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There’s more to faith than sex

February 25, 2010

The government's so-called "concession" on sex education in faith schools has unleashed a predictable array of responses: angry denunciation from Accord Coalition, lofty condescension from the Guardian, and splenetic hysteria from Mark Steel. On the surface, the issue appears to be just another spat in the mounting controversy over the place of faith in public life. Faith communities are presented as demanding special treatment from government and, instantly, opposing infantries take up their positions and launch the bombardment. But underlying these surface altercations is a deeper but concealed fissure between two distinct models of public diversity – individualism and pluralism. Unless these models are made explicit and critically assessed the chasm will only deepen and the debate become yet further mired in confusion and sullied by pointless name-calling. On the individualist model, the overriding goal of the state is to enforce diversity by guaranteeing extensive individual equality rights across the whole of society. The full package of such rights is assertable not only within state institutions but also within any publicly-funded institution, and even, on an extreme version, within every private institution. Diversity is secured by enforcing rights which compel universal respect for particular aspects of individual identity: gender, nationality, sexual orientation and so forth. The great strength of the individualist model is that it protects all individual citizens against arbitrary discrimination both within the public sector and in wider society. This is easiest to see in racial discrimination: not only must the state treat racially distinct individuals equally, so must non-state institutions. The only possible exception might be ethnic community associations where ethnicity could be an important occupational requirement. An often unstated assumption is that institutions other than the state have no secure rights of their own to decide on individual conduct within their own sphere. Whatever rights to self-government they may have can readily be overridden by the universal imperatives of the state. So the serious weakness of the model is that as the scope of public equality rights expands it threatens to encroach on areas of autonomy at the core of the diverse identities and goals of non-state institutions, a point eloquently stated recently by Jonathan Sacks. By contrast, the pluralist model holds that the state must not only protect a robust regime of individual equality rights but also underwrite the legitimate autonomy of many independent social institutions, families, schools, religious organisations, trade unions, universities, businesses, cultural associations, and so on. It honours these as arenas in which individuals discover and express many aspects of their diverse goals and identities. It also acknowledges that any of these could choose to be "faith-based", my local food cooperative in Cambridge is quite openly guided by a biblical vision of trade justice, and pluralists would defend its right to hire only staff who support that ethos. On the pluralist model, the self-governance rights of institutions are not created by the state. The model seeks to protect diversity not only among equal individuals but also among equal institutions (some of which will pursue distinct moral or religious purposes). This involves striking a judicious and sometimes difficult balance, not so much between individuals and institutions as between two facets of individual human flourishing: our need for separateness and our right to belong. There is a necessary debate to be had over where precisely the balance should lie between protecting these two kinds of diversity. So let's have such a debate. It should cover not only current neuralgic issues such as sex education or Catholic adoption agencies but broaden out to include issues barely on the public agenda: for example, should publicly-funded faith schools have the autonomy to offer a truly faith-based economics or environmental curriculum based on a biblical vision of justice, stewardship and sustainability? Or should they be forced to teach neo-liberal orthodoxy premised on rational utility maximisation, the paradigm tacit in most economics textbooks. For such a debate to be honest, let each side openly declare which is their preferred model of diversity, individualism or pluralism, and not simply lambast each other as either secular liberal totalitarians or reactionary religious bigots. Workable, mutually respectful compromises might then begin to stagger out of the fog of mutual recrimination. A final friendly word of advice to Christian schools: don't fight the battle only over your right to teach kids the bizarre and counter-cultural message that sexual abstinence is healthier than casual experimentation. Fight it also over your right to teach them the no less subversive message that libertarian economics is incompatible with Christian faith.