Celebrate Europe Day!

9 May is Europe Day. It deserves a blog.

It's kept on this day because it marks the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration on 9 May 1950. This was the momentous event that proposed the merging of the French and German coal and steel industries. So it came to be seen as the founding moment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) out of which the European Union evolved. 

Robert Schuman (not to be confused with the composer!) was Prime Minister of France and the first President of the European Parliamentary Assembly. He is regarded by many as the "Father of Europe" for his visionary approach to the reconstruction of the postwar continent. Most important, from our perspective, is the faith of this profoundly Christian statesman. A devout Roman Catholic, his thinking about Europe was deeply influenced by catholic social theology with the principles of solidarity, subsidiarity and the quest for the common good right at the heart. I've blogged about the Christian influences on the European project before.

Think about it. Today, 8 May, marks the anniversary of the end of the war in Europe in 1945. We are right to call it VE Day because it marks the liberation of all our peoples from the scourge of Nazi totalitarianism. That includes the liberation of the German people themselves from the terrible years of Nazi occupation - not just the occupation of their land but of the nation's mind and heart and psyche. 

A mere 5 years later, almost to the day, the Schuman Declaration marked the willingness of historic sworn enemies, France and Germany, to begin to collaborate economically. It's an extraordinary achievement. Since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which itself drew on a long history of rivalry in Europe, these two nations had been sworn enemies. To begin to heal memories, grow trust and discover how instead of fighting they might work together for the good of all their people would have been undreamed-of a mere half a decade earlier. 

So I want to promote Europe Day as the natural "day after" VE Day. Victory in Europe would have meant nothing had there not been an entirely new spirit abroad to rebuild the shattered continent that had suffered so awfully. This was thanks to Schuman and others like him who took the Christian vision of reconciliation and peace-seeking with the utmost seriousness. And although the EU is far from being free of severe strains and unresolved tensions, armed conflict has not broken out among its member nations ever since that day. It's a huge achievement we need to talk up and celebrate. 

My generation has been the beneficiary of these six decades of peace. I was born less than a month before the Schuman Declaration. I count myself hugely fortunate to have been spared the upheavals of war experienced by my parents and their parents. We so easily take it for granted. We get into a way of thinking about the EU that is dominated by the economy, security and migration, but that is worryingly short on memory when it comes to why we are part of it in the first place. These two days 8-9 May remind us.

Yes, I'm an idealist about the EU because - despite all its difficulties, I still believe in its founding vision. Not uncritically or naïvely: it can and does get things wrong. But that's no reason not to persevere with a project that has given this continent so much. Indeed, I think of myself as a European before I am British (and British before I am English). That's partly thanks to my Anglo-German parentage. But I think it's more to do with my Christian faith. As I read it, the gospel impels us towards a greater integration with all the human family. My being European is a vital part of my identity because it's one of the ways in which I see us growing together in committed bonds of peace and collaboration with our fellow human beings. It doesn't stop at the borders of Europe. But it can start there. 

However, I'm also a realist. I suspect that we who are "conviction Europhiles" will always be a minority in the UK. Europe Day is never going to be a public holiday here. I doubt you'll see the EU flag fluttering from many public buildings or draped in the front room windows of Europhile homes. I don't imagine that many school assemblies will make it their theme (I'd love to be proved wrong) or that church bells will ring out in celebration. 

But perhaps there are readers of this blog who may just think the day is worth raising a glass to and say a prayer of thanksgiving and hope. It's a good time to remember the founding purposes on which the European Union was established. So I urge us not to forget peace and human rights, social welfare and education, solidarity with the poor, democracy, the environment, cultural exchange and all the other ways in which the EU has made such a difference not just to the continent but the world. Let's recall that we are in this for the common good. There is indeed a long hard road ahead that we need to travel. But I want the UK to take a lead in this great collaborative venture and not be left on the sidelines.

So let's go on making the case for voting #Remain In the referendum. We know it makes sense for all the best geo-political, world trade, economic and security reasons. We know we are #StrongerIn. But let's not forget our history, where we came from. Let's not forget the founding vision and the Christian faith that inspired it. Let's celebrate Europe Day with real thankfulness and hope. And pray for the EU, its institutions and all its member states, and not least, for the referendum itself. 

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".