Our Brexit Turmoil: how will we look back on the Church's reponse?

I blogged yesterday about the Church of England's initiative to get the nation talking about Brexit next weekend. A cup of tea and a candid conversation could help heal division - that was the thrust of it. (Next Friday was due to be Brexit Day of course. It now looks as though it won't be - but we'll have to wait for Brussels' reply to Mrs May's letter asking for a short deferment to be sure.)

It was inevitable that the C of E's gentle encouragement to get us talking would be parodied. In my blog I gave it two cheers on the grounds that anything was better than nothing in the circumstances, and a lot of littles could add up to something big. This is precisely why truth and reconciliation processes have been remarkably successful: my daughter, an Africanist, has facilitated Indaba sessions ("conferences") and testifies to the life-changing effects of purposeful conversation. There is a lot to be said for discussing divisive issues such as Brexit in safe places of trust and candour.

But it needs preparation and proper facilitation to be of real value. To launch an idea like this at ten days' notice does seem not only hasty and misguided, but tepid, as if the project doesn't take itself altogether seriously. One person tweeted a response to my blog: You’re a good man and this is a gracious response, which I admire. But I’m afraid I can’t but think this CofE initiative is beyond parody. The gospel reduced to tea, platitudes and Patience Strong. Sorry. Another said: Very generous of you to offer two cheers for this idea; not sure I could raise even that. It seems very parochial and half-hearted. Still, given that if Brexit does go ahead we'll be setting the clock back to the 1950s, perhaps it's culturally appropriate.

Which brings me to the heart of what I want to say. It's St Cuthbert's Day. It's also the spring equinox. If ever a day should put a new spring (pun intended) in our step, it's today. So maybe I'm allowed to nurture a wish (or if you prefer, a prayer, a longing, a hope, a dream). It's this: that on a day when it's finally clear that Brexit has become a national, not to say European, emergency, the UK churches should put muscle into contributing positively to the debate about what kind of outcome we look for in this tortuous process, and what kind of a people we aspire to be.

It's understandable that our churches have not wanted to take sides in the Brexit debate. Like Parliament, the churches are as divided as the nation is. The other established church in these islands, the Church of Scotland, has been a conspicuous exception in long championing EU membership, as I've pointed out. It’s always made it clear however that its members personally hold a variety of views and no one is asked to endorse its public position. But I don't think I'm alone in having become dissatisfied with the studied impartiality which my own Church of England has observed at an official level. There comes a time when it is Laodicean not to make a choice - even if we must also underline strongly that Anglicans don’t all see things the same way. Diversity of view on this as on many other issues is affirmed in a broad church like ours.

So what ought we to be doing as Christian communities? To my mind, our churches should be drawing on our rich theological and spiritual resources of prophecy and wisdom to put the Brexit controversy into a larger context than nationhood alone. We should offer interpretation that begins not with the "Britain first" mentality but by asking, What might be good for our continent? What might support its poorest and most vulnerable people, including our own? What might make for reconciliation and peacemaking in our world and for the conservation and care of our environment? What might Britain with its wealth of experience bring to the family of nations? And even, What might God's perspective be on all these questions?

What will the starting point be? It's clear enough in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. When it comes to human life, the Bible summons us to love our neighbours as ourselves. There's no ambiguity about this. So it can only mean that the flourishing of other people should be as prominent in our concerns as our own, and by extension, the welfare of communities, not just individuals. Here's the insight that should challenge these years of self-interested rhetoric about promoting our own wealth by "taking back control".

I've always believed that "better together" expresses an ideal of society at its most wholesome. Collaboration, partnership, common purpose achieved not by coercion but by consent - no nation could survive without them, no church, no community of any kind. That's why our consent to align ourselves with the European Union and play a leading part in its life has served all our nations well in our lifetimes. But now we face the threat of fragmentation wherever we look, not least due to extremist politics that are openly contemptuous of the civilised values most of our post-war generation have grown up with in Europe.

If our churches are not one hundred percent clear about the importance of loving our neighbour, who else is going to be? I'm saying that we now need urgently to speak up for these values before it is too late. That's a matter that goes well beyond Brexit. But Brexit is itself a symptom of disintegration, the loss of belief in values that once held us together, the falling apart of an association of peoples who were all the stronger because they pooled their sovereignty and pledged to work together for the common good. I find this intellectual and spiritual collapse, which is what I largely think it is, extraordinarily sad.

These things were important to those who launched the European project in the aftermath of war. They were not all people of explicit faith, but they were deeply influenced by Catholic social teaching about how human beings flourish when they invest in healthy relationships, strong communities and a just, inclusive and equitable society. It took courage to think in that way and perseverance to put its ideals in practice. It was immensely far-sighted. I think it could be argued that it came to fruition - however slowly and fitfully - because of an understanding of humanity based not on economic or political expediency (though that comes into it) but on humane theological values of justice, peace, truth and charity, which in turn derive from the wisdom and goodness of the Creator.

Who is speaking nowadays about this founding vision? Some faith leaders aren't afraid to do this as individual men and women. They deserve our gratitude and encouragement because it is often controversial and sometimes costly. But what about our churches as public institutions? Where's the voice of urgency, the spirited engagement in what will affect the future of us all? That's where I'm left feeling despondent. Evenhandedness can be a good thing, not least when you can see different sides of a complex question. But now is a time when choices must be made. That’s when voices need to be heard that are prophetic, hopeful and wise. So much hangs on decisions made in the coming days and weeks that will irrevocably affect our lives and those of our children and grandchildren for decades to come.

Yesterday I quoted Archbishop Justin Welby. Launching the Church of England's initiative this week, he said: "A century from now the Church will be remembered for how it responded at this crucial moment in the life of our nation and country". He is right of course. We stand at a moment in history that most generations don't get to experience. At such times, destinies are forged. This brings both the privilege and responsibility of the nation’s institutions to speak publicly in ways that capture the significance of our times and interpret them with wisdom and prophetic insight.

I don't think we have fully understood that yet in the Church of England. But I reckon that if George Bell and William Temple were alive today, they would urge the church to take a robustly positive view of our membership of the EU and not regard it as a matter of indifference. They would speak out against nationalism in all its forms. They would see off the specious doctrine of British exceptionalism. They would surely say, for the sake of justice and the welfare of Europe as well as the UK, let’s give ourselves unreservedly to the life of the continent we’re part of. They would say these things with charity. But they would not hold back when it came to conviction. It would matter to them what side of history the Church of England decided to be on.

So here's my wish and my prayer on this first day of spring. Wouldn't it be marvellous if our churches  embraced the idea of a forward-looking nation, one that grasped hold of a future in which we pledged commitment to our neighbouring peoples and nations and affirmed the friendships and  alliances that have served us so well in Europe? Cuthbert saw the world as a place where everything - including human life - was connected, held together in the love of God. I passionately believe that the European Project is consistent with that life-affirming vision. Why wouldn’t the Church want to say amen?

A Christian Vision for Europe: learning from the past

As background for the EU referendum, I've been reading about the vision for the reconstruction of Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War.
 
What's striking is the prominent role of Christian thinkers in the debate. On the European mainland, politicians like Robert Schuman laid out plans advocating a new order in which it would be impossible for European nations to engage in the destructive warfare that had had such a calamitous effect not only for Europe but the entire world. As a courageous fighter in the French resistance, he had seen this at first hand. What is less well-known nowadays is his deep religious faith, informed by his detailed knowledge of, among other Christian philosophers, St Thomas Aquinas. It was Catholic social teaching that motivated his vision for a more peaceable Europe, particularly its emphasis on the quest for justice and the common good. In this he was not alone.
 
The Schuman Declaration was published on 9 May 1950, less than a month after I was born. (That date is now kept as Europe Day, and I hope we shall see the EU flag flying on public buildings then.) The plan advocated as a starting point a single economic market that would bring together Europe's vast coal and steel industries. Common economic goals, would, he believed, would not only greatly reduce the risks of conflict but would lead to other shared endeavours that would transform the economic, social and political face of the continent not least in reconciling its nations and healing centuries-old divisions.

Schumann believed that individual nation states were not best placed to judge what was in the interests of the common good. A nation's priorities would inevitably always be the welfare of its own citizens. There is nothing wrong with self-interest if it is enlightened: Aquinas followed Augustine in discussing very carefully what it meant to command, as Judaism and Christianity do, that we should love our neighbours "as ourselves". But Schuman, along with other Christian democrats, believed that a much larger vision of life together was needed for the safety and flourishing of the continent. Only a supra-national enterprise in which the reconciled peoples of Europe collaborated closely could ever deliver this.

UK church leaders and politicians watched these developments closely. Prominent among the Church of England bishops was George Bell who welcomed Schuman's visionary plan. In a debate in the House of Lords, Bell expressed the hope that Britain would bring to the new Europe the distinctive gifts it had to offer: its long experience of stable democratic government, its global "reach" as a people whose empire extended across the world, and its warm friendship with the United States. Andrew Chandler quotes him in his new biography of Bell: The preservation of national sovereignty as its own end was, he said, "not itself a Christian principle. The partial fusion of sovereignty is in accordance with Christian principles if it is in pursuit of noble ends and justice and peace".  

Those words seem strikingly modern. The idea of "pooled sovereignty" as a way of exercising a nation's power and influence has been much discussed during the EU campaign. During the recent visit of US President Barack Obama we have heard a great deal about Anglo-American friendship, prized by almost everyone on both sides of the debate. But what motivated Bell and those who thought like him was a Christian vision of society, a dream inspired by the gospel for the future of the human race. They were not simply concerned with pragmatic politics.

I am sure he owed this to his close contacts with prophetic German Christians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller during the terrible years of Nazi rule. He saw a national church fatally embroiled in national self-interest, blindly colluding with tyranny and persecution. What he learned from Bonheoffer and Niemöller was that Christianity is bigger than any nation state. If it is to be true to its Lord, its scope must never be less than humanity itself, for it was the world to which, out of love, God sent his Son. And therefore (he said, aware that he was speaking as a bishop of the Church "of England") the very idea of a "national" church was in an important theological way, a contradiction. Unless a national church saw itself as a vital member of the world church, and led its people to think of their nationality as subsumed under their Christian and human identity, it would deny the universality of the gospel.

We need an historical perspective if we are to debate our EU membership intelligently. As has famously been said, if we ignore the lessons of the past we shall find ourselves committing them all over again. It's especially important that we Christians who engage in the debate understand where we have come from. I'm not sure that the churches are saying nearly enough about the clear Christian motivation of the EU's founding fathers. Indeed, I'm not sure that the churches are saying nearly enough about this entire debate. And that would have greatly puzzled the church leaders of the 1940s and 1950s.

History, like patriotism, is not enough. We need to frame the debate in contemporary terms, not those of a past age. The dilemmas that face the European Union today are different from those of half a century ago, and vastly more complex. But that's why those who speak for religious faith should be more vocal, not less. It's true that bishops and church leaders are not experts in global politics, the economy, trade, security, governance and many of the other matters that are defining the debate. But that was true in 1950 too. Religion should speak about what it knows, and tread tentatively where it lacks technical knowledge. But Christianity knows a great deal about aspiring to a nobler vision of human community, about social justice, solidarity with the poor and needy, seeking the common good, and above all, about being a society that transcends all human limitations and frontiers. It knows about those things because it has lived them for two thousand years.

This is why the church today must heed the lessons of the past, and summon up the courage not only to think itself into a universal frame of mind but to speak about it. Perhaps the church needs to reboot its imagination so that like those visionary Christian prophets of the postwar era, it speaks compellingly once again into the politics of the day in pursuit of a reconciled human family. Its distinctive contribution to the EU referendum could be to remind us of the universal Christian principles that lay behind the founding of the European project. Their propounders, the parents of the European Union, are no longer with us. But "they being dead, yet speak".