Those who believe religion and politics aren’t connected don’t understand either. (Mahatma Gandhi)Footnote1
It is hard even for the most dedicated secularist to deny that communities of faith are the most durable contexts for relationships and habits that exist at right angles to functional and individualist models of human society. (Rowan Williams)Footnote2
It is nearly 20 years since the The Round Table last published a special issue on religion in/and the Commonwealth.Footnote3 In the editorial introduction to that issue, I argued for greater attention to religion in the literature of international relations, Commonwealth Studies and the internal affairs of Commonwealth countries, and for a greater degree of religious literacy.
Preet Gill, Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston wrote an article for the Huffington Post before the London Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) of 2018 headed Why religion is the solution to the Commonwealth’s problems. He called on the Commonwealth to ‘confront the demons of religious intolerance’ and so strengthen both the Commonwealth and society in general.Footnote4 Gill pointed out that eight Commonwealth countries featured on the Open Doors 2018 World Watch list of 50 countries where it was most dangerous to be a Christian. He also pointed to Commonwealth examples of good practice in multi-cultural societies and inter-religious dialogue. There is little evidence that this article – more nuanced, than the headline suggests – stimulated debate or action.
Has anything changed in the years since the previous Round Table special issue devoted to religion and the Commonwealth? I would argue that the issues are even more important and the need for religious literacy even more urgent. The case studies in 2005 were drawn from Sierra Leone, Uganda, Malawi, India, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan and Malaysia. India and Pakistan are still prominent, but the current issue has less of an African focus with just one article, that of Patrick Afamefune Ikem and Confidence Nwachinemere commenting from that continent. Then I regretted the dominance in the literature of the Abrahamic religions and the concentration on the Christian/Muslim dichotomy. This issue does something to remedy that with more on Hindu and Buddhist perspectives and fundamentalisms. This issue also features perspectives from the post-Christian(?)/secular societies of Australia and New Zealand.
Some perspectives are still missing. It would have been good to have something from Canada where the continuing debate and revelations over residential schools draw attention to some murky Christian and missionary legacies. Suppressed atheist and humanist worldviews from Africa also deserve more of a hearing.Footnote5 Another gap in the literature is the study of the overlap and interplay between the Commonwealth and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), which describes itself as ‘the collective voice of the Muslim world, ensuring to safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people of the world’. Among Commonwealth countries, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Gabon, The Gambia, Malaysia, Maldives and Pakistan are members of OIC.Footnote6
Meanwhile, identity and culture wars and debates in which religion(s) are inevitably implicated intensify, and religious fundamentalisms (in all the world religions represented in the Commonwealth) have the potential for inciting even more violence and conflict. In Pakistan, as Farah Nazir shows in her article, blasphemy laws, with a toxic colonial and post- independence history, continue to feed internal divisions and provoke international outrage. In Nigeria, 12 out of 36 states have adopted sharia law.Footnote7 A 2022 report from Humanists UK emphasises that Blasphemy Laws are both a legacy of British rule and a current Commonwealth issue:
Commonwealth countries are much more likely than other countries to have laws against blasphemy or apostasy … Humanists UK has called for Commonwealth countries to repeal their blasphemy laws, as has happened over the last decade in Jamaica, Malta, New Zealand, Canada, and Scotland … 45% of countries in the world criminalise blasphemy, with 7% having the death penalty and a further 27% having prison sentences. But among Commonwealth countries, those figures are 59%, 9%, and 38%, respectively.Footnote8
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth, through its Charter and publicity promotes itself as a ‘Values Based’ organisation:
Affirming that the special strength of the Commonwealth lies in the combination of our diversity and our shared inheritance in language, culture and the rule of law; and bound together by shared history and tradition; by respect for all states and peoples; by shared values and principles and by concern for the vulnerable.Footnote9
Martyn Percy in a trenchant article that touches on several relevant themes, albeit only from a UK perspective, suggests that ‘Values may well be the new religion of the 21st century. They are formed out of a simple equation: ideologies + passions = values’.Footnote10
There is not much explicitly about religion in the Commonwealth Charter although it is surely impossible to discuss and promote ‘Commonwealth values’ without taking the religious background of the great majority of Commonwealth citizens seriously. Arguably, official Commonwealth discourse pussy foots around religion just as it pussy foots around LGBT+ rights.
These topics abound with complexities and ironies, not least in the UK, where the UK’s heritage is mainly Christian but attitudes and organisations are predominantly secular amid increasing religious diversity with significant Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and other smaller religious populations. The UK is the only country in the world apart from Iran to have clerics in its legislature (bishops in the House of Lords), but the media and surveys of public opinion manifest mistrust of religiously committed politicians, 20 years after Alastair Campbell notoriously said, ‘We don’t do God’.Footnote11 In UK politics Tim Farron (of the Liberal Democrats) and Kate Forbes (of the Scottish National Party) have experienced the difficulty of squaring the circle of political leadership, on the one hand, and strong, personal beliefs, on the other. It may have cost both those politicians the leadership of their respective parties.Footnote12 The ironies are compounded now that the United Kingdom has a Hindu Prime Minister and Scotland a Muslim First Minister. Scott Morrison’s Pentecostal identity attracted scrutiny when he was Prime Minister of Australia.Footnote13 The President of The Seychelles from 2020, Wavel Ramkalawan, is an Anglican priest, photographed praying alongside Justin Welby at the COP conference. In some Commonwealth countries, as Ikem and Nwachinemere’s article shows a political leader who doesn’t ‘do God’ would be unthinkable.
This special issue attempts to explore the issues and extend the debate. Michael Nazir-Ali’s opening article argues for the continuing relevance of religion and the religious underpinnings of morality and law for understanding states and societies in today’s world. Religion can and, tragically, sometimes does go wrong – as the articles by Dayanath Jayasuriya and Farhana Nazir show – but it also plays an important cohesive and prophetic role. Religion(s), Nazir-Ali concludes ‘have an obligation to promote reconciliation, peace and justice. Such a responsibility should be an important aspect of inter-religious dialogue and religions should be prepared to give an account of their commitment, in these respects, to one another and to world opinion’.
Jonathan Chaplin juxtaposes Christian tradition and thinking with the Commonwealth Charter and Commonwealth values and calls leaders and thinkers of other world faiths to a similar engagement. Imranali Panjwani attempts this in his article ‘Where law, politics, scripture and theology intersect: An exegetical examination of 49:13 in the Qur’an in light of India’s right-wing legislation and policies against Muslims’. He examines Islamic scripture and law, arguing that there is a Qu’ranic charter for Muslims living peacefully and productively in diverse societies. He deploys his arguments particularly to counter anti-Muslim discrimination in Modi’s India and the challenge of Hindutva but his argument could be extended into a discussion of Islam and Commonwealth values.
Farhana Nazir juxtaposes two notorious cases, one from the 1920s and the other from the 2020s, to show that use and misuse of blasphemy law and treatment of minorities in Pakistan have complex historical roots in British India
Dayanath Jayasuriya provides a useful case study of Sri Lanka, tracing developments up to September 2023. Sri Lanka is the Commonwealth’s only Buddhist majority country, a multi-religious society with sizeable Hindu, Muslim and Christian minorities. He shows how religious tensions contribute to a murky intertwining of politics, ethnic identities, violence and corruption at home and in the diaspora and problematises any notions we might have of Buddhism as an essentially peaceful religion. Religious tensions add considerably to the challenge of building a united and progressive country in Sri Lanka.
Pentecostalism in Africa, and elsewhere, has received much attention from students of religion and anthropology – less so from students of politics and IR. This gap is filled in this issue by Ikem and Nwachinemere. Their article, ‘Soft Power Prophet(s): The Unexplored Dimension of Nigeria’s Religious Soft Power Potential’, brings together a concept from International Relations with a demonstration of the role of a charismatic and influential ‘prophet’ in his home country and internationally.
Geoffrey Troughton and Philip Fountain’s article, ‘An Insecure Secularity? Religion, Decolonisation and Diversification in New Zealand’, shows that the thinking and language of religion and spirituality have an ongoing relevance and flexibility in a society where the last census recorded nearly half the population as of ‘no religion’. This article with its references to Maori tradition also reminds us that indigenous beliefs, outside or syncretised with world religions, may still have a part to play.
The Round Table and the Commonwealth still have much to ponder.
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Notes
1. Widely attributed to Gandhi but I have not been able to trace the source of the quotation.
2. Rowan Williams, Faith in the Public Square, Bloomsbury, 2012, pbk, 2015, p. 120.
3. ‘“Not Peace but a Sword?’’: Religion, Conflict and Conflict Resolution in the Commonwealth and Beyond’, The Round Table 94 (382), 2005.
7. Commonwealthroundtable.co.uk/general/eye-on-the-commonwealth/blasphemy-and-lynching-religious-mob-rule-in-nigeria-and-pakistan/#:~:text=As%20Amnesty%20notes%2C%20this%20violates’,%2C%20not%20for%20being%20offended.&text=Only%20Pakistan%20rivals%20Nigeria%20in%20lynching%20people%20for%20’blasphemy’.
8. https://humanists.uk/2022/10/11/commonwealth-countries-are-the-most-likely-to-have-blasphemy-laws/.
The example of Frank Field, maverick Labour MP and a one-time member of The Round Table is also telling. In the introduction to his Politics, Poverty and Belief: a political memoir (Bloomsbury, 2023) Brian and Rachel Griffiths write (p.16)‘ Frank was under no illusion but that his progress as a politician was hampered by being known later in his career as a Christian. Can one declare oneself as a Christian today in elective politics? Frank’s soul searching on his political journey will strike a chord with many Christians involved in public life. Initially his faith and politics were related, but rather distantly. The more he read, the more he recognised that Christian faith is more than just a private matter. It is a worldview, and as a worldview it stands apart from other worldviews: secular liberalism, Marxism, libertarianism, pantheism. At each stage on the journey there will always be a force compelling the Christian to move closer to the centre, to Christ and His Kingdom’.