Review of Cardus webinar on Christianity and pluralism

On September 9, Cardus (a Canadian think tank devoted to infusing faith into every aspect of society) held a webinar entitled, “Can Christians Fully Participate in 21st Century Pluralism?” I was interested in what they had to say, so I attended. 

Andrew Bennett is the Cardus Institute’s Director of Faith Community Engagement. He was speaking with James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. 

Instead of starting the conversation with a definition of pluralism, Orr launched into an etymological history of the word, how it was a philosophical metaphysical and not a political term, and that politics is downstream of metaphysics. There was much name-dropping (“William James claimed that pluralism was reacting against Hegelian philosophy, but for Figgis pluralism is rooted in Augustinian pluralism”), but the erudite back and forth between Bennett and Orr shed little light on how to think of pluralism in the 21st century.

After indulging in several more diversions only tangentially related to the webinar’s core question, Bennett and Orr finally came to talk about pluralism in a modern context, only to grossly mischaracterize it. According to Orr, the “risk of violence is increased by opening up the moral community at scale and at speed.” Whereas earlier forms of pluralism provided a mediating buffer against the state, operating within a broadly shared conception of mutual flourishing and common good, today is very different, according to Orr. The secular liberal state as envisioned by John Rawls has no common perspective amongst the citizenry, and liberal individualism demands that people have sheer autonomy, without any obligation to others. 

I am familiar with much of Rawls’ work, and this is not an argument I have heard him make. 

Eventually, Bennett and Orr asked: Is Christian participation in society limited? If so, who is doing the limiting? Is it the state? Are societal norms and taboos preventing Christians from being a part of public discourse? Perhaps Christians themselves have bought into the concept of the atomization of individuals devoid of a social fabric and withdrawn without external coercion?

Bennett noted that there is lots of participation by Christians in the public square, so perhaps this wasn’t a significant issue.

I thought this was a key insight and worth pursuing – perhaps the answer to, “Can Christians Fully Participate in 21st Century Pluralism?” is a simple, “Yes.” But Bennet and Orr pivoted immediately to asking whether an official presence of faith in the public square helps or hinders Christian participation in society. 

Bennett observed that an official Church risks becoming indistinguishable from the state, and that Canada has no established Church. He asked Orr, “Is the Church of England less free to engage in debates because of its status?”

Orr responded, “Yes.” But rather than explain why, or how, the Church of England is constrained, Orr spoke about the impact the Covid epidemic had on people. Orr then went on a rant against the Church of England (an odd choice, in my opinion) for participating in “madcap, highly contentious, politicized schemes”, such as paying a hundreds of millions of pounds in reparations when the Church has only 11 billion pounds in assets, while “parishes are closing up and down country”. And yet Orr also said that he can’t think of a time when the country has needed more of what the Church can offer. 

The rest of the conversation was not about whether Christians can participate in society, but how to infuse more Christianity into the world. Orr claimed that belief in God has tripled in the UK among 18-35 year olds (a surprising statistic, as every source I have found makes clear that faith in Britain is declining, with younger cohorts increasingly non-religious). He also stated that New Atheists are expressing regret, citing Ayaan Ali Hirsi Ali and Niall Ferguson as examples. (If this trend is more widespread, I have missed it.) Orr also finds the “intellectual credibility of Christianity” striking. (Again, Orr must travel in very different circles than I do.)

Orr made many unsubstantiated claims, including “Christianity feels new now”, “Standard liberal policing in the public square has been dissolved on the Internet”, “Liberal multiculturalism has dissolved connected communities”, and “Affluenza has enabled us to forget the important things.” Orr did not elaborate on any of these, so his meaning remains ambiguous.

Bennett brought the conversation’s focus to Quebec. He asked Orr what the impact was of growing Muslim and Sikh populations on the public square, and how we occupy public square together as members of very different religions. Orr stated that secularists believe that secular and religion are antonyms, and that everything in the religion box is basically the same. He accused secularists of “tone deafness” by failing to understand the differences between Augustinian Christianity and Salafist Islam. He then went on to claim that “Islam is not compatible with post-Christian secular society.”

The Webinar ended with an appeal for Christians to “animate the sacred”. Orr is aghast that the English Prime Minister and leader of the opposition are atheists; “at least Farage is a Christian, even if not a great one.” Orr noted that the young are drawn to evangelical forms of Christianity. In Orr’s view, the “great challenge” is to “reverse engineer the fourth century.”

Overall, I found the webinar disappointing. The little time devoted to the question at hand indicated that Christians are indeed full participants in society, but that this is insufficient in an increasingly secular world. The problem, according to Bennett and Orr, is not that Christians are somehow prevented from participating in society – it’s that Christians are insufficiently Christian in the 21st century. What Bennett and Orr decry as societal decay, I consider to be social progress. May secularism and pluralism continue to progress throughout the 21st century, and beyond.