THE next Archbishop of Canterbury will become the most prominent religious leader in the UK, at a time when religious cohesion in this country faces three significant threats.
The first and most obvious comes from the Gaza War, which has now claimed more than 50,000 lives, and the continued plight of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Muslim and Jewish populations around the world, not least in Britain, feel intimately connected with this suffering. There is a real risk that the trajectory of improved relations between their communities is now irreparably derailed.
The second is the obsessive and ignorant demonisation of Islam in what we might term the “civilisational culture wars”. Far-Right groups associate the malaise of the West with the perception of an over-assertive Islam that threatens our way of life. This narrative was a clear strand in last summer’s riots (News, 9 August 2024).
The third receives less attention, but it is growing in intensity. It is the nexus of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh tensions that emanate from the Indian subcontinent. These led to riots in Leicester in 2022, and we have yet to see whether the recent escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan, after last month’s horrifying slaughter in Kashmir, will manifest itself on our shores.
All of these sources of tension are global in nature and affect local communities in the UK through the technological reshaping of religion as tribal, oppositional identities, both national and transnational. They illustrate how religion has become a core element in contemporary geopolitics and a significant driver of conflict.
WHY should the next Archbishop of Canterbury give this much attention? He or she will have plenty of other priorities to engage with, among them: a deeply divided Anglican Communion, a safeguarding crisis, and an unresolved stand-off over same-sex blessings. Interfaith relations will feel, to many, like a distraction from the task of reversing our Church’s decline. Indeed, Presence and Engagement’s 2017 report found many congregations themselves to be too “overwhelmed, insecure, and inward-focused” to make interfaith relations a priority (News, 7 July 2017).
The geo-political seriousness of today’s interreligious conflict has eroded old stereotypes of interfaith relations as relativism or synchronism. But a misconception persists that promoting robust religious pluralism is at odds with the task of evangelism.
The opposite is true. Fostering the conditions that enable religious diversity, including religious freedom, is the precondition of all believers’ expressing and sharing their faith in a free and tolerant society. Giving room to other religions should not be seen as allowing less room for Christianity, just as it was never right to suppress Roman Catholicism or the dissenting churches to maintain the Church of England’s hegemony.
Upholding and promoting robust religious pluralism is, therefore, an important responsibility of the Primate of All England. It is integral to our constitutional religious settlement, in which enduring ecclesiastical privilege (establishment, bishops in the House of Lords, support for church schools) brings with it the responsibilities of generous hospitality to minority faiths.
For a time, it felt that such a model was becoming outdated. Declining congregations made Christian privilege increasingly hard to justify, and the notion that “we” extend hospitality to “them” can surely be patronising or controlling.
Yet, in the months since 7 October 2023, many of us have experienced how Jewish and Muslim communities have looked to the Church of England, not least under the leadership of its Supreme Governor, the King, for support when they feel harassed, and to provide spaces for exceedingly difficult conversations that they do not feel able to convene themselves.
As the sociologists Tariq Modood and Thomas Sealy have pointed out in their global analysis of the governance of religious diversity, “that calls for disestablishment come overwhelmingly from secularists rather than from minority faith groups is telling, as is that some Christians can also feel alienated from the secular state” (The New Governance of Religious Diversity, Polity, 2024).
SO, PERHAPS there is still some life in the hospitality model. Indeed, it may prove more resilient and realistic than the more programmatic forms of secularism which were propagated in the modern era as a “neutral” container for religious diversity, but which are now collapsing in many countries, including Turkey, India, and even France.
We may hope, therefore, that the promotion of good interfaith relations is a topic taken seriously by the Crown Nominations Commission for the see of Canterbury. The participation of the Archbishop in Jerusalem, Dr Hosam Naoum, is an encouraging sign that it might be. Strong leadership in religious freedom, encounter, and dialogue will be crucial for the stability of our nation over the coming years, and it will model something vital for the rest of the world.
The Revd Professor James Walters is director of the Faith Centre at the London School of Economics.
