Mick Hartley

Theo Hobson, CiF’s resident Christian, sets out his creed of personal as opposed to institutional belief:

I have found the Church to be intellectually cowardly and dishonest: unwilling to discuss awkward issues. It is more interested in defending its subcultural power than communicating the Kingdom of God afresh. Instead of going to church, I try to plan alternative worship-events, free of institutionalism.

So that is why I am a Christian: I affirm the utopian hope of the Kingdom of God – and I affirm the idea that we are all prone to evil, and so constantly reliant on God’s grace. I want these ideas to spread – but not by means of political privilege. My eccentric view is that Christianity can only really be communicated in the context of freedom. The churches attack secular liberalism as a threat to their power bases, but actually it’s the ally of true Christian culture. We need a secular state, in which we can develop a new sort of Christian culture that has left institutionalism behind.

Which is fair enough as an expression of personal belief, but it makes his attacks on Dawkins et al seem a little overheated. After all, if religion was just about personal belief and took secularism seriously, there wouldn’t be a problem. It would just be a case of, well, OK, but I think you’re wrong. It’s the inevitable attempts to exert wider influence that get the so-called militant atheists so exercised, as in the case of Intelligent Design.

And the current Embryo Bill furore:

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, became the most senior church figure to call on Mr Brown to sanction a free “conscience” vote of MPs on the Bill.

“I think Catholics in politics have got to act according to their Catholic convictions, so have other Christians, so have other politicians,” he said. “There are Catholics who feel very strongly about this matter and I am glad that they do.

As Mark Henderson in the Times points out:

The cardinals’ insistence that Catholic MPs “have got to act according to their Catholic convictions” and oppose the Bill…has something of the pot and kettle about it. While opposing a political three-line whip, they are essentially imposing a religious one.

More views, less charitably expressed, here andhere.

The roots of secularism are contained within Christianity, with the “Render unto Caesar” line. Not so in Islam, of course – which makes Kuwaiti journalist Ibtihal Al-Khatib’s interview on Al-Arabiya TV so impressive:

Anyone who is secular is accused of being a heretic, which is absolutely untrue. Secularism is the belief in the separation of religion and state. In other words, religion belongs to God, and the state belongs to all. Every person is free to practice his religion and follow his spiritual path, but all are subject to a civil state. That way, we ensure just treatment for all, instead of Sunnis enjoying more rights than Shiites, or vice versa, and Christians having no rights whatsoever in an Islamic state. […]

All I’m saying is that you cannot use these texts to build a modern state. I say this is impossible, because there are many different ways of understanding these texts. In addition, in modern countries, there are not only Muslims. You cannot build a country on Islam alone, and exclude followers of other religions.

Amen to that.