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Is Religion a Force for Good?

Clare Short’s contribution to RE Today Magazine
Summer 2005

One of the joys of representing a constituency as diverse as mine is that I am invited to attend special events in churches, mosques, temples, Gurdwaras and synagogues that represent all the great religions of the world. This ranges from Birmingham’s Catholic and Anglican cathedrals and Central Mosque in the centre of the city through to smaller local mosques and black churches in the back streets of Ladywood. I usually find these visits deeply moving. I am touched by the sincerity of my constituents’ religious beliefs and as I read up on the basic teachings of the different faith groups, I find a commitment to love and seek justice for all people, to be a central teaching of all the world’s great religions.

I was brought up as a Catholic and took my religious commitments very seriously. But as I grew up, I concluded that a church that said contraception was wrong could not be respected and then my faith began to unravel and I poured my quest for a more just and moral order into my politics. This has lasted me for the past 25 years or so, but is now proving a cause of great disillusionment. But my visits to religious institutions stirred in me an old yearning that is now widely referred to as spirituality. And, as my mother got older, her lifts to Mass also got older and so I now regularly attend Mass at the church where I was baptised, made my First Communion and was confirmed which is in the centre of my constituency. There is of course much with which I still disagree, but the sermons are very fine and I love the community of people and the sense of goodness that lingers in the church. All of this, together with my long friendship with and respect for John Hick has led me to conclude both that all the world’s great religions are equally legitimate routes to God and that all people need a spiritual dimension to their lives. And what draws me powerfully to be attracted to the religious domain is that all religions teach that we should love each other, be truthful, be generous and caring for those who are in need and also to care for nature and this fragile world of ours. All of this is fine and good and I conclude that our decadent, obsessively materialistic society needs more of it.

But it is not as simple as that. We all know that in history terrible things have been done in the name of religion and as we look around the world today there is a new fanaticism and ugliness arising in all the world’s religions which has been too little discussed by people of faith. People of religious conviction need to examine why this is happening and what can be done to challenge it.

There is of course plenty of commentary on Islamic fundamentalism and much of it shows an ignorance of and bias against Islam that perhaps makes comfortable those who miss the simplicity of Cold War divisions and wish to replace them with Samuel Huntington’s nonsensical war of civilisations. But it is not just Islam that is being misused to justify the killing of innocent civilians. Similar movements are at work amongst Christian fundamentalists in the US who are looking forward to “the rapture” when those who are saved will ascend directly into heaven and the rest will suffer hellfire. An examination of their many sites on the internet shows that this leads them on to support an expansionist Israel because they do not believe the Messiah will return until there is a Jewish state in historical Palestine. And they also give strong support to the “war on terror” and tend to see Islam as part of the enemy. This would be worrying but not perhaps a great concern until we realise that they are of course a significant part of President Bush’s political support base. There is also, of course, a fanatical strand of Judaism which in the name of this ancient religion and its holy book is breaching international law, creating vast settlements on Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza and persecuting and oppressing the people of these lands.

Disturbing as all of this is, we need to be clear that this use of religion to stir up conflict is not confined to the three Abrahamic religions. There has been a growth of Hindu fanaticism in India which led to an outbreak of terrible killing and rape in Gujarat in 2002. And there are fanatical Buddhist monks elected to the parliament in Sri Lanka preaching hatred and vengeance against the Tamils.

Why is this occurring? Is it the end of the Cold War and the death of ideology that creates a vacuum of belief? Is it the speed of change in this era of hastening global integration that is causing so much change that people are clinging on to dogmatic certainties? The most vicious and dangerous divide is in the Middle East. It is an immediate test of whether people of faith can be a force for good. If we cannot come together to find a just peace in the Middle East then religion will once again flourish as a source of bitterness, hatred, division and bloodshed and the quest for goodness and spirituality will be cast aside.

Clare Short, MP for Birmingham Ladywood