Neither Private nor Privileged:

the role of Christianity in Britain today

by Nick Spencer

“Now, what I want is, Facts… Facts alone are everything in Life.”

Given how thoroughly Charles Dickens ridicules Mr Gradgrind, whose words open Hard Times, it is surprising how a Gradgrindian obsession with “facts” can still dominate public discourse today.

Although few preach the gospel of rationality with quite as much zeal as the determined Gradgrind, it is still common to hear pundits explain how public decisions should be based on the facts rather than on wishful thinking, reason rather than revelation, or sceptical enquiry rather than belief in fairies.

It is easier said than done, of course. Take the following fact, as an example. At the last census, in the privacy of their own homes, free from any immediate peer pressure, given eight options to choose from, the first of which was ‘None’, and being alerted to the fact that the question was voluntary, 37 million people in England and Wales chose to say they belonged to the Christian religion. You are unlikely to find a harder fact than that. The perennial question of whether or not we live in a Christian country has, it seems, been settled.

Except, of course, that it has not, and everyone knows that the vast majority of those 37 million honour their Christianity in the breach rather than the observance. One in ten of them attends church regularly and that number is falling precipitously. There are far more Anglers than Anglicans. The church is, in reality, little more than a minority sect, a pressure group campaigning for its own interests. Perhaps it should be allowed to do that but given religion’s record in poisoning and dividing society, it would be better for all concerned if religious faith were kept private. As Simon Hoggart reasonably suggested in the Guardian earlier this year, “They can believe whatever they like… just so long as they just stop messing up our lives.”

Despite what some claim, the “facts” do not settle anything. We may broadly agree on the facts of the Census (c. 70% Christian) or the facts of church attendance surveys (c. 7% attending), but that is as far as they will take us. For some, such facts indicate that Christianity should be “privileged” in public life because Britain was and remains a fundamentally Christian country. For others, Christianity should be “privatised” because the facts show it is minority pursuit and a dangerous one at that.

Such positions are caricatures, of course, but only just. You don’t have to read far to come across sentiments such as those of AC Grayling, demanding “a right for the rest of us to non-interference by religious persons and organisations.” Christian nation positions are less abundant today but by no means nonexistent. Thus Peter Hitchens in a debate with Lord Harrison on the Today programme in April 2007:

“This is a Christian country, Lord Harrison. Its laws, its customs, from the Coronation service to the Bill of Rights are based upon Christianity… Every characteristic of this country, the way in which we are governed by conscience as free people is based upon the fact we are Christian.”

If neither position convinces, it is because neither takes sufficient account of the contexts and interpretations that surround the “facts”. Britain has deep Christian roots but is no longer anything like as Christian as it was even fifty years ago. Conversely, most people do still choose to call themselves Christian, for whatever reason; the role of Christianity in the public square has served to unite rather divide the country (at least since the mid-seventeenth century); and evidence suggests that it is counterproductive, not to mention illiberal, to insist that one particular comprehensive doctrine should be privatised (because it is “religious”) whereas others may have full access to the public square, because they are not.

Is there a middle way, a path between privatisation and privilege, which is firmly rooted in the Christian tradition but also realistic and responsive to the “facts” of public life in contemporary Britain?

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First, we need to be clear what we are talking about here. We are not discussing whether Christianity should be a public religion. The gospel is public truth and no amount of theological wriggling or political pressure can change that. Privatisation is not an option.

Similarly, whilst the nature of Christianity’s public role is a subject for debate, that debate must be founded not on expediency or contemporary political demands, but on scripture and theological reflection.

The New Testament has much material to aid us in this matter, not least in Luke’s account of the life of the earliest church. Acts chapters 1-5 focus primarily on the activity of a small number of leading disciples, notably Peter and John, but also consciously pull back on three occasions (2.42-47, 4.32-37, and 5.12-16) to offer a picture of the wider church. These different focuses offer a four-fold picture of engagement in the public square, one of public proclamation, public assembly, public action and public confrontation.

This business of public proclamation is clear. At Pentecost, Luke tells us that “Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd.” (Acts 2.14) The motif is repeated in subsequent chapters. When Peter attracts an “astonished” crowd after healing a crippled beggar on the Temple steps, he turns to address them. (Acts 3.11) In a brief summary of the early Church’s life, at the end of chapter 4, Luke tells us, “with great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” (Acts 4.33) Similarly, when the apostles are arrested in the following chapter, it is to prevent them publicly teaching the crowds about Jesus: “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name.” (Acts 5.28) Public proclamation was, and is, the sine qua non of the Church’s public life.

Second, there was public assembly. Luke takes care to point out that not only did Jesus’ first followers meet together in private (Acts 1.12-14) but they also met regularly in public. In his first summary of the early Church’s life, Luke tells us that “every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts”, and in his second he records that “all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade”, before adding, “no one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.” (Acts 5.12-13) In this way, the early Church lived not simply as a community, but as an intentionally publicly visible community.

Third, there was public action. Luke tells the reader, in Acts 2.45, that “selling their possessions and goods, [the apostles] gave to anyone as he had need.” His later summary, in chapter 4, elucidates this picture of public generosity by describing how “there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.” He also describes how “crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed.” (Acts 4.34-36) Then, in chapter 5, Luke tells us, “the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.” (Acts 5.12) Between them, these vignettes give us an idea of the early Church’s public action, in which the new community helped and healed those within and beyond its immediate boundaries in an expression of God’s action in Christ.

Finally, there was the business of public confrontation. This is readily misunderstood as a form of would-be violent insurrection, a model that is singularly unhelpful in understanding the pattern of the early Church which, according to other New Testament sources, was largely respectful towards to the governing authorities. Instead, the early Church plotted a midway between aggressive insurrection and supine timidity. Theirs was a public commitment to an alternative authority, an alternative narrative, alternative values and loyalties, a commitment that could and did cause tensions with the public authorities. Thus, when Peter and John were told by the Sanhedrin that they may “no longer … speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus,” they replied, “judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God … we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4.17-19) The exchange is repeated on their next appearance before the Sanhedrin when the High Priest again accuses the apostles of ignoring the “strict orders not to teach in this name.” Peter and the other apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than men! ... We are witnesses of these things [relating to Jesus].” (Acts 5.29-32) This is not armed rebellion but rather a stubborn insistence that being a Christian demands certain things. It betrays willingness, if not desire, for public confrontation.

Acts 1-5 was never intended to be a blueprint for the Church’s engagement in public life but its four-fold model of public proclamation, public assembly, public action and public confrontation, which we can group under the umbrella term “public witness”, does offer us a constructive example of how Christians might operate in the modern, British public square.

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Should Christian witness be “merely” public, in the sense of operating in a space to which we all have access, or should it be ”political”, in the sense of operating within that part of public space that is the site of the “governing authorities”? Put another way, should Christian public witness take place within, without or against the governing authorities?

Two examples should help clarify the distinction. Many Christians disagreed with the government’s decision to invade Iraq, and many spoke against it. Some did so within the House of Lords, as by right, and others did so by digging children’s graves outside the Ministry of Defence in December 2004. Both actions qualified as forms of public witness, but one took place within the locus of the governing authorities and the other outside and against it. A less contentious example might be the difference between a Christian group that funds and runs a hostel for homeless people and one that does the same with public money. For secular (and indeed some Christian) commentators those forms of Christian activity that take place in the Lords or with public money are unacceptable. The Church has no right to operate in those forums. It is and should be radically different. For other (and not necessarily Christian) commentators, not only has the church a right to operate within that part of the public square, but it must, if only for the good of society, be there. Which should it be?

Frustratingly, whilst the New Testament gives a good guide as to the nature of the church’s public witness, it does not give much of a steer on this question of where it witnesses. Rather, it appears to endorse an approach of flexibility and adaptation. In some well-noted instances (1 Timothy 2.1-2; Titus 3.1; 1 Peter 2.13-14; Romans 13.1-7) New Testament writers advocate what appears to be a cooperative attitude towards the governing authorities. In others (e.g. Luke 4.5-8; Luke 22:25-26; John 18.33-37; 1 Corinthians 1.18-2.16; Revelation 13), we hear what appears to be a more subversive approach, in which Christians should work outside, perhaps even undermining, the official authorities.

Although this may appear to be confusing and contradictory at first sight, on reflection it makes good sense. The extent to which the church works within, without or against the governing authorities of the day will depend largely on the nature of those authorities. If the governing authorities do what the gospel indicates they should do – if, for example, they judge justly, maintain public order and seek to help the vulnerable – then there is real opportunity for the church to work with them. If, on the other hand, the authorities’ concept of the good is in serious tension with what the gospel proclaims it should be – if, for example, it is violent, idolatrous, imperial, or oligarchic – the church cannot but work against it. The key note must be flexibility.

It is a basic Christian belief that no state will ever truly embody gospel values, and it is a basic historical observation that very few will ever be totally at odds with them. Even the idolatrous Roman Empire was recognised by New Testament writers for its duty to punish wrongdoers and restrain evil. This process of analysing the moral orientation of a state is unlikely, therefore, to yield neat, clear-cut answers – a fact that becomes particularly clear when we think about the British state.

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What, then, is the moral orientation of the British state?

The common mistake here is to answer this question by opinion poll. If democracy is government “of the people, by the people, for the people” surely the moral orientation of any democracy’s governing authority will be the same as that of its people?

There are plenty of examples – most obviously euthanasia and the death penalty – which remind us this is not so. Indeed, a moment’s reflection on the radically plural nature of British public opinion makes a nonsense of the idea that the governing authorities should reflect society’s conceptions of the public good. Which good exactly?

Because populations do not profess a single, identifiable conception of the public good, democratic governing authorities cannot reflect what isn’t there. Rather, in the UK at least, they develop manifestos, themselves embodying conceptions of the good, which are then presented to the public who choose between them. The concept of the public good found in any democratic governing authority is, therefore, responsive to and to some degree reflective of its electorate, but it is not a direct representation of it. The nature of this “political” quarter of the public square is not determined by public opinion, but rather by the concept of the good that the public prefers.

This is the key to understanding the church’s proper role in the public square. The church is not a political party and should never tout for votes. Rather, it should do what it understands it must do – whatever combination of public proclamation, assembly, action and confrontation that entails. In doing so, it will appeal to or scandalize different elements of public opinion to different degrees – and it is this mix of reactions that will, ultimately, determine where in the public square Christian witness will be seen.

Some Christians may get nervous at this, hearing in it the idea that the governing authorities will decide what the church does. At the risk of repetition, this is emphatically not the argument. The church will – must – do what it understands Christ calls it to. That means public witness almost irrespective of the circumstances (we might make allowances for Christians in Soviet Russia or Edo Japan). But whether that witness is within, without or actively against the governing authorities of the moment will depend on the moral orientation of those authorities.

Authorities that, for whatever reason, are corrupt or recklessly libertarian or aggressively imperialist would not find much in Christian public witness that they would wish to encourage and support. In such circumstances, the church’s witness will be public but not “political”, in the sense used above.

On the other hand, those authorities that judge justly, maintain public order and seek to aid the vulnerable may want to work with the Church in achieving some of its objectives. Providing that such co-operation does not adversely affect the Church’s basic calling, there is no reason why it should not respond positively. The argument, then, is that if Christianity is to operate alongside or within the governing authorities, the fruit that it naturally produces as part of its corporate life will need to be “in keeping” with the taste of the day.

It will be obvious that this does not settle the issue. The question – What precisely is “the taste of the day”? – is a large and difficult one, involving analysing historical influences, public opinion, necessary compromises, and the like. The taste may differ from one policy area to another – there is no guarantee that government policy will necessarily be joined up – and this may make cooperation acceptable in some areas but not in others. It might, for example, mean that hospital chaplaincy was acceptable and military chaplaincy not; or that the presence of Bishops in the Lords was acceptable but Establishment was not. These debates need to be had.

The argument of this essay is that the debates should occur on the foundation of the argument from public good. The rallying cries for privatisation or privilege may stir the blood but do not reflect the subtleties and complexities of a historically-Christian but unprecedentedly plural, modern democratic state. The argument from public good does – although it still leaves room for considerable debate, which demands more than just the “facts alone”.

Nick Spencer is Director of Studies at Theos, the public theology think tank.

The debate, therefore, is not about whether Christian witness – whether understood as proclamation, assembly, action and confrontation, or in some other way – should be public, but rather where it should be public.