I’ve now had a read of the Department for Communities report that the NSS linked to.
The document, ‘Face-to-Face and Side-by-Side: A framework for partnership in our multi faith society,’ relies heavily on abstract ideas of best practice, delivered in the kind of management duckspeak that is the official language of government today. Like Orwell’s Newspeak, this is the kind of talk that can be parroted straight from the larynx without engaging the brain.
Where it does make direct claims, they are problematic. For example, Hazel Blears states in her foreword that ‘According to the 2001 census, more than three quarters of us in the United Kingdom consider ourselves to have a faith.’ This is disingenuous. According to Christian researchers, church attendance as a proportion of the population has been plummeting for sixty years and will hit a low of 2% by 2040. Of the people who have faith, most do not consider it an integral part of their identity.
Thus the shorthand phrase ‘people of all faiths and none’ should be amended to ‘all people, and some people who are religious’.
The report also seeks to reinforce the conventional wisdom that faith groups do a lot for charity. To this end it states:
Faith based organisations and charities have long been at the forefront of social action in this country and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) identifies them as a ‘strong force’ within the third sector. Over half of faith based charities aim to serve the general public.
To support this the report cites the NCVO’s 2007 document ‘Faith and Voluntary Action: an overview of current evidence and debates’. But the NCVO research actually indicates that religious affiliation makes little difference in terms of volunteering (p12). Key quote:
Our review of the evidence highlights the fact that the perceived distinctiveness of faith-based organisations across a range of domains (particularly values, resources and building social capital) is seen as important by policy-makers, yet there is no compelling evidence that faith-based organisations are different from other organisations (p56, emphasis mine).
And as Brett Lock pointed out:
[I]n terms of providing wider dispersed social services, faith-based groups are not up to the task for the simple reason that an obvious intra-communal generosity has been misdiagnosed by the secular eye as a faith-based propensity for charity.
My experience of voluntary organisations is that they are motivated by a common humanity, not superstition. An example was a project in a deprived area of North Manchester. The estates suffered from high levels of unemployment and crime. Residents were terrified to open their front doors. One local resident – we’ll call her Jo – had had enough of this and gave up her evenings organising events and activities to keep young people off the street.
This had positive and tangible effects on the area because when the young people were at her evening sessions they couldn’t be elsewhere committing crimes – not to mention the opportunities and interests they were introduced to, and the stability brought to their lives.
Jo ran these programmes for years, without pay, before the council started funding her. There wasn’t any appearance of religious faith in her motivations – just a desire to make her community a safer place and to prevent young people from screwing up their lives by getting involved in crime.
Can we have an end to the misconception that religious people are naturally better disposed towards social justice than the rest of us?
Contrast Jo’s hard work with this case study from the government report. Entitled simply ’The Tent’, this is ‘an unexpected and private space dedicated to the meeting of faiths as equals (as opposed to guests in each other’s spaces).’
The Tent draws on Bedouin traditions of hospitality, and was made of goats hair in the Middle East.
The unusual 16-sided structure was designed by Prof. Keith Critchlow, a world expert in sacred geometry, who was charged to create a ’sacred’ space without using symbols specific to any one religion. Using the universal language of geometry, algebra, astronomy and harmony he has created a perfectly proportioned space which draws on the traditions of Al-Andalus Southern Spain during the middle ages, where Jews, Christians and Muslims shared the space in relative peace for 300 years. The interior is carpeted with rugs woven in places of conflict throughout the world and it sits in a tranquil peace garden.
The Tent provides an experimental meeting space where people of different faiths can come together in different ways to explore differences, transform conflicts, and to build firm foundations for collaboration. The programme of activities is based on a ‘Spectrum’ which defines ten categories of inter faith engagement. These range from specific dialogue processes, through methods for studying sacred scriptures together, storytelling (sharing personal narratives) to devotional gatherings using various forms of meditation and music. Particular attention is paid to learning and teaching facilitation and group work skills to group leaders.
I am not making this up.
The report features familiar names from the usual rogues’ gallery of fundamentalists, including the Salvation Army – which told a human rights committee that it was impossible for the SA to be religiously neutral – and also MPACUK, a far right Islamic group whose founder contributed to David Irving’s defence fund. Apparently MPAC have been ‘leading a campaign to involve women in Britain’s mosques’ (p53). The report notes that most mosques do not admit women, but hastens to absolve faith from discrimination: apparently this is ‘not because of their theological following but because the architecture of the mosque does not allow for a separate space for women.’ Couldn’t women and men simply pray together? Perish the thought!
In conclusion, this report deserves no better analysis than Keith Porteous Wood gave:
This document gives a disturbing insight into the Government’s obsession with the so-called faith communities. It gives the impression that all religious activity is good and that religious people in the country do such disproportionate amounts of good work that they need to be uniquely cherished and encouraged, often with significant amounts of cash. The document gives sparse and token references to the efforts and energies of non-religious volunteers and community activists. We are really non-citizens as far as this document goes.
