Taking diversity seriously
by Andrew Hammond
Under the strapline 'Together in Diversity', the European Union has devoted 2008 to celebrating and deepening our understanding of the great panoply of cultures now to be found across the continent. On its website we read:
Europe's great cultural diversity represents a unique advantage. It will encourage all those living in Europe to explore the benefits of our rich cultural heritage and opportunities to learn from different cultural traditions.
This is clearly both an optimistic project (in the best sense - not just unfoundedly hopeful); and a very timely one. The prophets of doom would like to consign Europe to a deteriorating mess of incompatible ways of thinking; our rational, liberal, democratic and Enlightenment way of life (so the argument goes) under threat from the violence and irrationalism of alien cultures. Our politicians worry, for instance, about 'hyper-diversity' - the close-packed varieties of ethnicity and culture in some of our urban social housing. In some blocks in London, there are tens of types of such variety, such that no-one can expect even to be able to understand the neighbours - they don't share a language. And we agonise as to which is less difficult (less of a tinderbox) - the rich and poor rubbing shoulders as in British cities, or the concentric ghettos of Paris.
If we think only of migrations, the arrival of refugee people, or the development of religious and philosophical ways of thinking, it is quite obvious from history that the situation in Europe has forever been fluid. Changes have happened, sometimes smoothly, sometimes violently, and in many cases over time to the benefit of the nations involved - including economically. There can be neither simple analyses nor simple 'solutions'.
At the end of January there was a powerful convergence of events which made a notable contribution to the EYID. In Liverpool, the 2008 Culture Capital, the polymathic and quietly charismatic Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, framed his visit with a lecture on 'Europe, Faith and Culture' and participation in a service of commemoration for Holocaust Memorial Day. This latter event was intense and moving, as it customarily is. It was also importantly enriched by the presence for the first time of a Muslim representative. The service, which attracted 1,600 people, coincided with the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Rowan Williams' lecture was closely argued - and, as is his style, rather densely argued. One key point was that it is historically misleading to think that treasured European 'values' arrived with the Enlightenment, as though the much more ancient inheritance of Christian values and ways of thinking played no part in their development. These values include versions of 'rights', 'freedom of choice' and 'democracy' which are based on a notion of personal (or group) self-definition.
Williams suggested that for a long time in Europe we had a way of thinking which may have had its roots in Christianity, but which also had a parallel track, a more deep-seated and directly Christian approach which allowed for some detachment - for questioning and challenge, for prophetic criticism, and even martyrdom. He called this a 'double vision'. Once the intellectual shifts of the 18th century had begun, Europe lost this balance, and scepticism and relativism became ever more self-assertive. Because we lost that parallel track, what was left contained the seeds of deep anxiety about what might be true or right - because it had no foundational or objective security beyond itself.
Those seeds have come to fruition then, in over-emphatic assertions of belief, in the quest for certainty - most worryingly in fundamentalisms, be they 'secularist/atheist', Christian or Muslim. And such assertive belief-systems cannot cope with the ancient Christian tradition of 'negative theology', the sense that we can never say all that there is to be said about reality and divine truth. That was a vital part of the parallel track, at its best. The result is argument and even conflict which is based on the need to win.
Williams concluded with a rhetorical flourish which lifts our eyes above the parapet after such concentrated focus:
And it may be that we shall discover a notion of human rights that is not just about enforcing my own claims but about the demands of dignity in all persons; a notion of freedom that sees it as freedom for the other not from them; a vision of democracy that is about the constant search for ways of ensuring that even the most marginal and deprived has a voice; a search for a convergent morality in public life, not a separation between minimal public order and private moral preferences; and a climate of artistic creation that evokes something of the richness of the human subject when it is opened up to the holy. That would be a true culture of life; a worthy goal for this great community, this year and every year.
Clearly Williams wants this to have an explicitly Christian foundation, and would argue that that is the only way for it to work. But he is also deeply committed to understanding other cultures, especially the other mainstream religions. In the context of unease and suspicion which pervades so many European nations, relationships with Muslims are obviously particularly pressing, especially those of a more exclusive or fundamentalist colour. Williams was asked about this in a Radio 4 interview on the day of the Holocaust Memorial ceremonies.
Interviewer: You also talked about the relationship with Islam and said in part of your speech 'One of the tragedies of our time is that an Islamic world which has historically produced a vastly sophisticated material and poetic culture is threatened from within by those who acknowledge the bare words of the sacred text, divorced from learning and interpretation'. But given that is the case, what can we do about it? Can we do anything except watch?
Rowan Williams: I think we can go on conversing but many people in the Muslim world, probably the overwhelming majority - certainly the overwhelming majority of educated Muslims - would say we actually need some support, some deepening, some strengthening in resisting the sort of neo-puritan … trends which wipe out Islamic history and make Islam something rather barbaric.
So we have here a rather clearer-headed and more focused approach than those who engage in inter-faith activity are often given credit for. In Williams, this combination of penetrating analysis with patient attention to the other (one of his cardinal virtues) is an example to which we might aspire in this year of Intercultural Dialogue - the recent furore about his sharia law comments notwithstanding.
In London there is a process called 'Scriptural Reasoning' in which Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars compare their scriptures and try to understand each other better: not find a lowest common denominator of shared beliefs, but sit together in a spirit of 'confident hospitality'. [see here]. This is a fine activity in itself; but it also suggests a way in which other apparently clashing cultures might become cultures which work towards mutual understanding. The EU's commitment to enabling this has to be a good - and very necessary - thing.
Useful links
- "What did the Archbishop actually say?"
- The text of the main lecture
- Transcript of the radio interview
© Andrew Hammond. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.