Driving over to York this morning I was interested to listen to a piece on the abortion debate on BBC Radio 4. What was intriguing was not the (rather predictable) discussion, but rather the fact that it was the ‘Science Editor’ who commented on it. This betrays the assumption that we are dealing with a medical matter rather than an ethical one. (OK, the bill going through Parliament today would come under that brief, but it still begs the question.)
Maybe I was attuned to this because yesterday I was chairing the Sandford St Martin Trust in London. The Trust’s objective is to ‘promote excellence in religious broadcasting’ and it seeks to do this in a variety of ways, but principally by making prestigious annual awards.
At the Awards Ceremony at Lambeth Palace in May 2010 Roger Bolton made a bold case for the appointment by the BBC of a Religion Editor. He was not asking for an apologist or an evangelist, but an interpreter.
We live in a world in which, whether the commentariat like it or not, religion is (a) a powerful motivator of both individuals and communities, and (b) a social, political, economic and cultural phenomenon – that is, a reality that cannot be simply ignored (because “we don’t like it and wish it wasn’t there”) and cannot be neutered by uncritical assumptions about secular or ‘scientific’ neutrality.
The public discourse needs an interpreter to do for religion what Evan Davies did for economics.
The discussion on the radio this morning was good, but it would have been even better if there had been a brief interpretation or explanation of why different people see things the way they do, derived from the assumptions they assume. If you know what I mean.
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Location:Bishopthorpe, York
September 6, 2011 at 6:06 pm
It was interesting to listen to a debate on Radio Kent today, about whether school assemblies should or should not have a Christian element to them.
Strangely enough, the Christian commentator, agreed with the humanist that the current situation is unsatisfactory and too prescriptive. He seemed to be saying that such gatherings should include the whole gamut of religions, not just Christianity. He seemed to be saying it should be in line with what is taught in the national curriculum. Interviews with parents and children however seemed to be saying that we should maintain the status quo.
The BBC tried hard to convince them that the humanist stance was fairer, but didn’t really succeed. It was interesting that one young group had a favourite hymn of Jerusalem which they sang for the mike.
They also had a disagreement about faith schools, but that is another debate entirely.
September 6, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Brilliant post, thank you.
I might have misunderstood you… I hope not:
What worries me about this is that all our assumptions tend to start with the unspoken premise that the other’s have baser motives than we do and that only our motives are pure.
Most of the public slanging matches could be avoided if we assumed that the other’s position is worthy of respect, that it is not automatically selfish, greedy, careless, thoughtless, moralistic, unintelligent…
We might need an interpreter. But before we can listen to him, we need to search inside ourselves and learn genuine respect of difference.
September 6, 2011 at 11:24 pm
Erika: Your comments reminded me of something Song wrote on this blog once [remember Song? where/when did she go?] I was so struck by it that I wrote it down and kept it where I would keep stumbling across it. It was in response to something Nick had posted about conversations in which we “risk being transformed”. She wrote, “How can we truly engage with something we’ve already dismissed?” and “Why should anyone listen to me if I have already decided they are wrong?”
It cuts both ways!
September 7, 2011 at 9:57 am
Dearsoeur,
Song, yes! She still blogs, doesn’t she? And I think she comments on other blogs with her real name, but I may be wrong.
I think the difference is that I was talking about our assumptions about “someone” whereas you talk about engaging with “something”.
The difficulty is that there are indeed topics that are purely black and white, where the IS a right and a wrong. Blacks were either equal or they weren’t, slavery was either wrong or it wasn’t. Climate change is either happening or it isn’t.
But in those conversations, too, we should be humble enough that the others aren’t immoral demons, vile morons to be dismissed completely, but mature, complex adults we might even like very much were we to meet them in other circumstances.
We can have very firm views about the subjects we argue about. The challenge is about our underlying assumptions about the people we’re talking to and how we treat them as a consequence of our assumptions.
September 7, 2011 at 11:15 am
Interestingly, there seems to be a real interest in the young with taking Religious Studies, which is a broad and rigorous discipline. Numbers studying it after 9/11 rose.
My son switched course to pursue it and then a Masters Degree and ended up in advertising where his interviewer said that having someone who knew/ thought from a different perspective was better for the Company than having another Marketing Degree clone.
The mass media do need to catch up.
September 7, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Erika: I think I understood that and was actually agreeing with you. It took the likes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu etc etc to expose the deeply held [often unconscious and therefore unexpressed] beliefs and convictions that underpinned slave trafficking and then continuing segregation. I was agreeing with Nick’s point, too, about needing interpreters, to aid the listening process, otherwise we may make all sorts of assumptions about what the assumptions of others actually are. If you and he see what *I* mean!
September 7, 2011 at 6:12 pm
So who interprets?
Who is and is seen genuinely educated, impartial and respected enough to take on this job?
I’m asking because in the CoE/Anglican Communion sphere, Rowan Williams is a prime example of someone who should be an ideal interpreter. He genuinely sees both sides, used to be respected by pretty much everyone, should have been an outstanding mediator.
And yet – he ended up being perceived as a complete failure, hated with a passion by the same people who used to love him. And although he has made mistakes, he does not deserve half the bile that’s being poured upon him.
What price interpreting?
September 7, 2011 at 8:43 pm
I didn’t hear this, but I did hear the item on the news about the rejection of the Nadine Dorries bill to stop abortion providers from offering counselling. I have mixed feelings on this _ I am not sure those who may benefit financially should offer counselling. I can’t see there would be a problem with an offer ( and offer is only an offer!) of independent counselling to all seeking a termination.
September 8, 2011 at 12:04 am
Erika, sometimes the interpreter stands in the middle and gets pulled apart by both sides who refuse to listen to the other language. There is an image that comes to mind…
September 8, 2011 at 8:05 am
Suem,
Those who currently offer counselling do not “benefit” financially, they make enough money to finance their service and a small profit to plough back into the service. I can’t find the link now, but there was some brilliant analysis in one of the papers that showed that removing the ability to provide counselling from those who do it at present would open the doors to even less professional counselling, as the bill didn’t say who should provide it, thus enabling groups with a definite pro-life agenda to counsel – and that is definitely no longer “independent” in the sense of being “balanced and not putting pressure on women”. As most current counsellors are registered with professional bodies, the quality of the counselling provided could go down if they were no longer allowed to provide the service.
And even the Daily Mail had to concede after they sent a journalist to pose as a pregnant woman seeking a termination, that the Marie Stopes clinic provided absolutely impartial advice, repeatedly ensuring that the woman had understood every single option open to her.
Nick,
quite! There are some outstanding interpreters for religion around. But if they don’t get torn apart by their own side, they get completely ignored by the outside. It’s not as if highly intelligent religious people had not tried to engage with Dawkins et all. Many of our public critics are absolutely insistent that they know better than we do what Christians believe and only engage with the lowest fundamentalist level. You have to ask about their motives. But the publicity they get ensures that most people end up believing that this is what religion is about – and new assumptions have been created. We don’t help ourselves, of course, still being torn apart by issues no-one on the outside can really understand any longer and which are just seen as unfair, outdated, immoral and all about social control rather than a mature faith.
But there again, astonishingly respectful conversations like the one between Philip Pullmann and Rowan Williams don’t generate as much publicity.
So the question is – how do you interpret successfully? And how do you chose your interpreters?