There was a revealing exchange on the Today programme yesterday morning, with sometime culture secretary Chris Smith, would you believe it, who was defending western values, and Tariq Ramadan, who was not.
Smith has just published a book, with Richard Koch, called Suicide of the West, which argues that Western civilization has thrived more than any other civilization in the past or present. It has, the argument goes, been more successful in economic, military and political terms, in science and technology, in the arts, and in enhancing its citizens' health, wealth, longevity and even, probably, their happiness. A large degree of that success can be traced to six principal ideas - Christianity, optimism, science, economic growth, liberalism and individualism. In 1900, most Westerners felt tremendous pride and confidence in their civilization. They knew what it stood for, and they believed in it. Today that sense has gone. And that is largely because the six ideas which underpinned Western confidence have suffered a century of sustained attack.
What was so brilliant about the discussion was that Smith’s case was performed for us on the radio. He pointed out that ‘liberalism’ is ‘the one that is in the greatest danger’, that the ‘principles of liberalism are very much at risk’. He also defended Christianity, for believers and non-believers alike, as vital: ‘the great gift Christianity gave to the west’, he said, was the ‘sense of the individual, the sense of self,’ since it is with Christianity that humans first talk ‘about the individual person having a relationship with God.’ It was, he added, ‘not about a selfish individualism, but about a responsible individualism’.
Ramadan’s response was to attack the primacy of Christianity as a religion in the West, to suggest that because Islam has been an at times antagonistic and at times nourishing influence, it has been as important to the development of liberalism and democracy and everything else. His first words were: ‘It’s clear that you are selecting some of the values when you say Christianity. It’s wrong. It’s historically wrong, because… we are forgetting the Islamic input, so it’s not only a Christian civilization, so you are reducing –’ That seems to me egregious as a denial. I'm with Chris Smith: we need to defend and uphold our Christian legacy, and we ‘need to reassert’ the ‘fundamental enlightenment values’.
Comments (4)
Some astute points, some not so astute.
“To suggest that Christianity gave to the West the concepts of individualism & self worth is utter tosh. Such concepts were being nourished in ancient Greece & Rome well before the birth of Jesus Christ.”
Qualify this assertion. I think it is factually incorrect, except in very limited sense. There was no connection between individuals and gods, nothing personal about these relationships. And there is no way, for instance, that any character in Greek drama, even in Euripides, could say with Hamlet, I have that within which passeth show… There was no equivalent sense of psychological interiority.
“If the pre-schism Catholic church had had its way concepts such as individualism, self determination & freedom of speech would have not enjoyed the pre-eminence they do today.”
Correct, but the schism arose within the Christian church and nowhere else. It is an odd and rather pointless counterfactual argument that says this was not the case. One of the most axiomatic battles going on during the Reformation was not cultural but spiritual: the fight for recognition of a personal relationship with God, of salvation by faith, which only God and the individual, not society, could audit. The connection between the Enlightenment and Christianity is well established and it would be extremely ill informed to deny it. The great Cartesian dictum, cogito ergo sum, was an assertion of self by one who had a profound religious faith.
“To fight islamization by endorsing the primacy of Christianity is an error that lowers the issue to a primitive realm of combat which is more comfortable for islamic fundamentalists.”
You’re right, except that, firstly, Chris Smith is asserting, as far as I understand it, the importance of Christianity for a western society suffering from collective amnesia. And, secondly, it was the BBC, not him, who set up the binary opposition between the two religions by bringing Ramadan into the studio.
Posted by Nick | May 19, 2006 3:25 PM
Posted on May 19, 2006 15:25
I think I agree with Jeff. Most of the features which we prize in the West predated Christianity which is essntially a Judao-Eastern faith which has been 'Westernised'.
Being an admirer of Ancient Rome I consider it to be great historical tragedy that the Roman state and its insitutions were taken over lock stock etc by the Christian Church. A church which also abandoned most of its beliefs and from being a religion of the oppressed became an oppressor.
Obviously I agree with Gibbon.
It is easy to admire the great art and music which Christianity inspired but there is also a
very dark side which is less than spiritual.
THe organised church has also played a very inglorious role in social matters.
Perhasp this may be improving as the church now in some ways is more positive and supports social order.
However I also agree with Nick that Ramadan was wrong. The real error was for the BBC to be inviting Ramadan. HE is just famous for being famous. The points he made were historically wrong and his intervention was less than academic.
To come back to Chris Smith ( I havenot read the book) he ignores the greatest threat: the threat to liberalism comes from people who call themselves liberals.
In particular the greatest contrast is with the elites of today and the elites of Rome who considered their role to be social and civic duty. I do not want to sound simplistic but the elites of Britain and the West have abandoned any concept of duty.
They have abandoned leadership and now follow the common herd. This includes the kind of 'role models' sometimes cahmpioned by Civitas.
One thing is sure. LIke Rome we are on the edge ofa n abyss.LIke Rome it may be unlikely elements who will take the lead in dealing with it. It will not be the 'elite' educated and privileged who have created the problem.
Posted by angela pinter | May 19, 2006 2:31 PM
Posted on May 19, 2006 14:31
I heard the piece and I thought the problem lay, as it often does, with the rent-a-muslim policies of the programme producers at the BBC. As my good friend Garrett says at Lord Jim, whatever it is, get a muslim on; never mind the quality, feel the inclusiveness. Ramadan didn't make bad points, they just didn't belong in that debate. Someone like Roger Scruton would have been the ideal person to put on to discuss Smith's book but, fatally, he is a white man implicitly bracketed with the political right, and so somewhat unqualified to speak via Pravda. I mean the BBC.
Posted by Mark Brentano | May 19, 2006 2:00 PM
Posted on May 19, 2006 14:00
The foundation stones for Western culture were well in place before the advent of Christianity. Although I don't deny that Christianity has at times played an important role as a vehicle for the inculcation of Western values & mores elsewhere, Christianity as we know it is more the creature of Western culture rather than a foundation for it. It was the adoption of Christianity by the Roman polity that gave it life, impetus & the capacity to spread & grow throughout the Western portion of the empire.
The Reformation was obviously instrumental in fashioning both the modern Catholic & Protestant churches. The seeds of the Reformation lie in principals & concepts that are more Western than they are Christian. To suggest that Christianity gave to the West the concepts of individualism & self worth is utter tosh. Such concepts were being nourished in ancient Greece & Rome well before the birth of Jesus Christ. If the pre-schism Catholic church had had its way concepts such as individualism, self determination & freedom of speech would have not enjoyed the pre-eminence they do today.
Whilst I endorse the the defence of Christianity in the face of islamic attack I only do so because of the greater importance of defending the Western concepts of freedom of association & religion. To fight islamization by endorsing the primacy of Christianity is an error that lowers the issue to a primitive realm of combat which is more comfortable for islamic fundamentalists. It is fundamentalism of whatever religious guise that needs to be opposed, because it is fundamentalism that will always pose a threat to the laudable Western principles of individualism, liberalism, democracy & all of the other rights that flow therefrom & therewith.
Posted by jeff guy | May 19, 2006 3:29 AM
Posted on May 19, 2006 03:29