Normally, as someone brought up in a church-going white British family, I would wish all my friends a Merry Christmas. But I have friends who are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, ‘lapsed Anglican’, agnostic…. In this age of political correctness, should I be careful not to impose my beliefs on anyone else? Happy Holidays, one and all!
Respecting other people’s beliefs is important – I would go so far as to say that it is the ‘Christian’ thing to do. The difficulty comes where people have diametrically opposed value systems.
Melanie Phillips, in the Daily Mail on 14 December 2009 wrote:
In July, Duke Amachree, a Christian who for 18 years had been a Homelessness Prevention Officer for Wandsworth Council, encouraged a client with an incurable medical condition to believe in God.
As a result, Mr Amachree was marched off the premises, suspended and then dismissed from his job. It was a similar case to the Christian nurse who was suspended after offering to pray for a patient’s recovery….
What this amounts to is that for Christians, the freedom to live according to their religious beliefs — one of the most fundamental precepts of a liberal society — is fast becoming impossible. Indeed, merely professing traditional Christian beliefs can cause such offence that it is treated as a crime.
Last Easter, according to the Christians Together website, a group of Christian workers in Chorlton-cum-Hardy (the Manchester suburb where I grew up) was ‘surrounded by mounted policemen who later called up a police van with officers in body armour’. This followed a complaint that Chorlton Evangelical Church was distributing invitations to an Easter service in an area which reputedly houses a number of gay people. Following a referral to the original complainant who objected to the church's activities, a police officer from the 'Race and Hate Crime Unit' returned the next day after having examined the Christian group's literature. He said that no crime had been committed. The church evangelist, Julian Hurst, suggested that to be surrounded by five police officers – two mounted and three from a police van – was a 'little disproportionate'. He expressed concern about the apparent attempts to gag Christians using 'hate crime' legislation: ‘If people try and gag Christians I think that our society will be the poorer for it.’ (Click here to see item on YouTube).
Perhaps such conflicts between the demands of faith and the human rights agenda are inevitable amidst the ferment of debate about religion, discrimination, equality and values in today’s UK. Indeed it links to questions of what it means to be ‘British’ in our increasingly diverse society.
It seems to me that seeking a shared set of values is fundamental to finding a common vision of the kind of country we want.
But is this possible when we come from so many different starting-points? Clearly many of the ‘gate posts’ of traditional British moral values (which were admittedly often honoured in the breach as much as in the observance) have been uprooted. Who is to say what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ when post-modernism tells us that ‘my value-system is as good as your value-system, and not the Church, the state nor anybody else has the right to tell me otherwise’? The result is that most of us have a fairly flexible approach to what is acceptable in terms of ‘living arrangements’, alcohol consumption, insurance claims, copyright, swearing, gambling and paying VAT. And the state does its best to limit the damage by introducing ASBOs, knife amnesties, CCTVs, educational initiatives, anti-discrimination laws and community service orders.
If we can no longer appeal to religion or ‘our’ Judeo-Christian heritage for shared moral values, is it adequate to leave morality to the court of ‘public opinion’? There are several points to consider here.
On the whole, human nature being what it is, the natural momentum of public opinion tends to be in the direction of easing moral codes. Many things are now regarded as normal that would have been illegal a hundred years ago. I am not for turning the clock back. Many wrong things were tolerated then – such as the lack of respect given to women and children. But not every liberalisation is necessarily in the best interests of society. It is hard to give examples without sounding judgmental. But I am one of those who believes in the sanctity of marriage and questions ‘value-free’ education where all life-style choices are regarded as a matter of how you feel.
Equality, transparency and sustainability are currently high in the ‘top 10’ values chart. But they should not replace traditional moral values of honesty, integrity and unselfish love without which society will fall apart. Just as ‘conscientious objectors’ were given the freedom not to fight during the Second World War, people and institutions (such as faith schools) should be allowed the freedom to live out their own moral values.
New ethical questions occur all the time. So we need to look at them carefully and allow for the fact that it may be hard to reach a consensus. Christians hold a wide range of views on abortion, euthanasia, homosexual marriage – and there is nothing in the Bible about stem-cell research, for example.
Those of us who do have moral values deriving from our religious faith, need to live them radically. It seems to me that it is not my job to impose my Christian faith on anyone else. My responsibility is to do my best to live the life that Christ proclaimed (and lived). ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is not a bad principle on which to run society, and one that is shared by many of other faiths and of no faith. ‘Blessed are the pure.’ Now there’s a challenge! ‘Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires; God will satisfy them fully!’ Is that not a key thought? If Christianity is to be taken seriously by non-Christians, those of us who call ourselves Christian need to demonstrate that it is in reality a fully satisfying way to live, worthy of emulation. ‘Do as I say not as I do’, has never been an effective approach to convincing others. If I aim to live what I believe in – and am honest about my short-comings - then at least my friends of other belief-systems have a fair chance of seeing what is on offer.
I am left to conclude that political correctness, although it espouses many desirable values, is not the ultimate arbiter of what is right. In a society that (rightly) celebrates diversity, I have the right to choose to be a Christian. I therefore wish all my friends who are not offended by the sentiment a very Happy Christmas.
Ken Noble
The author was, at the time of writing, Secretary and Acting Treasurer of IofC UK. In Feburary 2008 he was appointed to the Executive Team of IofC UK, with special responsibility for pastoral care.
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