A “Kennedy moment” in Scotland

I was on a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh last Wednesday, and had just logged on to the in-train Wi-Fi, when the news broke. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister in the Scottish parliament, and leader of the Scottish National Party, had resigned. For one reason and another there will be few Scots for whom this did not constitute a “Kennedy moment”. An older generation will find it hard to understand that I now have to explain for the younger generation what this is. John F. Kennedy was both the US president and a towering and era-defining political figure. He was assassinated on 22^nd November, 1963. This event was so shocking that it became a memory anchor for a whole generation (or two). People would discus where they were and what they were doing when they heard that Kennedy had been shot. Now, it is true that, to slightly misquote a famous vice-presidential debate, Nicola Sturgeon “is no Jack Kennedy”. But in the relatively small world of Scottish politics, and more widely in the UK, she has been a major presence for more than twenty years.

It isn't hard to find reviews of her political career from friends and foes alike. Love her or loath her, all are agreed that she was (is?) a formidable political operator. Most are also agreed that she was head and shoulders above most of her Scottish opponents and more than a few of her UK ones (she has seen off Conservative UK Prime Ministers almost beyond counting). She has been a dominant figure in Scotland, particularity since she took over from Alex Salmond, her former mentor, after the independence/separation referendum was lost (from her point of view) in 2014. Her whole purpose in politics was to break up the political union that is the United Kingdom, and see Scotland take its place as an independent and sovereign state, one of the family of European nations. Unfortunately a solid majority of her fellow Scots did not agree, and voted 55% to 45% in favour of the status quo. But this of course was merely a temporary setback. Salmond resigned, Sturgeon took over, and began agitating. With Brexit, she saw an opportunity. This she claimed was a material change in circumstances and fundamental alteration in what the opponents of independence had been offering the Scottish people back in 2014. Indeed, when the Brexit vote was broken down by UK nation, Scotland had “voted” against leaving the European Union. This quietly ignores the issue that Scotland, as Scotland, wasn't being asked; it was a UK-wide vote. Just as both Glasgow and Edinburgh were both bound by the outcome of IndyRef1 although they voted differently, so Scotland was bound by the outcome of the Brexit referendum.

In truth it made little difference. Some pretext would have been found, some excuse advanced, as to why the agreed position in 2014, that IndyRef1 was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, wasn't. What few in England seem to have ever grasped is that this single aim was Sturgeon's (and is the SNP's) over-riding aim. Given the name and aim of her political party this is an elementary error. Over-riding means exactly that. To the SNP Independence is more important than educational performance, NHS budgets, drug deaths and tax policy, all of which are highly contentious in Scotland. And this is not only the case because independence is seen as a means to an end i.e. that all of these other problems will be more fixable in an independent Scotland. Even if Scotland were to be demonstrably poorer on its own, this would not matter to a true tartan nationalist. Theirs is a principled position, not a means to and end. Independence is what truly matters and everything else is secondary. Post-Brexit, this should not be that hard to understand in the rest of the UK. A lot of folk voted to leave the EU in the full knowledge that they would be worse off. They were told often enough that this would be one of the outcomes. And so it has transpired.

At the centre of all of this was wee Nicola. But no more. Out of a bright, blueish, Edinburgh sky, came the announcement on Wednesday that she was resigning. And so I shall ever remember that I was pulling out of Easterhouse station on my way to Edinburgh Waverley. But as with trains, life moves on. US politics motored along after JFK's assassination, and political life in Scotland and the UK will do too. And Nicola Sturgeon's true significance will be assessed and reassessed as time, like a train, rolls along. Inevitably, attention has now turned to who will replace her, and what this mean for both Scottish and constitutional politics.

So far, one name seems to be at, or near, the top of the pundits' lists: that of Kate Forbes. Ms Forbes is the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy in the SNP government, and is currently on maternity leave. Kate Forbes is a Christian, and this is clearly seen as a problem by at least some of the commentariat. Some, probably out of ignorance, reach for stereotypes. My suspicion is that few of the political team on the Times know the difference between, say, the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, they are both “free” and “presbyterian” after all. But differences there are. For the record Forbes is a member of the Free Church. This, in the view of one of the scribblers at the Times is sufficient to qualify her as a “strict Christian” who belongs to “an austere Christian denomination” (the Times, 18/2/23, p9!). Others see trouble ahead particularly given that currently the SNP in Edinburgh are in cahoots with the Scottish Greens.

Forbes was spared any involvement in the Gender Recognition Reform Bill debates at Holyrood by virtue of her maternity leave. But differences with her party activists over this, abortion and homosexuality (if they exist) have all been highlighted as potential flashpoints. While at Westminster such issues are treated as matters of conscience and are rarely (if ever) whipped, the same is not true in Edinburgh. Only the Conservatives allowed their members a free vote on GRR. There are echoes here of the difficulties Tim Farron got into in the 2017 general election campaign (which I discussed at the time here). He found that he could not both lead a UK political party, and live as a faithful Christian because of the tensions between his Christian beliefs and some of his party's policies which he had to represent. He has also been admirably candid that this was largely because in publicly answering a number of key questions, he had been unwise in his approach. There are undoubtedly some in the media who are already dusting down some of the very same questions to put to Kate Forbes should she stand to be leader of her party and First Minister of Scotland. Such interactions, if and when they come, will tell us more about media, culture and society, than they will reveal anything about Kate Forbes and Christianity. 

Interesting times ahead then. But some of us will always remember where we were on the afternoon of Wednesday 15th February, 2023.

(Way) less than less than half….

No, the title is not a typo. It was inspired by the headline on a report on the BBC website last Tuesday, which also appeared in their main 10pm TV bulletin. On Wednesday, the Times got in on the act with a report (“End of an era for Christian Britain”), analysis on page 7, and a Leader. Thursday’s letters pages were full of opinions, advice and argument (here’s the Guardian’s as an example; the Times sits behind a paywall). This flurry of interest in the state of “Christianity” in the UK was prompted by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) who are gradually working their way through the data produced by the 2021 census. They had just published data on “ethnic group, national identity, language and religion” for England and Wales (actually four separate statistical bulletins) on a relatively slow news day. Before thinking about what implications (if any) can be drawn from the numbers, it’s worth just noting some caveats. The particular focus of the discussion was analysis of the voluntary “religion” question in the census (first introduced in 2001); that was enough to prompt the ONS itself to urge caution when looking for trends. If you want to look a trends over time, there are precisely three data points. A trend is extractable; whether it means anything is the question. That said, in 2021 the question was answered by 56 million people, 94% of the estimated population of England and Wales.

What attracted the BBC’s attention was the change in the number of respondents reporting their “religion” as Christian between 2011 and 2021 which had dropped from 33.3M (59.3% of the population) to 27.5M (46.2%); hence the headline “Less than half of England and Wales population Christian, Census 2021 shows”. The story then started with the statement “For the first time fewer than half of people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christian, the Census 2021 has revealed” (italics mine). The reason I have italicized the first part of this sentence is that it struck me as odd. We have no real way of knowing when this state of affairs became true. And we cannot know if it was true before (it must have been at some point in history). But I’m being picky. We kind of also know the point that is being made.

Have we learned anything new and does it matter? We do not know what was in the minds of the millions who answered the question. This was self-reported religious affiliation that turns on the interpretation of words like "religion" and “Christian”. The two are not synonymous, nor would I argue is one necessarily a subset of the other. When challenged I am usually inclined to deny that I am religious. If “religion” is about humanity’s search for God (as it is occasionally defined in some dictionaries) then that does not apply to me, even although I am happy to accept the label of Christian. I was sought and found by God and am the recipient of outrageous grace. When I could do nothing for myself, God stepped in and rescued me – I am what I am because of Him, not me. And if “religion” names a set of institutions that the religious belong to, or rituals that they must practice, then again I deny that the word applies to me. There are institutions and practices that may be said to mark groups to which the label “Christian” can be attached. But these are neither defining nor obligatory for the Christian, the foundation of whose identity lies elsewhere. All of which raises the question of what a Christian actually is.

If for some reason you have had cause to refer to my blog profile, you’ll have noticed that I have qualified the word Christian. Qualification is needed precisely because the word means different things to different people. And this goes to the heart of the interpretation of the census results. I qualified it with “Biblical”, because that is where the term originates. When the early, mainly Jewish, followers of Jesus were driven by persecution away from Jerusalem (where they had congregated), some headed to Antioch and some spoke to non-Jews “preaching the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11:20, ESV). The result was the founding of a church in Antioch  (modern day Antakya in southern Turkey), and it was here that these disciples of Jesus were first called “Christians”, probably as an insult. This was the origination fo the word and it seems to me that it continues to be a sensible meaning of the word. It is those who are in personal relationship with the same Jesus, in response to the same Apostolic Gospel. It is less dangerous and insulting these days to be associated with Jesus (at least here and at least for now). But it is this relationship that was and is the heart and essence of Christianity.

Something is clearly in decline and this may have important consequences. But consider for a moment a counterfactual. Taken at face value, prior to the recently reported decline in the proportion of “Christians” in the UK, every second person I met would have been a Christian. But this has never been my experience. My experience is that people who are followers of Jesus, who are in personal relationship with Him, who seek to think as He thinks and live as He lived, have always been fairly thin on the ground. They were not commonly encountered day to day and certainly made up way less than half of those encountered. This has not changed in my thinking lifetime. Primarily what has declined is a different kind of thing and we might therefore usefully employ a different qualifying word, like “cultural”. What the census is picking up, consistent with other surveys, is a decline in cultural Christianity. The “Christian” veneer that has covered UK society, a veneer derived from values inherited from Biblical Christianity, has begun to slough off.

Veneer, of course, is only ever a covering, hiding an underlying substance that is usually something entirely different. Indeed the purpose of a veneer is to both cover and often conceal what lies beneath (like oak covering chipboard). If this covering is now being discarded, and at an increasing rate, then perhaps this is to be welcomed as something at least more honest. But one wonders what really is being revealed underneath and whether it will turn out to be all that agreeable.

Part of something bigger…..

This weekend, we here in this United Kingdom are celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee. She is our longest reigning monarch, celebrating 70 years of faithful service. While the anniversary actually fell on 6^th February, this is the weekend of the holidays, pageants, parties, a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, and so on. She is a remarkable woman, has been a remarkable head of state, and that is why many are reflecting (and remarking) on both her role and her rule. Among them was Matthew Parris in today’s Times. I’ve mentioned before my liking for Parris’ columns. But now he’s beginning to worry me.

He begins his column discussing termites of all things, because they illustrate the power of the collective. This leads him on to the human and national collectivism that was demonstrated in the pandemic. But that was a moment of coming together quite out of character with times in which division and dissension have been, and are, to the fore. What therefore can unite us Brits? It is this that brings him to her Majesty, and her role as not just a figurehead, but as a powerful uniting figure. And her appeal is, well, remarkable. Even republicans find her, if not the institution of monarchy, admirable. Interestingly Michelle O’Neil, the First Minister Elect of the Northern Ireland Assembly, wrote  to the Queen recently, expressing her admiration and gratitude. I have no doubt that she was being sincere. But remember, she is a republican who wants to see NI out of the UK and joined to the Irish Republic. The paramilitary group that gave birth to her political party murdered the Queen’s second cousin (and mentor to Prince Charles) Lord Mountbatten during the “Troubles”. O’Neill’s letter tells us something about both women, but certainly is an indication of the wide admiration that Her Majesty generates. But Parris’ main point is that this admiration also tells us something ourselves.

He asserts in his piece the following: “Like it or not, implanted within each of us is an inchoate craving for something…”. I find myself in agreement with him here. He is not claiming any original insight. His point is that we are looking for a unifying figure, we are looking for something (or someone) to “draw us together”, to bring us together into a “something bigger” beyond our individual selves. We identify the Queen as the figure who can do this, egged on by admiring commentary from abroad (even from the French President). Of course, we may be imputing to her qualities she does not in fact have. And Parris fairly points out that those often mentioned attributes of hard work and sense of duty are manifest by many other public servants who are unsung and unnoticed. We just don’t know, most of us, what she’s really like. And yet, because of the way we are apparently made, we latch on to her, and invest in her our respect, admiration and hope. Of course there is a problem. Inevitably, she is only a temporary occupant of the throne. Just this weekend, we have all been reminded of her frailty (she is after all 96 years old) as well as her remarkable reign. And this raises the question for Parris as to who comes next and whether they (or rather he) will be able to fulfil the same role. As it happens, he’s fairly optimistic.

But there is something very odd going on here. Why are we “made” with a desire to be united around someone (anyone) who can only ever succeed on a temporary and imperfect basis? He seems to be almost channelling Augustine at this point, an avowedly Christian writer whom he has certainly read. After all, Augustine opens his famous “Confessions” by writing: “..you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (Confessions 1.1). Parris has observed our “instinctive need to be part of something bigger than ourselves” as manifest in our coalescing around our “dutiful monarch”. He can’t explain it; but Augustine could. Augustine’s point was that we were made to know the God who created us, but by nature and practice we have become estranged from Him. And yet there are these strange echoes hinting at how we really are beneath how we appear in day-to-day life. One of these is the desire to believe in and belong to something bigger than ourselves. This sort of instinct that has been derided by materialists since the dawning of the enlightenment as a myth and a frailty just will not curl up and die. It keeps popping up in strange places and phenomena. But none of the God-replacements we turn to are able to ultimately fill the hole left by our denial of Him. Some are just wholly unsuitable and harmful. Some, while good in themselves (like our Queen), and performing a legitimate function (as she has done superbly), don’t really answer our deepest longings and needs. These can only be met with and in the God who made us and sustains us.

Of course dear Matthew will have none of this. He seems to feel a need to remind us in his column that he is a “Christian atheist” as well as “an agnostic about royalty”. Both are easy to forget; he sounds fairly keen on royalty and appears to be rigging on a Christian theme. But you really can’t be any kind of Christian and an atheist without so draining and redefining the word “Christian” (which he really does spell with a capital “C”) of its meaning that it becomes useless. As an adjective I suppose the word might bear some weight, but then it only rates lower-case c. The form he uses reveals a lot. Because it is clear that its meaning rests in the one whose title it contains, and that title is highly significant. “Christ” is the Greek form of the Hebrew “Messiah” – God’s chosen servant. As it turned out, God Himself in the form of Jesus. So “Christian atheist” suggests a degree of confusion that is never nice to observe in someone of clear intelligence and insight who’s getting on. Hence my worry.

Whether recognized or not, we are part of something bigger. At its heart is not (respectfully) the Queen of the UK and Commonwealth, as amazing as she is, but the King of Kings (and Queens). She apparently recognises this, and knows that she serves in a greater kingdom for a greater King. We could all usefully learn from her example.