House of Lords debate on the Address

Monday, 20 November 2006
The Bishop of Chelmsford

My Lords, I hope that the House will not consider it an abuse if I use the few minutes allotted to me today to talk about the significance of religion in international politics. I was encouraged to do so by some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on which I shall comment in a moment.

I have one London borough in my diocese where 110 languages are spoken; we have an international community in this country; I am part of an international church; and I chair the board of Christian Aid. So these matters are very close to home. I noticed that Kofi Annan made the following remark in a recent address in Istanbul:

"Today, at the very time when international migration has brought unprecedented numbers of people of different creed or culture to live as fellow-citizens, the misconceptions and stereotypes underlying the idea of a 'clash of civilizations' have come to be more and more widely shared. Some groups seem eager to foment a new war of religion, this time on a global scale—and the insensitivity, or even cavalier disregard, of others towards their beliefs or sacred symbols makes it easier for them to do so".

I was very grateful to hear in the gracious Speech that the Government remain committed to their African agenda. I was sorry that none of the opening speakers mentioned this issue, and I hope that those who make closing speeches on behalf of their various Benches will come to it. As chair of the board of Christian Aid, I say to the Government, "Please hold on to this priority. If we are to tackle the issues of poverty, this is a major priority in our international world".

We are hugely grateful for what has been achieved across the political spectrum on increasing the percentage of GDP given over to international development and aid, on debt relief and so forth. However, if we are to roll back poverty in our world, we must come to terms with the importance of religious institutions.

In this country and places such as Africa, we could say that we live in a post-secular world and that religious communities have an absolutely basic role to play in the task of building for the future. If DfID does not use as effectively as it might the faith-based agencies such as Christian Aid, CAFOD and Tearfund in this country, it will miss an opportunity. When I went to South Africa a few years ago, on Ash Wednesday I stood in a church with a thousand other people. In Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria and elsewhere, religion is a very important feature of people's lives. If we want to deal with HIV/AIDS and from the bottom up to tackle poverty, we must enter into a conversation about how better to use those networks in their specificity. If there is anything I, as chairing the board of Christian Aid, can do to assist in helping those conversations, I shall gladly do it.

My second point is on Iraq. I have recently read Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, because it is very good to know what the opposition thinks. He starts by listing the wars which he thinks are caused by religion. That is far too simplistic a way in which to think about things; we need a much more sophisticated understanding. The issues in Iraq are political and rooted in history—and one of my problems with policy at the moment is that it seems to have forgotten 20th century history in Iraq—and feed religious sentiments. My debate with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, with regard to fundamentalism in America would be that political traditions can shape how religious people respond to events. If you go to the United States and talk to black majority churches, which might be equally fundamentalist, you would get a different set of political responses. So we need to deal with the complexities of this matter and not to dump on religions issues that actually belong in politics. We need to be aware that some of our political leaders historically can use religious traditions, even cynically, for political purposes. So there is an important policy conversation to be opened up among us, and Iraq is a very good centre for it.

Iraq is a 21st-century nation: it is multicultural and multifaith; there are Christians as well as Sunni and Shia Muslims; there are secular-minded people, religious-minded people and people of different cultural traditions. It is vital, therefore, that if policy is to be shaped in the contemporary world it takes account of those complex cultures. My message this afternoon is that if we are in the business of reshaping policy in the Middle East, we should have a more serious and informed conversation about people's cultures, beliefs and complex traditions.
I am glad that we shall have another debate on this matter in December. War feeds the very worst things in its impact on human communities. If you want communities that are fed by important religious sentiments to end up fighting each other and destroying each other, create a climate of war and disorder. In the reshaping of policy that is no doubt going on in the United States, in our own Government and among the allies at the moment, I hope that due account is being taken of the impact of these things on people's cultures. In Iraq there is chaos in those spheres. There is much that we need to be doing together—and if there are things that most of us with a religious tradition behind us can do to help, that is what we are here for. The day in which politics goes in one direction and those in religion go in another is long past, and we need to work together.

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