THE new Church of England working group on promoting unity was given a platform in the House of Lords last week by its chair, the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow.
A paper from the working group, published last week, is due to be discussed at the General Synod in York on 11 July (News, 25 June). It explains why the flag of St George can still be a sign of unity, rather than division.
Taking on this work, Bishop Snow told peers, “has made me think hard about the three threats before us today, and what they mean for our common life — indeed, for the Church and for other faith groups.
“In decades past, people found recognition and a sense of agency and belonging in the institutions closest to them: the parish and the chapel, the union, the club. . . In the past 50 years, both the membership of such bodies and their numbers have fallen dramatically.”
In a debate on threats to democratic institutions, he criticised “online influencers . . . and new in-groups built on shared identity, often mobilised against a particular other” as “an ersatz belonging, one that depends entirely on the construction of a shared enemy”.
He said: “Populist movements benefit from the decline of our civic infrastructure; they have an interest in dismantling it. Where faith-based institutions are concerned, civil society offers a cultivated conscience, a reason to say no to manipulation or controlling behaviour, and to insist on the dignity of those whom a populist movement may wish to exclude.”
Recent efforts by the Government had not “come anywhere near meeting the scale of the threat that we face”, he suggested.
“Rebuild the places where, across our differences, we still learn to trust one another. For a people who have somewhere to belong are far harder to set against each other, and that is the surest defence that we have.”
Baroness Gill (Labour) referred to “the level of vile social media comments” she had received when she was elected. “I did not mind them attacking me on my politics . . . but I did mind that it was about my race and my sex,” she said.
Lord Jackson (Conservative) said that “the Pope’s magisterial first encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas [News, 29 May] . . . touches on some of the issues raised in today’s debate”.
For Lord Norton (Conservative), a “necessary starting point” was embedding citizenship in the educational system. “That is the route to building an informed electorate, and indeed the route to ensuring that citizens appreciate voting and have an incentive to vote.”
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, summing up for the Government, made a specific point on trust: “If we are to rebuild the faith that politics can be a force for good, we need to work together. This work must transcend differences in political parties, and will require us all to come together.”