The push for Christianity: Are we going forwards or backwards?

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi

This week, Baroness Warsi, the Chairperson of the Conservative Party, led a delegation to the Vatican. She made a public call for the reinstatement of Christianity in the heart of public life. Lady Warsi says she has a grave fear that “militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies...at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant”. In one sweeping statement she has undermined the vast culture of tolerance that secularisation has achieved in Europe over the past century. Warsi’s call for the refurbishment of Christianity in public life must be heeded with serious scepticism and care. Lady Warsi, a practicing Muslim, has significant clout in British politics. Her comments and indeed the presence of the Conservative Party at the head of coalition government should be treated with apprehension in the way in which the state deals with issues of religion and morality.

One of the biggest problems with the discourse on religion in the public sphere is actually the erosion of what a particular religion traditionally stands for. We live in a society in which religion has become a veritable pick and mix. Because of the freedoms that secular society affords its citizens, many people now choose the bits of their religion that they like and discard the rest. They do not seem to realise that they are members of a club in which there are certain rules, rules which were instated in an ancient time. In Catholicism’s case these rules were created two thousand years ago. In Islam’s case, not long after that. However, in order to deal with the modernity of their congregation’s dispositions, the church now attempts to dumb down many of its sacraments and rituals. It will marry people in its buildings, even if those undergoing the ritual never attend the regular services. It will make token and vague gestures of openness and goodwill towards homosexuality in a bid to appear ‘with the times’ and inclusive. It will attempt to appear respectful towards other belief systems while always harbouring its own superiority.

Lady Warsi inexplicably claims that secularisation is actually ‘deeply intolerant’. For a member of government to say this in 2012 is astonishing considering secularisation is directly responsible for the freedom of European society. Indeed, her position as the first female Muslim government minister would not have been possible without the diminishment of the churches role in Britain. As a result, her comments are a hypocrisy. Of course there are many Christian values which can benefit society but we must not forget the elements which hinder it aswell. Let’s take Lady Warsi’s words and imagine them as a reality. We must be careful when we do this because to fully imagine a Christian society we must commit to the full manifestation of its ideals. It is very easy for politicians to highlight the good bits of Christianity. This is not acceptable and it is indeed misleading. If they want to promote Christianity then they must be held accountable for all of its teachings. If Christianity once again took a central role in the arbitration of public morality there would be the resurrection of very serious positions on homosexuality, abortion and divorce, to name but a few issues. The Church of England passed a resolution in 1998, stating that homosexual acts are “incompatible with scripture”. Yes, Christianity can teach us to ‘love thy neighbour’ but it also teaches us that "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives” (Leviticus 20:13 NAB). If the British government really wants the reinstatement of Christian ideals, will its representatives be happy to stand up and say these words in the House of Commons? What about abortion, a practice that is currently legal in the United Kingdom? The Church of England, while allowing its execution in certain prohibited circumstances, ultimately says “we see abortion, the termination of that life by the act of man, as a great moral evil” (Church of England Board of Social Responsibility). The relationship between unique religions would be more difficult than it is now. Relations between Islam and the Anglican and Catholic traditions have been rocky to say the least. An editorial in the Church of England newspaper, Church of England News, says : “This progress (of the Muslim faith in the UK) has been enthusiastically assisted by this government (Labour) in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims”. While Pope John Paul II did much to create a shared understanding between Muslims and Christians, his head of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, issued a direct warning in 2004 to Catholic women against marrying Muslim men.

Baroness Warsi sees secularisation taking hold of society “when signs of religion cannot be displayed in public buildings”. She fails to elaborate on the enormous contributions that secularisation has made to ameliorating the quality of lives of millions of people: the liberation of gay people, the right of a woman to make her own decision on abortion, the right of a couple to dissolve their marriage, the right for people to think for themselves. The Catholic Church believes that the decision of a married couple not to have children is a selfish one. Catholicism teaches that the very function of marriage is to reproduce. Would governments stand up and say this? Where does it stop? If Christianity was once again to take a central role in public life, would the church’s teachings on creationism be advertised? Christianity firmly believes that God created the world and rejects the now widely accepted thesis on evolution. It is issues and values just like these that Christianity harbours but will rarely engage in a debate on. The reason for this is because society has advanced beyond them. A true member of the Christian church believes these things.

We are finally reaching a point in time where secularisation has become the norm in Europe, and government policies, for the large part, are impartial and liberated from the chains of religious dogma. Of course people should have the freedom to practice their faith privately and indeed a secular government allows the space for a wide variety of faiths to coexist. For a minister of a country like Britain, which prides itself on its openness, freedom and tolerance of all people, to suggest a return to the basics of Christian morality alone in public life is deeply worrying. What about the people of different faiths that live in Britain? A secular government is the only way a country can have true tolerance and equality as religious influence will inevitably lead to the exclusion of certain people and the retraction of certain rights. It has been a long struggle to get to where we are now. Let’s not go backwards. 

© Simon Tierney 2012

Survival of the newspaper

The first edition of Ireland's earliest newspaper, An Account of the Chief Occurances of Ireland, February 1659

Warren Buffet once wrote: “If cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed". The rise in online media continues to have a dramatic effect on the newspaper industry. There is an almost tidal movement towards the instant, the interactive and the most accessible. It makes me wonder about Ireland’s first ever newspaper: An Account of the Chief Occurrences in Ireland, launched in 1659. What a fantastic name for a newspaper. Accessible? Maybe not. One can’t imagine an internet news start up considering a title such as this today. This paper was a periodical newsletter whose mission was to have a weekly distribution. Not bad for the mid seventeenth century. Fast forward three hundred and fifty three years to 2012. The appetite is now for immediate news. But this is not the sole reason for the decline in newspaper circulation. The cost of buying a paper is a factor. So too is the departure from the idea of the newspaper as the great authority in our lives and a move towards public participation in the news and vitally, reaction and contribution through social media. The question is, what do we lose in the decline of the printed paper and what is there to gain?

There is an interesting disparity in the readership statistics between the UK and Ireland. In the UK, all the papers with the highest circulations are tabloids, with The Sun leading the pack. Whereas in Ireland, the broadsheets are the bestselling papers, with the Irish Independent leading the way, while the Irish tabloids are all at the bottom of the list. What does this say about our two countries? Of course there are great differences in readership across the globe. Japan, a country with less than half the total population of the Unites States has a circulation of 14 million for its top newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun. In the US, the top paper is The Wall Street Journal with a circulation of just 2 million. The Japanese thirst for print appears to be strong while Americans get their news on the internet. With the advent of social media and the proliferation of online news organisations, the print industry is struggling to cope with their dwindling readership. The Irish Times had a circulation of 114,000 in 2004 while in 2011 its circulation had fallen to just over 100,000. If we look at the longer term diminishment of readership over in the UK we can see that Britain’s biggest selling daily broadsheet, The Daily Telegraph, had a circulation of 1.5 million in 1980, whereas it now has 650,000. That is a loss of nearly a million readers in thirty years. The reasons for this decline are manifold.

The largest demographic in which readership is being lost is inevitably that of younger people. According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, 65% of people between 18 and 29 now get their news online. How do they do this? They access newspapers’ web formats (if they are free), they use online-specific publications or alternatively they use social media such as Twitter and Facebook. What is being lost in these new media? Former Irish Times editor, Conor Brady, writing in the aforementioned, says there is a denudation of reliability, accuracy and authority. Much of the gathered information on the internet is plagiarised, he says and ‘hardly ever sourced and is frequently misrepresented’. However, young people love to use online media due to the quality of participation that it affords the user. On websites such as Irishtimes.ie or guardian.co.uk, readers can comment on articles, thus creating a veritable live discussion forum which is interactive. Young people are used to, and indeed demand, interaction, to have their say. It is this departure from the ‘newspaper on high’ of old which I believe is the big change-maker in the way we consume the news. Twitter is the culmination of this process, whereby users are now even driving the news story and indeed effecting change through mass and collective participation. We need only look at the recent example of Ryan Giggs and Imogen Thomas. In May 2011, 75,000 Twitter users broke the footballer’s superinjunction which he had in order to suppress information about his alleged affair with Thomas.

Most of the top newspapers have long realised the importance of their online editions. However, the advertising revenue they receive from the web is insufficient to compensate for the loss of circulation of their print formats. They get nothing in monitory terms from the reader itself. The content is free and therefore the readership is relatively high. This is a problem. The London Times recently made the bold move of making their online edition entirely subscription based. Of course, as a result the number of readers fell. When the Times erected their paywall in 2010 they lost 90% of their online readership. This is of course a disheartening figure for similar companies who may have been thinking of following suit. It is little wonder that their competitors such as the Telegraph and the Independent have continued to provide a free service. But the question remains: how does a newspaper in 2012 continue to be relevant and have a decent readership while also covering its costs? What appears to happen is that a newspaper company cuts its staff and fewer journalists do more work. But the resources are not there to provide the same thorough journalistic principles that these institutions once did in the pre-internet age. Former editor of the Los Angeles Times, John S. Carroll says, "Newspapers are doing the reporting in this country. Google and Yahoo aren't those people putting reporters on the street in any number. Blogs cannot afford it”. Carroll resigned in 2005 in the face of severe pressure from his parent company to cut his newsroom staff numbers. The future landscape of the newspaper industry is a rocky terrain. What is certain however is that the young demographic must be addressed. Many young people find newspapers to be too expensive. Ireland is a particularly expensive country for them. The Guardian in the UK costs £1.20 (€1.44), whereas The Irish Times costs €1.90 in this country. The disparity of 46 cent, multiplied over a year, adds up to a substantial difference. The main income from any newspaper is now derived from people over the age of 55 because they can afford it and they are used to traditional models. That section of the readership will not survive forever to support the purchase of newspapers. What will happen in twenty five years time? Will newspapers still exist in their physical manifestation or will we become nostalgic when we see them lining a chest of drawers?