The Church in Parliament
Rt Rev Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester and Convenor of the
Lords Spiritual, took part in a Westminster debate on the future of
the bishops in the House of Lords, on January 27th
2010.
The event was hosted by the Labour Humanists, under the banner
'Evict the Bishops?', Bishop Tim made the case for the place of the
Lords Spiritual and was joined in this by Crossbench peer Baroness
Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. Journalist Polly Toynbee and Jonathan
Bartley of Ekklesia spoke against the bishops and the event was
chaired by journalist David Aaronovitch.
A full transcript of Bishop Tim's opening speech is below:
Evict the Bishops? The Case for the Lords Spiritual
We might on
this side of the argument agree with our opponents that Parliament
is facing a critical moment. There is a crisis in Parliament
resulting from the present collapse in confidence in elected
representatives. There is a challenge in Parliament if we are
to raise the debate above the narrow dispute about the public
finances in the run-up to the Election. There is a deficit in
Parliament around the capacity of the Elected Legislature to hold
the Executive to account and to resist the will of an over mighty
Government machine. The question we face tonight is - does
evicting the Bishops go any way to solving any these
challenges? My argument is that it solves none of these
significant problems, and creates a number of new ones. It
feels like displacement activity - "something must be done; here is
something, let's do it".
The bastion against the manipulation of Parliament is the present
House of Lords. And the component within it which I am here
to defend is that of a small group of the Lords Spiritual whose
presence has contributed to Parliament for 500 years and who bring
to their contribution a network of connections into local
communities which no other institution can begin to match, a
regional perspective often lacking from the Upper House, and a
framework of values which (while claiming no moral superiority over
other's values) contributes to the political debate about what
constitutes the common good.
You may have concluded that the case for the removal of the Bishops
is self-evident and long overdue, but I can tell you that opinion
in the regions is mostly very different to that. Dining on
Saturday evening with 26 Imams from the Muslim traditions in
Leicester, I heard their overwhelming view that they want to see
the Bishops remain in the Lords in order to keep a clear voice
bringing a faith dimension to public policy making. That is
where the world's faiths see the place of faith - in the public
square. On Monday night at the Faith Leaders' Forum
comprising Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Baha'i and Buddhist
representatives exactly the same point was made. The fact is
that pluralism and the benefits of an established church travel
hand in hand. Further, the Power 2010 consultation, which is
being led by Baroness Helena Kennedy, recently held a public
representative body meeting at which the top priorities for
constitutional change were set out and ranked in order of
priority. Removing Bishops from the Lords failed to feature
anywhere.
And if the Lords Spiritual are seen as irrelevant, outdated,
self-seeking and irrational, why do Peers themselves overwhelmingly
advocate retention of the Bench? ComRes polling in late 2008
tested a representative sample of over 100 Peers. 45% said
they favoured no change to the Bench of Bishops, while 34% said
they should be allowed to stay if other denominations and faiths
had seats too (something the Church of England strongly
favours). That's a 79% proportion in favour of
retention.
Removing the Bishops does nothing to address the fundamental
democratic challenges we are facing. It destabilises the
Constitution, it undermines the presence of the Church of England
in every community, it marginalises faith from the public square,
and it ignores constitutional reform priorities, which as Polly
Toynbee herself has argued, should begin by addressing what she
calls "our disastrous first past-the-post voting system.
Let me deal briefly with three of the current arguments.
First that faith is dying, irrelevant to the population and
outdated. The present attendance figures at Church of England
churches remain at just over 1 million per week. This is a
weekly attendance unmatched by any political party, voluntary
association, public institution, trade union or, dare I say, the
British Humanist Association, which can at most command 10,000
members!
Both the Oxford and Cambridge University Unions regularly stage
debates about faith - why is that so? Is this simply a morbid
preoccupation with a dying phenomenon? Is it because the
students don't understand how misguided they are? Is it
because of some perverse ingredient in faith which makes it
difficult for intelligent people to comprehend its
irrelevance?
To live in a city like Leicester is to see the impact of faith
wherever you look. Nearly 25% of the city's population attend
places of worship on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The reach
of these communities into the most vulnerable, the most alienated,
the most "hard to reach" groups has been researched and
documented. Well over 400 faith sponsored organisations care
for the homeless, the unemployed, the sick and the frail.
Their needs will intensify as public finances erode. These
organisations ask for a voice - they speak of the Bishop as "their
Bishop". They bring a distinctive perspective on life which
requires to be heard in Parliament.
There are of course those who dream of a Utopia of secularised
political institutions from which the remaining vestiges of
religious interference are removed. The fact is that every
attempt to create a secular political space in this country has
failed. And there is no logical connection in any case
between a secular constitution and a secular political environment
- just look at the United States.
Second, let me deal with the arguments that the Bishops are a
historical anomaly. Bishops have been present in Parliament
since its origins. They predate the Church of England.
They were closely involved in the governance of this country from
the earliest days. Parliament is a living, evolving
institution and at each stage in its long evolution reasons have
been found to continue with spiritual representation. The
Bishops are a reminder that our key constitutional institutions,
the monarchy, our system of justice, our system of education,
health care and our charitable sector were all shaped by the
Christian tradition and initiated by Christian motives. The
fact is that the argument from enlightenment liberalism on which
the principles of pluralism rest, actually flow out of a Christian
theological world view - the equal rights and dignity of all human
beings under God.
Thirdly, there is the argument that Bishops are simply in
Parliament to serve their own narrow interests. Bishops have made
over 850 contributions to debate over the last 5 years - that is
roughly one for every sitting of the House. And look at the
issues they speak on: nuclear disarmament, climate change, child
poverty, international development aid, assisted suicide, housing
and regeneration, cluster munitions, asylum seekers, immigration,
Iraq, Afghanistan, human rights, multiculturalism… among
others.
I make no claim for the moral superiority of the Bishops. I
speak for those whose presence in the House is an expression of
their service to their communities rather than any privileged
influence and whose track record is of a concern for the common
good.
What constitutes the common good in any particular situation is
what politics is or ought to be about. For the Christian the
common good arises partly from the imperative to love God with all
one's heart and to love one's neighbour as oneself. From a
Christian perspective, if God's purpose for humanity is a common
purpose, we have a duty to ask how the organising of society makes
this purpose harder or easier, more or less attainable.
The Church's responsibility is to offer a series of searching
questions about what Government can make possible for people and
about what barriers to creative communal life it needs to take
away. A healthy relationship between the Church and
Government is one which Government accepts that it needs to be
challenged constantly in order to enable a morally serious project
for our common life to be taken forward, and one in which the
Church examines itself relentlessly as to whether it is being
faithful to a vision of human flourishing. I believe the
Bishops in the Lords have served both these purposes with
distinction and that their contribution to the Upper House of
Parliament is not just desirable but vital.
