Blair the Nutter?

The Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, said:

I am sorry that Tony Blair feels he could not talk about his faith in case people thought he was a nutter.

A Christian vision underlies all that is important about Britain: its laws, institutions and values.

If Blair had been able to relate this vision to his policies, we would have had more constructive social policy at home and principled policies abroad.

Blair ‘nutter’ fear angers bishop

This is a fascinating question. In America there is a strict separation between Church and State, yet politicians freely talk about their faith - indeed, it is rare to succeed to the highest levels of government without such (Christian) faith. In the UK we have an established Church, yet our politics has little or no religion in it. At any whiff of ‘the God thing’ there there comes the cry of fundamentalism.

I think that Bishop Michael is unfairly criticizing Tony Blair. I always admired the fact that Blair was up front and honest about his Christian convictions. I was sometimes disappointed at his government’s policies, but I recognized that 1) he was leader of a party, the majority of whose members are probably not Christians, and 2) he was the Prime Minister of a country the majority of whose citizens are not Christians.

The fact that Blair felt he would be ridiculed in the press if he made more of his faith in his leadership is not his fault, but an accurate reading of the British press (so, for example, the treatment of George Bush when he made the unfortunate comment about the ‘crusade’ against terror, etc). Bishop Michael should instead be angered at the intolerance shown in the media towards religion, especially Christianity.

Somehow this century the Church of England has become something to be patronised, little more than the caretaker of flower shows and most of the country’s oldest buildings, a kind of National Trust with weekly meetings. There is little or no sense that religion affects the way we live our lives. Ironically, one of the contributions of Richard Dawkins et al is the realisation that religion does affect the way we live - it cannot be dismissed simply as ineffective.

The question therefore is, what is its effect, and do we want it as a society?