The Newstatesman (UK) has three articles today under the heading “Belief is Back.”
Mary Warnock, a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s advisory group on medical ethics writes:
It is the role of legislators to be consequentialists. They must not ask, “What does my religion teach about this measure?” but “Will society benefit from it in the empirical world?”
…
The assessment of what is good and what is harmful is, for most people, deeply influenced by the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Influence, however, is different from authority. That religion, any religion, may seem beleaguered in a generally secular society may account for the increasingly hectoring demands that it should exercise authority over us. Yet it is essential to hold on to the fact that in this country we are not a theocracy, but a democracy. Parliament must make the final decisions on legislation, even though these are also moral decisions. Parliament must try to judge what is the common good. We all have the right, and duty, to criticise the law.
Stephen Bates writes,
Conservative Christianity has been much less effective in Britain than in the US because it has less social and political influence, less unchallenged access to the media – and less money. But there is certainly a desire in some quarters to mimic the tactics of the US right. They think they are winning the argument, but fear they may be losing the war. They assume that because the world is against them, that means they must be right. But the ultimate irony is that the more urgently they profess the need to win the nation for Christ, the more they repel those they say they most wish to save.
Sholto Brynes gently interviews Tom Wright, the bishop of Durham.