Good religion, bad religion

‘If conventional beliefs make you compassionate, kind and respectful of the sacred rights of others, this is good religion. If your beliefs make you intolerant, unkind and belligerent, this is bad religion, no matter how orthodox it is.’ This is Karen Armstrong’s key conclusion in her memoir, The Spiral Staircase. Her story is as moving as it is compelling and complex. She has travelled from devout and devoted nun, through loss of faith and a phase of passionate opposition to Christianity, to her location now as one of the most skilful, empathetic and prolific writers on religion of our time. I once heard her speak to a packed marquee at the Hay Festival about her book on the Buddha. No one who was there would believe that we live in a nation indifferent to religion.

As I read her book, Stephen Green of ‘Christian Voice’ was in the news again. This time because MP John Cryer has requested that the Home Secretary investigate the organisation and its activities. The politician described the Christian Voice website as ‘full of hatred’, so I thought I’d better check it out for myself. This was certainly not an edifying experience, but I’m not sure that ‘hatred’ is quite the right word. I’d say the site’s key features were morbid paranoia and enervating negativity. Apart from a claim to be ‘Standing Up for King Jesus’ there isn’t much that’s positive about the apparent activities of Christian Voice. It’s all about being against this, banning that and prosecuting the other. The ‘enemies of God’ are all having their say, Green reckons, and it’s time to hear ‘the Christian Voice’. We are living in the ‘dark days’ of a ‘Britain in sin’. Green obviously yearns for ‘fifty or sixty years ago when there was a general understanding in our land that God is the omnipotent Creator and Ruler, and that He deals with nations just as He deals with individuals.’ He is clearly driven by nostalgia for an age that never was and is working for a future that can never be. No wonder the website is so miserable.

Where is the hope? Where is the joy? Where is any sense that God can be glimpsed in the world around us, not least in our fellow human beings if we bring just an ounce of empathy and compassion to bear in our relationships? Letting people be and letting people be different, is something Green appears incapable of.
From Armstrong’s religious uncertainty springs something creative, attractive, and deeply divine. By contrast, Green’s certainty and striving for purity bears a fruit that is dry and hard as a stone. I know which voice I’m listening to.

Alison Webster is Social Responsibility Adviser to the Diocese of Oxford