Last week the Catholic Church launched the biggest shake-up in the history of post primary education in Northern Ireland. In England a High Court ordered a local council to stop saying prayers. The Queen spoke of the duty of the Anglican Church to protect the rights of those of all faiths and none and Baroness Warsi, the Muslim Conservative peer warned about the rise of militant secularism. So for a much-maligned topic faith still stirs passions. In the USA religion has stirred an unusual debate during the Presidential election as Christian fundamentalists are again waging war with their Bibles and down right discriminatory viewpoints. After nearly four years in office President Obama has actually failed to convince one in four of all American that he is Christian. (Much more worryingly for him and us, just over fifty six percent of all Americans are not convinced he can manage the economy!) In the race to succeed Mr Obama –which seems highly unlikely- the republican front-runner Mitt Romney is a Mormon.
Many Americans view Mormonism as a cult. Many Irish people confuse Mormons with the Jehovah Witnesses who stalk their front doors at the most inopportune times during match of the day. To most Europeans the Mormons are best known through the clean cut clean living Osmond family who make the Brady brunch look like Fred West’s family. As Mitt Romney tries to convince Americans that he is better suited to lead America’s recovery than President Obama- a task which should not be all that difficult- Americans are being treated to the lesser attractive history of Mormonism such as its once strong attachment to polygamy, the wearing of ‘special underwear’ for men and the one time common but bizarre practice of posthumous baptisms that allegedly once included the parents of well known Jewish Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal. Against that backdrop Mitt Romney’s bid for the Oval Office seems ultimately destined to die in some backwater Alabama Hicksville ditch. Leaving Romney and his magic underwear aside, his main republican challenger is a fundamentalist Catholic politician called Rick Santorum. Santorum seems more equipped to be Pope than President- though what he lacks in sanctity he makes up for with populist sound bytes.
Santorum is a hawk in military terms and eyes Iran as the next target for American intervention- or imperialism, depending on your viewpoint. America makes for a strange democracy as it’s riddled with contradictions and controversies, which somehow live side by side in an uneasy truce between believers and non -believers. Over here we are much more sanguine about our faith. Tony Blair’s spin master supreme – Alastair Campbell once famously said of Number Ten ‘we don’t do God’. He clearly did not understand Blair who apparently not only ‘did’ God but apparently developed the Messianic zeal of a political Jesus.
Secularists often like to point out that religion is at the source of all ills and wars conveniently leaving out of their argument the mass godless murderers like Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot. For every Imam that issues illiberal fatwa’s and supports jihadists there are thousands who preach the love and tolerance of Islam. Unfortunately they are less likely to make the news pages of the average Daily Mail reader. Faith has a role in society and no amount hectoring by leading sceptic and anti-faith commentator Richard Dawkins will wish it away. Look at any of the three main Abrahamic based religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and you will see that the corruptions of these faiths come through their de-basement by man.
However, the Tories band-wagoning of religion is pointless- just as much as the Irish Labour Party’s jihadist attitude to the Vatican is misguided. It’s simply wrong to use legislation to enforce religious compliance as much as it is to legislate against the rights of believers. Too many legislators see it all as a zero sum game. Last week Cardinal Brady put down a timely marker on the naïve and populist integrationalist view of education in Northern Ireland. There are many shared values across society in the North and learning to appreciate how much is shared opens people up to the concept of tolerance and richness of diversity. Wars are waged by exploiting differences, something Napoleon recognised towards the end of his life. He wrote that the genius of great empires forged by Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and indeed himself were created by force but a more lasting one was built on love. A secularist wouldn’t see that.
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