Religion, politics didn't always meet on the right

[rug]

David Sirota
Friday, April 20, 2012

Here's a newspaper headline that might induce a disbelieving double take: "Christians 'More Likely to Be Leftwing' And Have Liberal Views on Immigration and Equality." Sounds too hard to believe, right? Well, it's true - not here in America, but in the United Kingdom.

That headline, from London's Daily Mail, summed up the two-tiered conclusion of a new report from the British think tank Demos, which found that in England (1) "religious people are more active citizens (who) volunteer more, (and) donate more to charity" and (2) "religious people are more likely to be politically progressive (people who) put a greater value on equality than the non-religious."

These findings are important to America.

First, they tell us that, contrary to evidence in the United States, the intersection of religion and politics doesn't have to be fraught with hypocrisy. Britain is a Christian-dominated country, and the Christian Bible is filled with liberal economic sentiment. It makes perfect sense that the more devoutly loyal to the Bible one is, the more progressive one would be on economics.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/19/EDCA1O5SRC.DTL

[Fumesucker]

1. Religion and the religious are a good bit less prevalent in the UK than in the US..

Two nations separated by a common language indeed but they are separated by more than that.

A family member by marriage of mine went to the UK and was shocked to her core when an elderly blood relative of mine told her "Of course I'm an atheist, dearie", I believe it was the first time in her life she had ever been told that in a direct manner.

[LeftishBrit]

3. It is quite acceptable to be atheist in most circles in Britain...

moreover, there is not the sort of hard dividing line between the religious and nonreligious as in some places. A vague, culturally-Christian sort-of-agnostic religious indifference is common here, to the point that it is almost impossible to give an accurate estimate of how many people are religious versus nonreligious; and regular church attendance is the exception rather than the rule.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Most religious people whom I know in the UK are not right-wing..

and many clergy have been an irritant to Tory governments with their criticism of economic policies that benefit the rich and oppress the poor; not to mention often being antiwar.

That being said, we do have some problems with the Christian right. Traditionally, this has mainly involved the Paisleyites of Northern Ireland, but there are certainly some elsewhere, and I think that interactions with the American Christian Right are making them worse. And some of them are a bit closer to my backyard than I quite care for.

But it's true that we don't have nearly the problem that seems to exist in some parts of America. Either with right-wing extremism as such (bad as the Tory party is, it tends not to reach the extremes of Republicanism), or with its having associations with religion.

[mr blur]

4. I find the same.

Religious people I know (and there are some - they don't talk to me about their god and I don't talk to them about atheism) are almost without exception left-wing or left-leaning.

Recently the Canon of St Paul's Cathedral resigned in protest because, he said, he couldn't reconcile his conscience with the breakup of the Occupy London camp outside the cathedral.