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Values
27 February 2009
This week, a BBC poll revealed that the majority of the population support the role of religion in public life. According to the survey, 63% agreed that "Our laws should respect and be influenced by UK religious values." Similarly, 62% agreed that "Religion has an important role to play in public life." Unsurprisingly, those who were already religious were especially in favour, but what must be really galling to the secularists is that 51% of those who said they had no religion still believed that religious values should influence our legal system. That is not what you would call a vote of confidence in the values of secularism.
Perhaps the reason for this is that it is unclear just what the "values of secularism" would be. Last weekend, a range of newspapers drew attention to a new government advice leaflet on sex and relationships which read: "Discussing your values with your teenagers will help them to form their own. Remember, though, that trying to convince them of what's right and wrong may discourage them from being open." What makes this particularly odd is that in relation to other aspects of sexuality - for instance homophobic bullying - the government is more than happy to tell young people what is right and wrong. So, why can't we say both? - homophobia is wrong AND sex before marriage is wrong.
In a similar vein, the Sunday Times in commenting on the current financial crisis and the behaviour of some top executives made a plea for "moral leaders". It suggested that what is required is not just people who obey the rules or who work within the legal constraints, but rather leaders who are driven by core moral values.
This is what is missing in our current climate, and it is missing because we have no overarching framework or base to guide our value judgements. Moreover, our young people know this. If you browse through the official exhibit guide to the Darwin exhibition at the Natural History Museum you will find the remarkable claim that the only truth is scientific truth and that morality is merely subjective. Now, if that is what our young people are being taught then no wonder they are perplexed. They know that secular society is simply making it up as it goes along. I suspect this is also why there is such a strong desire for a return to religious values as a moral foundation. We know that the ones secularism is offering are just far too insecure.
None of this is to suggest that only religious people are good. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes with Christians will be well aware of that. But it is to say that our morality cannot just be self-defined, even when supported by the majority. If we want to be truly moral, we need something a little more robust: God.
Justin Thacker, Head of Theology
Latest comments
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(The views below are the authors', and not necessarily those of the Evangelical Alliance.)
| Written by David Young on 06 March 2009 at 08.48 |
| Richard Pickles, you must be living on another planet if you do not think we have an ability to realise other people exist. |
| Written by Richard Pickles on 03 March 2009 at 16.01 |
| Gosh I seem to opinionated this week? I am not sure that such a thing as a stable reason exists David, or indeed an ability to realise that others exist in a plain way - although I may be reading into how you are using the terms reason and 'others'. Most therapists would speak of adult relationships being permeated by transferance, replicated and often distorted by early impulses for attachments, illusion and a complex interplay of love, hate, envy and gratitude. The mind structures existence in a way around these things that pragmatically works, and then kids itself that this is a true representation - but always driven by a whole unceasing crater of unconcious pyramids. And I thought reason was just a legitimsation of power? it is the term (backed with all sorts of arguments that within their reaosn make sense to them) used to suggest that their personal reality actualy coheres with something outside themselves that it is 'true' in some way that is not structured upon the shifting sands of culture, language and personal desires? |
| Written by David Young on 02 March 2009 at 21.40 |
| It was not bad writing but bad thinking. Morality requires an awareness of the existence of others and the ability to reason. Once you have that, it is possible to construct moral codes. The Bionic Weeble does not have any bearing on the matter, neither does the Divine Invisible Trumpet, Karos Immortal-And-Eternal The Fourth, The Ravioli Demon or God. |
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