London, UK - Religion is important in shaping public policy and religious groups are helping build “a new politics based on hope” according to Government minister Stephen Timms.
Mr Timms, financial secretary to the Treasury and Labour’s vice-chair for faith groups, said the faith communities had always been the “natural allies” of progressive politics.
Sounding the final death knell for Alistair Campbell’s statement that Labour does not “do God”, Mr Timms made it clear that he did not believe religion is dying out and said faith groups have a lot to offer government.
He was speaking on the day that new research from Christian charity Tearfund showed churchgoing making “significant” increases after years of decline.
Mr Timms referred to the problems in the world economy, the conflict in the Middle East and more immediate problems such as last weekend’s stabbing of Stephen Lewis when leaving a church hall party in his own constituency in East London.
Mr Timms said: “It would be easy to lapse in the face of challenges of that magnitude into cynicism or even despair – to conclude that nothing can be done by politicians effectively to resolve these enormous challenges.
“But it is the calling of politicians to figure out how to tackle them, to identify solutions and to work to implement them.”
He said the religious groups of Britain were crucial to this process and singled out the Muslim community for particular praise. “Muslims in Britain have helped faith gain a new voice and a new confidence,” he said.
He said the Government does not accept that the right response to the current economic crisis is to let it run its course.
“Our view is that Government can make a difference, standing alongside people through this period, working together to rebuild growth in the economy and to create new jobs.”
This was where faith groups came in.
“What I want to argue today is that the faith communities offer a rich resource of hopefulness which, in progressive politics, we need to tap into and draw upon.”
He admitted that religion had not always been seen as a natural ally of such progressive politics and in the US was associated with conservatism because of the alliance between Christian organisations and the former administration.
Mr Timms, addressing a meeting of the left-wing think tank the Institute of Public Policy Research, said: “Faith communities have a great deal to offer us, not least in their resource of hopefulness, as we build a new politics based on hope to respond effectively to the challenges we face. They can form the basis for a broad coalition of hope.”
He admitted this represented a challenge to progressive politicians to show they recognise faith-based perspectives and contributions as valid and mainstream, rather than irrelevant and marginal.
“That means recognising that faith cannot be relegated to the private sphere.”
He continued: “It may strike some as a bit odd to hear a politician in 2009 speaking of faith communities as a resource, when their numbers are surely in terminal decline. We have been regaled for years with statistics of falling church attendance, and the clear assumption that faith is on the way out.
“But the number of people in Britain who identify with faith – who see faith as the starting point for their thinking about the world and their judgments about right and wrong, indeed as the key to their whole identity – remains very large. In London, in areas like the one I represent, the number seems to me to be rising not falling. And faith groups are growing in confidence to venture into the public square and to serve their wider communities.”
He made mention of the tradition of Victorian and Edwardian reformers who combined Christian faith with philanthropic zeal.
Mr Timms said: “Something important is happening here on the left of politics. Faith, often in the past derided as conservative or irrelevant or heading for extinction, now providing more and more of its leadership.”
He concluded: “We need to draw political support from people who define their identity primarily by faith, and address the misapprehension that progressive politics sees faith as an enemy. We need to be equipping our institutions to work respectfully with people whose starting point is faith, to be tapping in to the insights of faith communities – their moral perspectives, and the experiences of practical initiatives in the UK and abroad.”
Figures from Tearfund showed that churchgoing last year increased after years of decline.
Attendance has gone up by as much as 25 per cent, according to a survey of 7,000 members of the public by Christian charity Tearfund.
Most of the increase was enjoyed by the established Church of England.
But the research shows a big change in churchgoing patterns. Many people no longer go weekly or even fortnightly and the biggest increases are in churchgoers who attend monthly or even once a year.
The research was deliberately constructed to take out attendance at the “hatch match and despatch” rituals of baptism, marriage and funeral services.
Tearfund found that 12.8 million adults, or 26 per cent, in the UK go to church once a year, with 7.5 million or 15 per cent showing up monthly and five million or 10 per cent going once a week.