Religion and Secularism in Britain today

Extract

A Newman Association day conference at Warwick University on the 9th March brought together nearly seventy delegates from different parts of the country to debate the rights of religious minorities in our society and to examine the potential for conflict between religious fundamentalism and secularism. Three specialists working in the field of inter-faith and intercommunity relations addressed the complex nature of these issues. They were the Reverend Dr. Clinton Bennett, the Reverend Dr. Christopher Lamb and Professor Edward Hulmes. Dr. Bennett is Executive Secretary for Inter-Faith Relations at the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, Dr. Lamb is Community Relations Advisor for the Diocese of Coventry and Professor Hulmes is Spalding Professorial Fellow in World Religions in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham and Fellow of the Centre of Theological Enquiry at Princeton in the USA.

Against the background of the Rushdie affair and the community tensions generated by the Gulf War the conference focussed on the contrasting attitudes of Islam and Christianity towards secularism. It also examined the different ways in which Christians respond to religious pluralism. Does the decade of evangelisation which all the churches have endorsed conflict with inter-faith dialogue? Should evangelism be directed at those in our society who have no religious belief rather than at theists like Muslims and Jews? What lessons has the Church learned from the gradual process of secularisation of British society and how should Catholics communicate those insights to their fellow citizens of other faiths whose culture and background make it difficult for them to engage positively with secular culture?