“…the biggest cultural difference is religion…”
Tariq Modood
‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education’ is a Stimulus paper published in 2015 comprising 2 papers written to generate debate about the role of religion in British society and politics and the resulting issues for higher education institutions.
Paper 1 ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood
Tariq Modood is a Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy and the context of his paper – cultural diversity and national identity – and what is at stake are described in this interview where he says “..the biggest cultural difference is religion”.
Western European moderate secularism
In this section of his paper Modood first addresses the statement that “Religion is a public, not just a private good”. To begin with it is not clear whether this heading is a statement about the separation of religion as public or private, a debate about this or a claim that religion is a public good.
Modood starts this section by stating that:
“It is understood that organised religion can play a significant role in relation to the ethical; voice, social wellbeing, cultural heritage, national ceremonies and national identity”[1]
There is a lot to unpack in this statement, it begs the questions: understood by whom? What is meant by “organised” religion? (In the UK context is he meaning the Church of England or all of the main faiths in the UK?) The word, “can”, is key here as this is a debateable claim, who agrees with this and what does the “can” involve? Is not organised religion and its role in national ceremonies and identity controversial when the UK is a multi-faith society? And what is ‘national identity’ to the UK not least when Brexit revealed sharp demarcations between geographical areas and the debate about devolution is ongoing. Two examples of the role that organised religion can take in society, offered by Modood, include “family stability” and “economic hope”. I think there is an assumption here about what family might mean, the nuclear family or extended family? But is ‘the family’ a stable unit and what of ‘blended’ families, are they stable? There is a growing debate about family abolition.[2] And what is “economic hope”?! Hope is not a tangible or concrete policy or strategy. Modood does conclude by acknowledging that organised religion is not necessarily always a public good, but his point is that, ultimately, religion can and does have important social and political effects for public life.
Modood writes about ‘the national church’, remarking that non-members can feel ownership or association with it. Modood’s example in discussing this is the public response to the Church of England (C. of E.) failing, in 2012, to agree to appoint women bishops, a decision reversed two years later perhaps as a result. I don’t agree with Madood here that this indicates non-members of the church feeling ‘ownership’, or association, with the C. of E. What is at stake is that the national church, by virtue of it being national, represents the population of the UK and such decisions are made, in a sense, in our name.
Madood also raises the question of whether it is legitimate for the state to be involved in promoting the ‘public good’ that organised religion offers (if that claim is accepted). The notion of the ‘public good’ appealed to here is not clearly defined but was hinted at earlier with ideas about ‘the family’ etc. that are contentious and highly politically charged.
Changes in religious demography
I learnt in this section about the ‘secularisation’ that has been taking place in the UK over the past decades. The research data for this has been widely reported and has emphasised the lack of religion of young people.[3] However, Modood’s paper draws attention to some of the complexities around this: spirituality, ‘belief without belonging’ and ‘implicit religion’(?) are still evident; Christian faith has become “vicarious”; university students declare a religious faith more than other young people. Modood also highlights the effects of immigration:
“…not just the settlement of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs from the 1950s onwards – but also more recently the growth of Black-led, especially West African, Pentecostalist churches, and the over-crowded Catholic churches as Poles joined their congregations”.[4]
One of the consequences of this that I found very interesting is that it has transformed London from one of the least religious areas to one of the most (and that large towns and cities are now more religious than small towns and villages). Modood also cited the findings that religious people tend to have larger families and so he predicts the growth of religion in the UK.
At the end of this section, Modood reveals that, although younger people are less likely to declare a religious faith, those that do have a religious faith have a high level of commitment to it and it place in their life. This was particularly so among Indians, African Asians, Pakistani and Bangladeshi young people and rising among young Muslims. This implicates religion as an equality, diversity and inclusion issue for the students that we teach here in London.
The public sphere
The issue of inclusion and equality, generally, is developed towards the end of the paper in the section ‘The public sphere’, in particular, in the context of post-9/11 and a rise in Muslim consciousness along with public campaigns and conflicts, stating:
“This is partly due simply to the stresses and strains of accommodating new or previously marginalised minorities and is not peculiar to religion or Muslims as such. Specifically, it parallels campaigns in relation to ethno-racial, gender and sexual orientation equality”.[5]
Despite this, Modood also finds reasons to be argue to suggest that there is not “a crisis of secularism” pointing to ‘the nature of the British state-religion connections’ offering examples of support and cooperation.[6]
However, I found the way in which Modood oscillates between references to the public and private spheres in the paper to be oversimplified. Also, when Modood refers to private is he referring to what might be called culture (including the habits and customs of faith)? Thinking about all of this I recalled an essay that I reread quite recently, for different reasons by Homi K. Bhabha. Discussing human rights in a different context (and debates framed by questions of the global and the local) in the essay “On Minorities: cultural rights” Bhabha tackles the complex questions of national identity, minorities, rights and the creation of ‘new minorities’ by problematising them to say something relevant here, that this:
“…reveals a liminal, interstitial public sphere that emerges in-between the state and the non-state, in-between individual rights and group needs…Subjects of cultural rights occupy an analytic and ethical borderland of ‘hybridization’ in a partial and double identification across minority milieux”.[7]
Bhabha also alludes to “…the underlying fear here…is the ‘creation of new minorities’…” something that Modood also refers to when he writes of people being uncomfortable with the ‘over-religionising’ the public sphere and complicated further by the intersection of racial and religious stereotyping. Bhabha cites Seyla Benhabib,
“historically the strong pursuit of collective goals or ‘goods’, commonly referred to as nationalism, has usually been at the cost of minorities – both national and ‘migrant or diasporic’…”[8]
Bhabha turns to poetry for responses to these complexities, a poem by Adrienne Rich, Inscriptions, which for him embodies the spirt of the hybrid subject he writes about:
“The subject of the poem is literally, the sphere of the proximity of differences – race, class, gender, generation – as they emerge in a range of intersecting public spheres – the street, the academy, the political party, the private diary – to claim a right to representation”.[9]
The questions the poem explores relate to the relationship of an individual within a larger community of belief and belief that is larger than the individual as “chiasmatic doubles”.
Modood ends his paper with an appeal for ‘religious literacy’ and understanding in Higher Education “but not in a narrowly religious way” instead “in a context of wider social divisions and group power relations, especially racism, ethno-religious exclusions”. [10] However, this final statement also evokes all the complexities of cultural difference and translation in a global world for which there too are no easy answers.
[1] Modood, T. ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, p.10
[2] Silverstein, S, “Family abolition isn’t about ending love and care. It’s about extending it to everyone, 26 April, 2020, open Democracy https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/family-abolition-isnt-about-ending-love-and-care-its-about-extending-it-to-everyone/
[3] McCallum, S. ‘70% of young Brits are ‘not religious’, 21 March 2018 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-43485581
[4] Modood, T. ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. p. 8
[5] Ibid. p. 10
[6] Ibid p. 11
[7] Bhabha, H. K., ‘On minorities: cultural rights’ in Radical Philosophy, Mar/Apr 2000 https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/on-minorities
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Modood, T. ‘We don’t do God? the changing nature of public religion’ by Professor Tariq Modood’ in Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education, 2015, London: Leadership Foundation for Higher Education. p. 12