What's behind the Coalition's Bible talk?

In recent months, we've seen a new confidence in talking about religion from the Coalition. In contrast with the last government's reticence on the subject, we’ve had David Cameron extolling the virtues of the King James Version, and Michael Gove proposing to send a Bible to every school. Cameron went so far as to distinguish himself from Labour explicitly: "People often say politicians shouldn’t 'do God.'" In fact, he said, politicians should recognise "both what our faith communities bring to our country... and also how incredibly important faith is to many people in Britain."

Have we then moved from a government unprepared to engage with matters of faith, to a new dawn of understanding about the role of religion in public life?

Yes and no. New research, being presented at the first of a series of debates organised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) "Religion and Society Programme," former MP Charles Clarke and Theos, suggests the picture is more complex.

The research, carried out by Dr Therese O’Toole, reassessed the key project from the Coalition in this area: "Near Neighbours." The project reveals a subtle change in approach to faith groups: it releases £5m of funding to four areas in England, with the aim of promoting interactions across faith and non-faith groups. Launched last year, it offers small grants of between £250 and £5,000 to local groups for projects that bring people of different faiths together.

It’s a “Big Society” initiative, which hopes to enable local communities and faith groups in particular, to create their own local solutions to social problems. But what is particularly novel is that the programme is administered by the Church of England, and applicants require the counter-signature of vicars from the parishes in which the projects would take place.

This coalition initiative places the Church of England in a new role, as broker and arbiter of local interfaith activity—which raises a series of questions. Does the Church of England have the capacity for the job? Does Anglicanism still have the central place in the religious landscape of the UK as it once did? And perhaps most pressingly, will religious minorities be able to access the funding if they don’t understand or connect with the parish structure of the Church of England? Early signs are that almost all East London funding so far has been channelled to Christian organisations.

Those positive about Near Neighbours argue that the richness of the Church of England’s infrastructure, as well as its history of interfaith work, are valuable resources which will make this programme work. Some non-Christians share this positive view. As one Muslim told the researchers, Near Neighbours might "achieve the results that the Prevent agenda wanted to achieve," at the same time as providing minorities protection under the wing of the Church of England. Others point out that Near Neighbours’s emphasis on funding interfaith activities is a necessary corrective to the mono-faith, Muslim-focused basis of Prevent funding.

Some members of the Coalition government—Eric Pickles and Baroness Warsi as well as Cameron and Gove—feel free to speak confidently about the positive role of religion in society, with a particular emphasis on the UK’s historical Christianity. But it remains to be seen whether the Church of England really provide a core, but not co-opted, public role, whilst not excluding those from minority faiths. Near Neighbours provides one test of how the coalition will navigate our diverse, multi-faith landscape. It’s too soon to say if the new approach will prove more successful than the old.

The clearest trend from the research is that all parties are getting better at dealing with faith, acknowledging it's growing centrality to a range of policy areas. Perhaps, then, in the next 10 years, the question will be not if a government "does" God, but how?

The criticism which can be levelled at all the parties in their dealings with faith groups is their tendency to instrumentalise them. The dominant theme here is of the social utility of religion: ask not what this government can do for you, but what you can do for your government! What matters is that religious people exhibit high levels of social capital, but keep their wider principles, values and beliefs as a matter of private concern. This gives governments a framework for engagement, but can often lead to faith groups feeling less like partners and more like vehicles for delivering political aims. It also fundamentally misunderstands the nature of religious belief, as Nick Spencer argued in the Theos report "Neither Private, nor Privileged." As all parties face up to the need to "do God," the biggest risk for faith groups is that the public message doesn't match the reality of policy on the ground.

Elizabeth Hunter is director of Theos, the religion and society think tank. Together with the Religion and Society Programme and Charles Clarke, they are running the Westminster Faith Debates, presenting the best research about the place of religion in public life. For details and to apply, visit the website: http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/faith_debates