‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’
Voltaire
In his third Reith lecture entitled ‘The Future of Solidarity’, Professor Ben Ansell illustrated all that's wrong with a society which has lost its connection with the Christian faith. Rather than extolling the virtues of everybody being different and learning how to respect others for what they are, his emphasis on solidarity resorted to a strong call for an almost socialist universality: a strange outcome for someone whose intention is to speak up for democracy.
The season of Christmas brings people together like no other, and the core Christian teaching of loving our neighbour however different they may be (and, indeed, loving your enemy) is put to the test as communities, families and friends converge: except, of course, this year there is a huge shadow falling across us from the Middle East, where the Christmas story started —but more on that later.
So, this week we take a closer look at ‘respect for others’, which was also one of our five core values at The Share Centre. I remember a discussion about why it wasn’t just ‘respect’, but too often that’s taken as ‘am I getting respect?’ rather than ‘am I showing respect for others’. In this commentary we see what ‘respect for others' means, not just for individuals but also for businesses, communities and nations.
The central logic behind ‘respect for others’ is an acceptance, indeed a welcome, for the opportunity to celebrate difference, to walk alongside others instead of talking down to them. In contrast, the entire purpose of solidarity is to push for convergence — trying to break down those differences — but all it ends up achieving is fortresses of like-minded people who then seek to impose their will on others.
Then, before you know where you are, power begins to polarise so that what was democratic solidarity becomes heavily-intermediated control. It’s a logic which denies the freedom of the human spirit, and in Ben Ansell’s lecture it was illustrated by his endorsement of the concept of ‘Universal Basic Income’, a potential outcome of the dominance of giant tech which would impose human welfare subservience for most people.
Likewise, we have learned over the centuries that a similar approach in business, when applied to organisations or services, results in bloated, inefficient monopolies. Take the National Health Service, for example, which Ben Ansell was also extolling last Wednesday. Notwithstanding its colossal share of public spending, waiting lists are through the roof, and the front page headline of last Saturday’s edition of The Times reported that ‘millions of people are now waiting more than a month just for a GP appointment’.
Monopolies are an organisational version of solidarity: by denying choice and competition, they remove the incentives for innovation and increased efficiency — imposed single-state solutions don't work in the long run.
At a national level, the creed of solidarity generates international tension, as we have experienced for centuries. Whether it's due to the socialist-inspired autocracies of China and Russia or the national populism of characters such as Trump and Bolsonaro, the solidarity that they demand from their citizens brings with it a huge cost in international friction.
Today’s massive increase in communication and human interaction/intermingling is fast eroding the logic for rigid national boundaries, and, as we have argued, we need to make swift progress towards greater democratic legitimacy for global governance.
So how can respect for others take the place of solidarity? It is by recognising that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and individuality so long as they do not aim to restrict or hurt others. It is by celebrating and cherishing human difference, whether of gender, race, nationality or religion.
This doesn't mean that those opinions and beliefs cannot be discussed and debated openly, but it does involve accepting and acknowledging everyone's freedom: ‘each to their own’.
At Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, who the prophet Isaiah described as the Prince of Peace. Yet the country of his birth has seen more conflict than any other over these last two thousand years, and the current upsurge in hatred and violence is its latest manifestation. Unbridled revenge for the Hamas atrocities has indeed taken root, and that realisation is finally causing both the United Kingdom and Germany to call for a sustainable ceasefire.
As we proposed on 30th October, we need to look afresh at Jesus's teaching to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Christianity is well placed to be a bridge between the continually warring Abrahamic faiths of Jews and Muslims, and Christian churches need to work harder at this in 2024. It’s interesting to note that the Bishop of Oxford, Steven Croft recalled the prophecy ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’ in a recent talk on the conflict in the Middle East. This temporary exile to Egypt was necessitated by Herod’s massacre of children in and around Bethlehem — does this sound familiar? To innocent children, it matters not whether the cause of their death is jealousy or unbridled revenge.
It's fair to recount that this all started over three thousand years ago following the Israelite exodus from Egypt. The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy tells us in chapter 34 verse 4 that Moses climbed Mount Nebo, a 2,300 ft peak just to the east of the river Jordan, to be told by God that all the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea was being given to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
This event was followed at the time by what can only be described as ethnic cleansing, described in the books of Joshua and Judges. It has resulted in the loss of millions of lives over the past three thousand years, and it has reached its recent climax during the last seventy-five years since the 1948 founding of the modern state of Israel. It resulted in the assassination of its prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and it continues to fuel the zeal of Jewish settlers in the West Bank today.
Could Moses have misheard, or imagined, such a specific geographical pledge?
National identity is a big question, but it illustrates how dangerous an insistence on solidarity, and a lack of respect for others, can be.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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