately, does not go into that sort of detail. Christians may agree on fundamental truths, but the divi- sion of clerical opinion on abortion has largely matched the division of opinion on that subject among atheists and agnostics; and if Catholics have supported Mr Alton, most Protestants are inclined to feel that that does not really count, because they are only obeying orders.
So if the Church of England cannot offer clear, unequivocal advice on such non- political, 'conscience' issues as abortion, what hope is is there that they can ever demonstrate the sinfulness of anything so humdrum and technical as a system of taxation? Has the Bishop of Manchester considered the use of a flat-rate charge for road tax or television licences? The aver- age household pays £158 a year on these two non-redistributive charges, yet so far as I know the General Synod has not noticed even the tiniest stain of inherent injustice in them.
The Government can feel, then, that it is
on solid ground when it fends off the assaults of the clergy. Religion is not a direct supplier of political programmes, and even where central moral issues such as hanging or abortion are concerned the same religious principles can often be used to back up completely opposite arguments. The churches have no monopoly of moral- ity, and the Government should be willing to say so loudly and clearly.
But at the moment, while the Govern- ment says this out of one side of its mouth, it is busy affirming out of the other side that morality is uniquely dependent on religion. In the current debate about reli- gious education, Conservatives have been falling over one another in the push to agree that religion is the sole source of moral values; and the Bishop of London's amendment to clause two of the Education Reform Bill, identifying religious educa- tion as first among equals in the basic curriculum, is the one piece of lordly tinkering with the Bill which the Govern- ment has shown itself most willing to accept.
When the Lords debated these amend- ments last week, the agreement that moral- ity depends on religion was overwhelming in its unanimity and complacency. 'No religion, no morality', said Lord St John of Fawsley, and only a few brave souls dared to question this obvious untruth. One of them, Lord Sefton of Garston, somewhat weakened his case by questioning the Virgin Birth; the Bishop of London, in memorably unclerical language, told him not to 'rubbish' people's beliefs, and the motion was quickly passed 'that the noble Lord be no longer heard'. Speaker after speaker argued that morality could survive in our society only if children were indoc- trinated with Christian beliefs at school, and then denied that they were advocating indoctrination. Nobody asked the obvious question about what happens to people who have been persuaded that morality cannot survive without religious beliefs, and then lose those religious beliefs.
There are, to be precise, two varieties of humbug at work here: the humbug of politicians, and the humbug of clergymen who give the impression that the sole reason for teaching religious doctrines is to improve public morality. A bit more old- fashioned hostility between church and state would do both politicians and church- men a world of good.
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