Thought for the Day, 12 January 2005

The Rev. Joel Edwards

It's been quite a week for religion.

Last week, thousands of Christians protested against the BBC's decision to broadcast Jerry Springer - the Opera. On Saturday, there were reports that church attendance in the Anglican Church has actually gone up!

And last night religion reasserted itself in Radio 4's 'Don't call me Asian'. In the aftermath of 9/11, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims are opting for a self-definition based, not on ethnicity, but on religious conviction.

Religion just won't go away.

This may well be a new challenge for a Home Office seeking to cast a ubiquitous cloak of 'Britishness' across our cultural differences in order to establish a more harmonious Britain.

So, is this a new chapter in religious extremism, or something more profound?

What stands at the centre of these developments, I believe, is a fundamental question of identity.

"Who am I?" remains a central preoccupation of the human spirit. And secular voices which have whispered to us from the margin of our being have failed to divert our attention away from it. What the 19th century philosopher, Toquville described as 'habits of the heart' not only shape our private values, they have also dominated all our cultural landscapes.

Christians who were offended by the transmission weren't just angry about the institution of Christianity. They were ordinary citizens, passionately anguished by the layers of obscenities piled onto the character of a Jesus whom they love and worship, and from whom they derive their identity.

As the Apostle Paul explained to his Greek audience 2,000 years ago, "In him we live and move and have our being."

But like all faith leaders, Christian protesters were also anguished because they believe that a society without a preservation order on religious sensibilities is a very vulnerable place to be.

For the task of religion is not to protect itself from ridicule or disagreement. It is to act in the interest of the society of which it is an integral part.

It is to secure the sacred spaces.

Sacred spaces, found not necessarily in our mosques, temples, synagogues or churches, but in the sanctity of those enduring values which keep our communities together, because they open the human heart to the possibility of the divine.

Sacred spaces lead us to love respect.

They give us room to recognise that, perhaps, the ultimate offence is to believe that there is no such thing as causing an offence.