Tag Archives: religion

Liberals will have followed the papal Conclave with mixed feelings.  Liberalism was forged in opposition to state power and state churches, their enforced orthodoxy and suppression of dissent.  On the European continent that gave early Liberalism a strong anti-Catholic tinge, which hasn’t entirely disappeared.  In England and Wales the alliance between Whigs and nonconformists became central to the 19th century Liberal Party, with campaigns to disestablish the Anglican church and to remove its control over schools and universities.  The high point of nonconformist influence in the party was between the 1880s and the first world war. In recent decades, some active Liberal Democrats have become hostile to faith and religion as such – in some cases intolerant of those in the party who hold to a faith and belong to a church.

I grew up as a Protestant Anglican.  I learned what I now understand as social liberalism from the sermons of Canon Marriott, preaching the ‘social gospel’ in Westminster Abbey (putting down my Biggles book, which choristers were allowed to take in to keep us quiet during sermons),   I had instinctive anti-Catholic prejudices, probably from the English history I was taught and the children’s histories I read.  I was shocked when, as a student, I first met an active Liberal who said he was also a Catholic.  His name was Geoff Tordoff, and he later became a key player in holding the party together during the last years of Jeremy Thorpe’s leadership and the Lib-Lab pact.  Then I worked throughout the 1966 election campaign for Pratap Chitnis, educated by the Jesuits and a practising Catholic, and learned to admire his intellectual as well as campaigning skills.  My prejudices evaporated as I worked with a succession of liberal Catholics whose faith and values went together.

What Liberals (myself included) dislike about religion is the claim to certainty that fundamentalists assert, the hierarchical structure of the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and (often) Evangelical churches, and the corruption of authority when priests defend their institution instead of their faith.  Popes 150 years ago condemned liberalism and the separation of church and state; the Church of England was a pillar of social order and Tory rule.  As institutions, both have fallen a long way short of the faith they proclaim.  Both these ‘establishment’ churches have struggled to adapt to open and democratic societies, and to the uncertainties of reasoned debate and honest doubt that such societies depend on.  But both have adapted, to the point where right-wing media in the USA are bitterly criticising the new pope.