Hunting with Dogs

As MPs get ready to debate a ban on foxhunting, Communications Director Revd Richard Thomas argues that Tony Blair is pursuing a course of secular fundamentalism.

The treatment by our Government of the massed protests of the countryside alliance, coupled with the police response to the sharper, more desperate measures taken by otherwise law-abiding protesters on day of the vote against hunting with dogs, surely must cause all Christians to ask serious questions about the growth of fundamentalism in our country and our Government.
 
It is not religion that threatens our security and our normally tolerant way of life. Fundamentalism is the problem, and it has infected just about all levels of our society. Just as we need to fight religious bigotry and fundamentalism wherever we find it, we also need to fight secular bigotry and fundamentalism with equal vigour.  Fundamentalism requires two things to flourish: an absolute belief in the rightness of one's beliefs, and the justification of a higher authority for excommunicating ­ literally, silencing ­ those with whom one disagrees.
 
The moral and spiritual arguments about fox hunting are as divided  (and as divisive) as those of the Gay issue, and Christians can hold both sets of views with equal justification. On the one hand, animal life is sacred, and the brutal harming of animals for pleasure is abhorrent. Yet the natural order (at least in our present, fallen world) is a brutal thing.  There is little argument that foxes need to be controlled, and hunting with dogs not only works with natural selection to keep the fox population healthy:  it is also the most humane method of control.  Gassing causes indiscriminate suffering to fox cubs and shooting leaves foxes (and some humans) with permanent injury.
 
It is not the killing of foxes, either by shooting or hunting, that threatens our way of life.  It is Fundamentalism.  And Tony Blair¹s Government has shown an increasing tendency towards the same kind of fundamentalism that he deplores in others.  An example of the 'soft' end of secular fundamentalism is the attitude of the police towards the motorist. 'Zero Tolerance' policies, and the enforcement of speed cameras remove that essential element of human compassion from the process. At the sharp end, the use of the parliament act to enforce what is, at its heart, a 'religious' belief ­ albeit the secular religion of the politician - is itself a fundamentalist act.
 
Christians have a responsibility, repeated every Sunday in our liturgy, to fight against evil, and to seek the common good. We cannot discriminate between the different causes that fundamentalists espouse.  Whether it is Islamic fundamentalism that creates suicide bombers, Israeli fundamentalism that shoots innocent children, Christian fundamentalism that persecutes homosexuals, or Government fundamentalism that persecutes whole sections of our community, it has to be resisted.  A caring, tolerant society is being increasingly put at risk by political expediency coupled with a secular fundamentalism that is as damaging as any caused by religious bigotry.  The tragedy is that, once we allow our society to embrace fundamentalism as a justifiable legislative process, we are ultimately fostering the very violence we seek to prevent.