I was intrigued to hear Cardinal Cormac Murphy O"Connor's call for a Christian dialogue with the Secular (or Secularism or Atheism). There is a lot of confusion with these terms but I believe he is talking about a dialogue with those that would seek to take God-talk away from the public sphere (strictly speaking "secularism"). Hence, he's had a little dig at Richard Dawkins and his like (who was given the most woefully gentle treatment when interviewed this morning by that rottweiler John Humphreys on the radio!). What this sort of discussion demonstrates is that our context is not one of "faith versus the rest", still less about a purported vision of Christian Britain against the threat of political Islam. Across all quarters, amongst all communities, there are fundamental convictions about the nature of the good life that need to find expression. The challenge is to find language appropriate to what motivates and inspires our deepest concerns about life, community and the other such that the differences do not detract from the building of a shared whole.
Frequently, when lecturing about Islam, people will respond by saying something like, "We have an amazing amount in common, it seems to me that the real enemy is secular atheism". I have to reply, "no". The fact that we have so much in common in terms of the oneness of God and a recognition of many shared prophets (as we do with Judaism) demands that we ought to be better about the conversations, but we have our fundamental points of departure. Secularism, too, though teaches us truths consonant with the gospel. There are threats within the agenda of secularists seeking to remove God-talk from the public square....There are also threats within the agenda of a robust political Islam that totalises the non-Muslim. But there is much of God's grace within the freedoms and liberties of secularism or in the corporate responsibility to God within political Islam. We are not dealing with either/ors here, enemies or partners.
Can we learn from all quarters in being fully Christian and totally engaged, bringing our own challenges in turn? My Masters supervisor David Marshall makes the point that the Church arguably rediscovered its original mandate of social justice through its encounter with Marxism. I would add that, more latterly, the Church has rediscovered its original mandate to stewardship of creation through its encounter with the conservation movement. What might we learn and rediscover about our particular biblical calling as we engage in honest, vulnerable but confident ways with Muslims, Hindus, New Agers, Prof Richard Dawkins etc etc...It makes our bewildering multifaith milieu an exciting prospect rather than a frightening one when looked at this way, does it not?
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