The Saturday Essay; Pronounced dead, but faith has risen once again

The resurgence of religion has come as a shock to those whose world view was formed in the Sixties and Seventies

HE WAS crucified, dead and buried, but on the third day he rose again. In a similar way religion has been pronounced dead so many times in the 20th century that the global resurgence of religion, as the millennium approaches, has come as a profound shock to those whose world view was formed in the Sixties and Seventies.

Just 20 years ago the idea that secularisation would follow the material and technological achievements of modern man seemed obvious. It was widely believed that religion would be relegated to the infantile phase of the human race that had now "come of age". In the East, Lenin, who had declared all religion to be "moonshine", slept secure in his tomb as a kind of materialist icon. His ideas were also common currency, in a less systematic form, in the West.

Even 10 years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it seemed that the new world order would be based on a faith that had little use for God, and which Ernest Gellner named "Consumer Unbeliever International".

Now things look very different, though some parts of white Western Europe are in denial. As the corpse in the mausoleum in Red Square looks ever more decrepit, attention is once again on the energies that flow from the empty tomb.

Reports from Indonesia, the Indian subcontinent and the Balkans all tell the same story about the growing saliency of religion in countries with very different religious traditions. Religion is often a component in conflict in these areas, but religious institutions have also proved able to mobilise the energies of populations beyond the reach of the old Westernised elites in the process of democratising public life.

I saw atheist certainty disintegrate over two decades in successive visits to the Museum of Atheism in St Petersburg. In the Seventies, the faith that informed the museum was crude and simple. There were displays of monkish instruments of torture, as if the Lubyanka had not made spectacular advances in this field. There were photographs of religious leaders, such as the saintly Michael Ramsey, which made them look deranged. Over the years, however, the exhibition became more sophisticated and tried to present a picture of history in which religion had its place in the evolutionary scheme but had been made redundant with the dawn of scientific materialism.

I was also present when the museum was closed down and the remains of St Seraphim of Sarov, the most beloved saint of 19th-century Russia, were discovered in the basement. The saint was resurrected from the tomb of the Museum of Atheism amid scenes of indescribable enthusiasm.

The global resurgence of religion stems in part from the attempt of post- colonial societies in Asia and Africa to liberate themselves culturally and to indigenise the process of modernisation. In other parts of the world, however, it is also connected with a renewed search for personal identity that has accompanied the decline of romantic nationalism.

Much of the 20th century has been dominated by the attempt of secular messianic states to engineer paradise on earth. Millions have been sacrificed in the wars fomented by Communism and Nazism. These were movements which, despite superficial differences, sought to deify the state and consequently both persecuted religious believers and institutions.

Whatever the complex reasons for the resurgence of religion, it is now an inescapable geopolitical fact, for good or ill. In Britain, churches are often relegated to the leisure and entertainments section of seaside resort brochures but the tendency to edit religion out of grown-up Anglo- American discourse can have serious consequences. It seems obvious that US monitoring of Iranian politics should always have included the religious dimension, but, as a survey from the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies has revealed, "the one recorded attempt to do just that within the CIA, before the revolution, was vetoed on the grounds that it would amount to mere sociology, a term used in intelligence circles to mean the time-wasting study of factors deemed politically irrelevant."

The US is changing its attitudes, and the passage last year by Congress of the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act has made religious freedom a diplomatic issue. In addition it signals a reassessment of the future significance of the role of religious convictions and institutions in international relations.

It is always hard, of course, to convince yesterday's avant garde that they have been overtaken by change. It is disappointing that in the events leading up to the Nato action against Serbia the potential of the faith communities to contribute to a peaceful settlement has hardly been explored. The Serbian Orthodox Church has not been a dull echo of the Milosevic regime. In a letter to Madeleine Albright last month, Bishop Artemije of the Orthodox Peace Mission in Kosovo predicted that "Nato intervention would strengthen the Milosevic regime" and "would delay the necessary democratisation of Serbia, a precondition for a stable peace in the Balkan region. In the aftermath of a Nato intervention... it is certain that the Milosevic regime would take decisive and drastic action against its domestic opponents."

Since much of the passion in the Kosovo conflict is generated by the manipulation of what Fr Sava, a leading peace campaigner of the Decani Monastery in western Kosovo, describes as "romantic myths" about history and religion, the potential of religious leaders to out-narrate the bigots should not be ignored. The cooperation of Muslim and Christian institutions throughout the region in seeking to assist the refugees is one of the few signs of hope.

The potential and the hope are frequently ignored by members of the Anglo- American elite, who, far from being genuinely pluralist in their attitudes, believe that the secularisation thesis is true and have built their view of the world and constructed its institutions on this dogma.

This is the context for the current debate about the relations between religion and society in Britain. Recognition is slowly dawning that the religious question cannot be edited out, and indeed for the first time since the middle of the 19th century a question about religious affiliations is to be included in the next census.

Part of the reason for this renewal of interest is that many of Britain's new citizens from ethnic minorities identify themselves by reference to religion rather than race. Muslims in particular welcome a development that recognises their religious identity. Tariq Modood, professor of sociology at Bristol University, predicts that this shift will have an impact on public life: "As the fundamental interpretative horizons of the citizenry expand through the immigration of religious peoples, so too the political identity of the regime is inevitably altered." This is clearly causing tension in a country such as France, where religion has been expelled from the public realm altogether and there are constant disputes about issues such as the wearing of headscarves by Muslim girls in state schools.

By an accident of history, England and Scotland both continue to have an Established Christian Church that guarantees a presence for religion in public life. Neither, however, is a state Church of the kind familiar from Scandinavia, where the Church also enjoys considerable financial support through the tax system. The Church of Scotland has always jealously guarded its independence, while despite the theatre of Establishment the Church of England is supported almost entirely by voluntary contributions. Despite having the care of more than a third of all the grade I listed buildings in the country and a large part of the artistic and cultural inheritance of the English people, the Church of England receives less in grants from public funds than the faithful contribute to the Treasury in VAT payments on repairs to historic buildings.

The Establishment is usually attacked by caricaturing its reality. No serious person has believed since the middle of the last century that the Church of England should have a religious monopoly. In places such as France, where a religious monopoly was at one time achieved, the effect was to ally the Church with the status quo and eventually to convert one side of the French political divide to the proposition that religion ought to be resolutely excluded from public life.

In Britain there was always a Christian opposition that brought together Roman Catholics and Protestant Nonconformists with elements in the Church of England in a succession of campaigns for social and economic change. This goes a long way to explain the continued partnership with religious bodies in areas of public life such as education, and the relative lack of controversy about religion as such in British politics. Now the religious presence in public life is being further pluralised as Muslim schools follow Jewish schools in achieving voluntary-aided status.

The Establishment of the Church of England is part of the mosaic that connects religion and society in Britain in various ways. The aim in the continuing process of change in the relation of religion and society should be to pluralise the religious presence in public life further, while resisting its privatisation. Those who believe the secularisation thesis is literally true are of course trying to privatise religion, but it would be dangerous to attempt to drive faith communities into a cultural ghetto.

Genuine pluralism allows a place for religion in public life, and this creates a context for politics that inhibits the growth of any kind of secular messianic state. It is the deified state that has been the great engine of misery in the 20th century.

At the same time, exposing the world views of religious people to public debate is some safeguard against the growth of privatised fanaticism. There is a real danger of the growth of such fanaticism if religion is exiled to some ghetto of piety where words of fire can be spoken among consenting adults. I have no fear that religion will disappear in the next millennium but I do fear religious fascism. The need to develop alliances with people from all traditions who believe in the way of dialogue has never been more urgent.

The Church of England has a particular responsibility for developing the relations between faith communities and the institutions of public life. The Church has been pressing for many years for expanding religious representation in the House of Lords and the Royal Commission gives an opportunity to ventilate the question again.

At the same time it is evident that bishops of the Church of England are widely perceived as figures capable of representing regions and bodies of opinion well beyond what may be regarded as the sectional interests of the Anglican Church. The Economist, the house magazine of Consumer Unbeliever International, last month recorded that campaigners for regional assemblies in the North-east and the West Midlands had approached the bishops of Durham and Aston to take the chair of the two newly formed lobby organisations. At the same time the Bishop of St Germans was on the front page of the Western Daily News as leading a coalition against rural poverty in Cornwall.

Representative figures are vital for social cohesion and, if the new House of Lords is to reflect a Britain of regions, then, quite apart from their contribution on educational and social topics, the bishops will have a role to play.

Occasionally attempts are made to suggest that religious leaders speak for a dwindling constituency. Of course, it is true that every mass membership organisation is having difficulty in competing with the entertainment industry. This is the context for the astonishing fact that the Anglican Churches alone in the Greater London region assemble more than 100,000 citizens every week for constructive purposes. The situation is even more marked in inner-city areas where the faith communities, churches, temples and mosques are left as the only organisations with pathways into the community as a whole.

There is, of course, great religious volatility and some disenchantment with established structures, but a visit to any high-street book shop and a glance at the Mind, Body and Spirit section suggests that when people drift away from the traditional religious structures the result is not a generation of sturdy atheists but vast numbers of people who will believe in anything. The challenge for the churches of England in these circumstances is to grow in a non-exclusive confidence in what we have received from the empty tomb and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. "From such ground springs that which forever renews the earth, though it is forever denied."

The writer is the Bishop of London