After Brexit? E-Book

• Herausgeber: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The political, social and cultural dimensions of European unity are going through a period of unsettling change and challenge. Whatever direction it takes, Brexit marks a crossroad from which there is no easy return to the way things were before. How do the churches of Europe make sense of what is happening, and how should they respond? Is the unity between them, the focus for a century of ecumenical endeavour, a strength on which they can draw, or does that unity itself face new threats? "After Brexit" is a vital resource for all those interested in these questions, bringing together contributions from scholars and church leaders. It reviews the role of the churches in European integration as a post-war project, analyses the current political and social landscape, and identifies key issues for the future of ecumenism in Europe. [Nach dem Brexit? Europäische Einheit und die Einheit der europäischen Kirchen] Die politischen, sozialen und kulturellen Dimensionen der europäischen Integration erleben eine Zeit tiefgreifender Veränderungen und Herausforderungen. In jeder Hinsicht ist der Brexit eine Weichenstellung, die eine Rückkehr zu früheren Verhältnissen nahezu unmöglich macht. Wie sollen die Kirchen in Europa diese Entwicklungen interpretieren und wie darauf reagieren? Ist die Einheit zwischen den Kirchen – die den Fokus auf die ökumenische Zusammenarbeit legt – ein Plus, von dem sie zehren können, oder wird diese Einheit erneut in Frage gestellt? "After Brexit" ist eine reichhaltige Ressource für alle, die sich für diese Fragen interessieren, und beinhaltet Beiträge von Akademikern und Kirchenleitenden. Das Buch hinterfragt die Rolle der Kirchen bei der europäischen Integration als einem Nachkriegsprojekt, analysiert die aktuelle politische und soziale Situation und identifiziert Schlüsselthemen für die Zukunft der Ökumene in Europa.

Leseprobe

Matthias Grebe | Jeremy Worthen (Eds.)

After Brexit?

European Unity and the Unity of European Churches

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© 2019 by Evangelische Verlagsanstalt GmbH · Leipzig

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Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Matthias Grebe and Jeremy Worthen

1.Introduction

IHistory: The Churches and the European Union

Piers Ludlow

2.Silent but Important: Religion as a Factor in the Integration Process

Gary Wilton

3.A Re-Reading of the Schuman Declaration for a Post-Brexit Era

IIContext: European Societies and the Place of the Church

Ben Ryan

4.A Nation Divided against Itself?

Arnulf von Scheliha

5.Social Divisions Associated with Brexit: How Are they Replicated in Other European Countries, and How Are Churches Responding to them?

Grace Davie

6.European Identity, European Unity and the Christian Tradition

IIIResponse: What Can the European Churches Do?

Sarah Rowland Jones

7.Riches and Risks of Tackling Contemporary European Issues Ecumenically

Will Adam, Matthias Grebe and Jeremy Worthen

8.The Church of England and European Ecumenism: Making our Unity Visible

Justin Welby

9.“Let us be Peacemakers”: Christian Presence and Witness in Europe

List of Authors

Further Books

Final Scores

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our thanks to the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), which with very generous financial support enabled the publication of this book as well as the event from which it emerged. Christoph Ernst and Manuela Barbknecht, our colleagues in the ecumenical office there, were ready to assist at every stage in bringing this project to fruition.

We are deeply grateful to the Archbishop of Canterbury, for hosting the “After Brexit” colloquium at Lambeth Palace and for being present throughout with his guest at that time, the President of the EKD Council, Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. Their contributions to the colloquium were of great value, while the Archbishop also made available after the colloquium an extended reflection on Europe and the churches for inclusion in this volume.

We are very appreciative of all those who participated in the colloquium and made it such a memorable and stimulating event. We are also conscious of our debt to colleagues from Church House and Lambeth Palace who worked with us on the design, planning and organization of the colloquium, especially Will Adam, Angeline Leung and Charles Reed.

Finally, we would not have been able to bring this book to publication in a timely manner without the dedication, attention to detail and administrative skill of Alice Costar, Research Intern at the Council for Christian Unity.

Matthias Grebe & Jeremy Worthen

1.Introduction

Matthias Grebe and Jeremy Worthen

The “After Brexit” Colloquium

The origins of this book lie in the concern to connect two distinct but related conversations: the conversation about European unity, which is primarily political, social and cultural, and the conversation about the unity of the European churches, which is primarily ecumenical and theological. In their current form, both conversations have their roots in the immediate post-war period; both offer reflections on achievements that seemed to have reached a certain level of maturity and stability by the end of the twentieth century, and since that time both have become increasingly marked in variegated ways by tension and uncertainty. In the case of the conversation about European unity, this tension and uncertainty were dramatically heightened with the outcome of the United Kingdom’s referendum on leaving the European Union in 2016 and consequent preparations for “Brexit”, as it has come to be known. Those like the editors of this volume, who are directly involved in the second conversation about the unity of the European churches, are bound to wonder both what the implications of the changing nature of European unity may be for the unity of the European churches, and likewise what the unity of the European churches may have to say to those seeking a way forward for the political, social and cultural unity of Europe at this critical juncture in its history.

It was with the aim of connecting those two conversations that ecumenical staff at the Church of England and at the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) conceived plans for a colloquium to bring together those individuals deeply involved in each of them. The visit of the Chair of the EKD Council, Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Justin Welby, in late 2018 provided an obvious context for holding such an event, and both church leaders were present for the colloquium that took place at Lambeth Palace on 16 November 2018. “After Brexit: European Unity and the Unity of the European Churches”, supported by a generous grant from the EKD, brought together politicians, church leaders and senior ecumenical figures along with researchers and academics from a range of fields, including social and political sciences as well as theology. Over 60 people were present in total.

The day was structured to maximize time for discussion and interaction while also being informed by expert contributions from a number of the participants. These contributions were circulated in advance and then briefly introduced before responses and comments were invited. The first session, The Church and the Unity of Society, began with contributions from Ben Ryan and Arnulf von Scheliha, with Rosemary Nuamah Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Social and Public Affairs Adviser, acting as the chairperson. The second session, The Churches and the Unity of Europe, brought together contributions from Gary Wilton and Piers Ludlow; the chairperson was James Walters, Chaplain and Senior Lecturer at the London School of Economics. The third session, on The Unity of European Churches, had a slightly different format. Two papers were circulated in advance, one from Sarah Rowland Jones, Dean of St Davids, and the other from staff at the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity, Will Adam, Matthias Grebe and Jeremy Worthen. After Rowland Jones had commented on her paper, there was a panel discussion facilitated by Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Loughborough and Vice-President of the Conference of European Churches, between Nick Baines, the Bishop of Leeds, Robert Innes, the Bishop in Europe, Heikki Huttenen, the General Secretary of the Conference of European Churches and Sarah Rowland Jones.

Inevitably, passionate convictions were exchanged at various points over the course of the day about why Brexit was happening and what the United Kingdom should now do. It was invaluable in this context to have the benefit not only of a range of perspectives from across the United Kingdom but also to be in conscious dialogue with the EKD, and to hear views from those residing elsewhere within the European Union, including Belgium, France and the Republic of Ireland. The day ended with a session in which Bishop Bedford-Strohm and Archbishop Welby were interviewed together by Lord Wallace of Saltaire. What emerged from the event as a whole was a further doubling down of what is a significant attempt to establish key questions which the churches must face in the coming weeks, months and years. It drew out crucial themes for current discussions about what kind of European society the churches envisage for a post-Brexit future, and what the church’s role should be in shaping it.

The main chapters of this book constitute papers that were prepared for the “After Brexit” colloquium and then revised in the light of the lively interchanges that took place. They are grouped under three headings: “History: the churches and the European Union”; “Context: European societies and the place of the church”; and “Response: what can the churches do?” This introduction uses these same headings to reflect on the discussion that unfolded during the day itself. It aims to identify critical issues, some of which receive substantial treatment in the chapters that follow, some of which are less prominent. All, however, are likely to require continuing attention in the coming years from those who share the view that the two conversations referred to above – about the political, social and cultural unity of Europe, and about the unity of the European churches – must find appropriate points of connection if the churches are to find their footing in a changing and often disorientating environment. Otherwise, they will struggle to understand properly their place in the current chapter of European history, and to witness effectively at this time to the joyful good news of peace and reconciliation in Jesus Christ.

History: the churches and the European Union

The sense of crisis about Brexit reached one of its peaks of intensity in the UK during the very week the colloquium was taking place. In such circumstances, it is easy for attention to narrow onto choices that must be made imminently and the issues that accompany them. Yet to understand where we are and the decisions that face us, we need to have some grasp of the history that has brought us to this point. Moreover, proposals for action in the present inevitably invoke a narrative about the past, and responsible decision-making requires us to be ready to reflect on its adequacy.

The roots of European integration

The colloquium presentations linked to the papers in the first part of this book both focused on the extent to which the churches played a role in the post-war origins of the project of European integration. Wilton focused on Robert Schuman’s declaration of May 1950 as the original inspiration for the EU, with its primary aim of peace in Europe being sought by the practical mechanism of placing coal and steel production under a common authority, thereby making war materially impossible. While it was a political, not a theological, statement, Wilton maintained that the Schuman Declaration was nonetheless motivated by deep Christian faith and consequently could and should be read theologically. Its horizons extended beyond Europe: the solidarity sought within the European continent could also be extended across the Mediterranean Sea in concern for Africa. For Schuman, the creation of a supranational organization did not undermine nation states but enabled them to operate together to achieve common goals.

In his contribution to the same session, Ludlow agreed that religion was an important motivator for many of the key figures involved in the initial moves after World War II towards European integration. He also concurred that this did not reflect an ideological principle of weakening the nation state but rather two overriding concerns. The first was to avoid the relapse into deadly conflict that had swiftly engulfed the good intentions expressed by European leaders after World War I. The second was to address the new reality that political agency at the global level was shifting into the hands of non-European actors, in the form of the United States and the Soviet Union. In order to respond to these challenges, political leaders drew on pre-existing networks and connections, including, crucially, that of political Catholicism, or Christian Democracy, as it became in the post-war context.

Ludlow stressed, however, that there was little engagement with formal church bodies in this formative period, while explicitly religious language was studiously avoided in public statements. He argued that this reflected a recognition that in a context where political consensus was a priority, religion could be a catalyst for division, not least in that the Catholic Social Teaching on which Schuman and others naturally drew was an object of suspicion to many Protestants. The idea that Roman Catholics held an ambivalent approach to issues of national sovereignty was one that still resonated in some European societies, while it remained commonplace in the 1950s for Catholics to refuse so much as to pray the Lord’s Prayer with other Christians. Of course, as well as divisions within Christianity itself, the further challenge remained of how to gain support from those who did not identify as Christians or who did not accept faith-based positions as a valid basis for modern political life. From the very outset, therefore, there was a reluctance to talk in explicitly religious terms about European integration, despite the critical role of religious motivations, reasoning and connections.

Inevitably, different rationales for participating in the project of European integration were influential for different European countries. In his presentation, von Scheliha emphasized the importance of the opportunity it represented for Germany’s rehabilitation by the international community. Full participation in the emerging European institutions and eventually the EU was seen as a way to establish and stabilize democracy, advance the economy, reconstruct the country and seek peace and reconciliation with former enemies.

Ryan’s paper highlighted the extent to which unresolved tensions around the role of religion in the origins of European integration continue to have an effect in the contemporary context. Affirming with Wilton and Ludlow the dependence of the great designers of the European project, such as Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi and Jean Monnet as well as Robert Schuman, on Catholic Social Teaching, he proposed that:

The European project was, in its origins, a Catholic ideological project. It is accordingly little surprise that it prompts a greater degree of scepticism from those whose politics and identity are inspired by a more Protestant intellectual tradition. The Church of England and its adherents have tended to be closer to continental Protestants (particularly Scandinavians) than to Catholics when it comes to support for European integration.

It may not be accidental that the Church of England’s historic (if now somewhat embattled) self-understanding as “the church of the nation” finds a strong parallel in the Scandinavian Lutheran churches. Ecclesial and national identities have been strongly intertwined in the past, even if they have been unravelling from one another for some time.

In some contrast to this historical picture, the colloquium demonstrated how far close involvement in European ecumenism today tends to be accompanied by strong support for European integration expressed in overtly religious terms. Yet the European ecumenists of the 1950s and 1960s were principally focused on how the unity of European churches across the “Iron Curtain” could make a significant contribution to European social and cultural unity that might offer a counterweight to the East-West division of the deepening Cold War. In this context, the closer integration of Western European nation states, aimed in part at increasing their political “reach” on the global stage in terms of economics and diplomacy, was more likely to attract suspicion than enthusiasm in those Eastern bloc countries to whose beleaguered churches Western ecumenists were seeking to reach out as a matter of urgency.1 Rowland Jones, formerly a British Diplomat during the Cold war era and its immediate aftermath, suggested in a comment at the colloquium that this dynamic of suspicion on the part of Russia regarding European integration had been stirred up by both the fact and the manner of the expansion eastwards of the European Union and also NATO during the 1990s and 2000s. Historic tension between the project of post-war peace-building through European integration among member states of the EU and the concern for peace and solidarity across the European Continent as a whole now plays into a wholly different context. What are the implications for the European Churches in framing their current witness to peace and reconciliation, and in their striving for visible unity across Europe?

Eclipse of the post-war narrative

From the outset, the idea of European integration was presented as a means of binding together Western European nation states, whose conflicts had precipitated two world wars, into peaceful politics. Tensions would be resolved by other means than violence. The framing of European integration, including the creation of transnational institutions, as a project for peace was a crucial strategy in building support for it. While, as was stressed above, it was not cast in overtly religious terms, Christians could be expected to respond positively to this rhetoric. How can those who preach a gospel of peace be against the things that make for peace? And if the EU has – as its advocates routinely claim – assisted in sustaining an unprecedented era in the modern age of peace between the major European powers, how could the churches possibly fail to support it?

A number of participants in the colloquium expressed views along these lines. There were also some critical voices, however. Nick Baines, the Bishop of Leeds, spoke about growing up in the city of Liverpool when it was still marked by bomb sites: “you could look at the end of a terraced house and see the fire place on the second floor, because it had been bombed and there was a crater.” For those who carry such memories, the imperative of embedding peaceful relations within Europe has immense force. As Baines pointed out, however, his children – and their children – do not share them: the repair to the city’s landscape was complete by the time they were old enough to walk its streets. Of course, the presence or absence of memories of the effects of war does not determine the validity of arguments about whether the European Union has or has not made a contribution to fostering peace, but it does have a critical bearing on what he called “emotional, imaginative engagement”. Baines’ point was that the post-war narrative linking European integration and European peace has lost its power to inspire. If a new generation is to be motivated to sustain and deepen relations between different European societies, it needs to create a new narrative about what Europe could become – and why it matters. The failure so far to do that became evident, Baines suggested, in the debate within UK on its membership of the EU.

Jonathan Chaplin, a political theologian, also questioned relying solely on the post-war narrative about the EU ensuring peace in Europe, and thereby concluding that Christian faith compels support for it today. As he wrote in comments sent to the editors following the colloquium:

There’s a need to identify more precisely what it is we think political institutions, at any level, are for, what their “calling”, capacities, limits and pathologies, are, and then whether there is some compelling political norm that justifies a transnational entity like the EU at all, how it needs to be reformed in the future in order better to fulfil its unique “calling”, and then whether the UK itself should be part of it, and, either way, how it should construe its relation to the EU anyway.

Chaplin was not arguing that this is an impossible task, or that the answers would necessarily point away from the UK’s membership of the EU (indeed, he himself is a convinced Remainer). His concern was rather that addressing these issues was a proper part of the churches’ responsibility, and one which so far they had failed to take up. If for Baines the problem with relying on the post-war peace narrative for European integration is that it has ceased to have compelling force as a narrative, for Chaplin the issue is that such rhetorical appeals cannot substitute for rigorous theological thinking about the purpose and value of political institutions.

In one of his responses to questions at the colloquium, Ludlow pointed out that the language of “the early idealism about Europe” associated with the beginnings of the post-war European institutions “was entirely directed towards internal European reconciliation”. The difficulty in sustaining the power of that idealism, he suggested, is not only about fading memories of European war; it also concerns the changing character of the European population. For instance, many who live in Europe today do not identify the conflicts between European nations in the 20th century as their immediate history, or the legacy of those conflicts as their historic responsibility, for the simple reason that their arrival – or that of their family – in Europe occurred after they were finished. Europe has never been ethnically homogenous, but a narrative of reconciliation in which those represented as the principal actors do not reflect the ethnic diversity of the societies in which we live today is bound to seem increasingly remote.

A parallel point was made by Heikki Huttunen, General Secretary of the Conference of European Churches and also a priest in the Orthodox Church of Finland. He stressed that there is a plurality of narratives about Europe, with the narrative of Western European nations overcoming conflict and embarking on the successful path of economic and social integration – “now challenged by the fact of the Brexit” – only one of these.

But there are other narratives of Europe too. The Eastern European communist parenthesis and everything after that, that’s another other way of looking at Europe; the Southern European, the post-Ottoman and the Mediterranean story. And what about those stories that are usually not even written down, the Roma, they’re a pan-European nation, but we hear very little about them or we don’t have the ways to think in their terms.

Nonetheless, the UK has its own reasons for remembering that the absence of violent conflict is not something that can ever be taken for granted. Katy Hayward reminded other participants of the continuing fragility of the Northern Ireland peace process, and of the potential for it to be affected by changes to cross-border relations consequent on the UK leaving the EU and the associated political turbulence. In responding to her remarks, Ludlow noted that the EU had played a low-profile but nonetheless significant role at a crucial stage in the Irish peace process. It was an important reminder that whatever the value today of the post-war narrative about its origins in terms of the quest for lasting peace in Europe, the EU continues to have the capacity to support initiatives aiming to lessen tensions within and between its member states.

Context: European societies and the place of the church

Connecting the conversation about European political and social unity with the conversation about the unity of the European churches requires a careful analysis of unity within European societies today. Where are the tensions and the causes of fracture? What is it that underpins people’s identification with their community or society, and how are boundaries of belonging being drawn between “us” and “them”? What is the role of religion and of religious actors, such as churches, in these processes, and what capacity exists for them to exercise significant influence? The second main part of the volume contains three chapters directly addressing these issues, which also attracted much interest at the colloquium itself.

Social divisions

Asked in the original briefing to reflect on “The Church and the Unity of Society” in (respectively) the UK and the German context, it was no surprise that social divisions should form a major theme in the papers for the colloquium from Ryan and von Scheliha. For Ryan, Brexit represented the crystallization of a number of long-term tensions that had come to characterize British society: between the generations, between town and city, as well as between different religious and ethnic groups. He proposed that the public space in which debates about Europe took place before, during and after the referendum had become “toxic” as social divisions hardened.

Ryan also noted the influential analysis of David Goodhart (present for part of the colloquium) that introduced a new division as key to understanding the emerging tensions in UK society: the division between “somewheres” and “any-wheres”, between those for whom place, community and identity are interwoven and those for whom they are readily separable.2 Ryan then introduced his own variation on Goodhart’s thesis. He suggested that a further line of division to have become visible in the referendum campaign was between those who talked in terms of “mind” and those who spoke in terms of “soul”: those for whom rational arguments based on the knowledge of experts seemed self-evidently the most reliable basis for making such a significant decision, and those who were looking for a narrative about what had happened to their country and what might happen to it next in which they could readily locate themselves, on the basis of their experiences and perceptions.

Von Scheliha’s balancing analysis of divisions within German society highlighted the contribution of two “crises”: the financial crisis of 2008, and the so-called migration crisis that achieved particular prominence in Europe in 2015, when close to a million refugees entered Germany. Both fed into a deepening sense of alienation among those who were already feeling they had lost out socially and economically as a result of German unification. Associated with this was a growing gap between those living in rural and urban areas, as well as heightened attention to religious identity, with fears about Islam becoming prominent. These issues, covered for a long time by the relatively positive economic situation, were not adequately addressed in Germany’s political sphere because Angela Merkel’s long period of chancellorship in grand coalitions has absorbed an influential and strong parliamentary opposition and has had the creativity to identify problems. According to von Scheliha the refugee crisis works as a catalytic converter to bring the social problems into the open in recent years, as evident in the rise of the populist right, represented by the electoral success of a new political party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Other participants also emphasized the role of economic factors in social division. Robert Innes, the Church of England’s Bishop in Europe, commented that “the UK’s distribution of wealth, at least from a Continental perspective, highlights a staggering and totally unacceptable level of inequality, particularly compared to other Northern European countries.” Guido de Graaff, a moral theologian working in the area of social and political thought, raised the broader question of how far people’s lives are now being profoundly shaped by “very important global macro-economic forces” that are simply beyond the control not only of nation states like the UK and Germany but also of transnational institutions such as the EU. People may look to the EU as either saviour or villain in the current context, but how much influence can it exert in an age of economic globalization? Moreover, what power does the church really have to address these complex causes of social division?

In responding, Ludlow sounded a note of cautious optimism. He agreed that the great challenge facing contemporary European societies was no longer the prospect of intrastate war but rather that of economic globalization and its accompanying changes, which reach into people’s everyday lives in all manner of ways. He affirmed, however, that European integration remains vital as one dimension of how European societies can respond to that challenge. Acknowledging that European leaders had not been very successful in communicating this, he suggested that the churches could have a role here. If economic changes lie at the roots of growing tensions and divisions within and between European societies, can European churches respond with effective testimony to human solidarity that reaches across national boundaries, and how it should inform economic policy and activity?

Place, identity and belonging

At various points in the colloquium, participants sought to articulate why it was that a majority of those casting a vote in the referendum had done so in favour of leaving the EU in 2016 – including, according to polling data discussed by Ryan in his chapter in this book, a majority of Christians. Indeed, self-identifying Christians appeared more likely to have voted to leave than the population average by a significant margin. Given the association of the EU via the post-war narrative with values such as peace, solidarity, reconciliation and cooperation for the common good, what led this to come about?

Different answers were given to this question, with a number of them exploring the relationship between place, identity and belonging. Ryan commented on polling data that located a key indicator of how people voted in the UK referendum in their response to two statements: (1) I no longer recognize the country in which I grew up, and (2) this country is a worse place now than it used to be. Those who disagreed with those statements were very likely to vote to remain in the EU. Those who agreed with them were very likely to vote to leave. In other words, people were wanting to leave the EU because of a positive attachment to their nation on the one hand and a negative assessment on the other of the trajectory on which it is currently travelling, with EU membership regarded as integral to that.

The significance of positive attachment to the nation as the primary motivation for many who voted to leave the EU was underlined by Philp North, the Bishop of Burnley. North commented that “it’s easy to portray the Brexit vote as a negative anarchist thing, whereas in the North West it’s a very positive vote for a vision of nation, in a place that’s proud of flag, proud of nation, proud of armed forces, proud of the monarch, and so on. The European project is seen as, somehow, watering down, diluting, undermining, perhaps, that patriotic narrative.” His assessment was paralleled by Rowland Jones’ account of an older relative who was adamant about the need to leave the EU. Her reasoning had focused on a narrative of resilient national identity bound up with Britain’s independence as an island not conquered by foreign invasion since 1066, but whose capacity to continue effectively delivering British well-being was diluted and threatened by its ties to the EU. In a very different context, Giles Fraser noted how the predominantly black congregation of his church in south London expect to pray for the Queen in the intercessions every Sunday. They too were proud of their country without embarrassment or ironic qualification.

Rowland Jones suggested there was an implicit theology here of the nation as the locus for experiences of both providence and redemption. Building on her comments, Fraser, who has made the case forcefully for Christians to support Brexit, drew a parallel with the State of Israel. For many Jewish people, its establishment in 1948 was a necessary response to the horrors of the Second World War: rather than abandoning the nation state because of the perverted nationalism of Nazi Germany, Jewish people strove to build a nation state that could provide security against such evil in the future. Moreover, Fraser sought to ground the connection between place and belonging in the Hebrew Scriptures, which “have a very strong sense that love is particular.” Indeed, he proceeded to say that it was also important to attend to that connection at a much more local level within the nation state, which nonetheless retained a crucial role in holding together the multitude of different communities in which place, identity and belonging were knitted together.

As North’s observations quoted above indicate, it is not difficult for the national and the transnational to be seen as competing spheres for attachment and identity, as well as for sovereignty and power. More for one is taken to imply inevitably less for the other, so that those with a strong attachment to the national are bound to resist transnational attachments so far as possible. Two participants in particular, however, offered reflections that sought to explain how a strong sense of national identity need not be in tension with a strong sense of responsibility and belonging across national borders.

The first of these was the Bishop in Europe, who spoke of the inseparability of perceptions of self from perceptions of the other, citing Kipling’s complaint: “What do they know of England, who only England know?” By stepping outside our own culture and seeing our country in the ways that others see it, Innes said, we gain a fuller and truer perspective on it, denied to those who remain wholly immersed in their society of origin. He then stressed the significance of multiple identities, arguing that in “a world of diversity and complexity”, we have no choice but to hold different identities together in a way that allows them to be complementary to one another rather than in hostile tension. British people living in other European countries share the experience of many migrants around the world in holding dual “national” identities. Moreover, Innes proposed a role for the church here, in that Christians have always lived with multiple identities – as citizens of heaven, yet also members of earthly societies, as members of particular churches, and also members of the universal church.

Indeed, one might make a specific connection here to the ecumenical experience as “living in more than one place at once”.3 As Huttunen expressed it at the colloquium, the “attempt to hear more than one story is, of course, at the core of the ecumenical movement.” There is perhaps a specific challenge here for hurches, such as the Church of England and the EKD (though rather differently), which have historically fostered a strong sense of overlap between ecclesial identity on the one hand and an identity of culture, society and place on the other. As North phrased it, can such churches find a way of “framing a narrative of nation that is tolerant, open and emphasizes unity?” Part of the answer to that question may be in terms of how they understand their own “borders” with other churches, and how they demonstrate freedom to cross them without loss of identity and belonging in their own “place”.

The other contribution that resisted the idea of a necessary tension between the national and the transnational or international came from Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. He began by making a distinction between patriotism and nationalism: patriotism as pride in one’s country, he claimed, is compatible with openness to remembering the dark aspects of its past in a way that nationalism that idealizes the nation is not. He described the roots of such patriotism as going very deep in human experience and as being an ordinary part of human flourishing: “of course, you should love your country. You should love your city. To have a home, it’s wonderful. We call it ‘Heimat’ […] a deep love and appreciation for what God has given to you. It’s wonderful to feel at home.” Yet when people move from loving their country in this way to believing it is superior to other countries, entitled to more than other countries and free to disregard the welfare of other countries, then something wrong and dangerous has occurred.

In order to articulate further how the “love of the particular” emphasized by Fraser need not be in competition with a love for all humanity across social boundaries, Bedford-Strohm explained his concept of “concrete universalism”.4 It is right that a father, for instance, would give more time and attention to the welfare of his own child than that of somebody to whom he is unrelated and whom he has never met. Yet it is that same love for his own child that generates sympathy for the situation of parents facing famine in other parts of the world who are unable to feed their children. “Love of the particular” enables recognition of the other as another like me in their particularity and their particular loves, and therefore as another human person who needs and deserves my help in the plight that confronts them. Bedford-Strohm concluded: “So there is no competition between universalism and concrete love of the people of your kinship. And to understand that and to, also, radiate it, in the way we speak about our global responsibility, I think, that is the task of the church.”

Religion, society and plurality

The ambivalent role of religion in the post-war project of European integration has already been discussed. One of the questions that arises in the current social context is the extent to which secularization, ecumenism and the growth of religious plurality since then have fundamentally changed the situation regarding the potential contribution of the churches to the shaping of Europe. The combination of these developments means that the danger of tensions within and between European states being exacerbated by factors relating to their different Christian confessional traditions is very much reduced, if it has not quite disappeared altogether. Does that create new opportunities for the churches to speak and act in a European context today, despite diminishing resources and renewed controversy about the role of religion in public life?