Recently I heard of a Home Office argument when trying to deport an Iranian Christian, that despite the clearly real danger of them being persecuted for their faith, (maybe even being killed) that they could just practice their religion "in private".
Now that is clearly a load of tosh! Faith is not a private thing (however coy we may sometimes be about it).
So I was interested to hear the episode of "Beyond Belief" on Radio 4 yesterday, driving home from Glasgow. (31st Dec 2007) The subject was religion in the workplace - and the key question was - "Can we keep religion out of the workplace?"
The speaker that kept making me shout back at the radio was Douglas Murray A Neo-Con apologist from the "Centre for social cohesion" (I was in the car on my own!)
Murray said "We have to divorce the private spiritual lives of employees and the situation they are in in the workplace" He goes on to point out that (Faith) "Affects your personal life - your spiritual life- it is not something you take to the workplace - it is totally irrelevant."
The totally irrelevant bit really got my goat! Douglas seemed to be appealing to some "higher" form of morality (of his own invention) to rule in the workplace - denying the relevance of any scripture (Christian, Jewish or Islamic)
A refusal to handle alcohol by Muslims in Sainsburys was denounced by Murray as hypocritical, yet he seems comfortable with one set of values at work and another elsewhere.
At the end of the program, Lord Brian Griffiths brough some sanity when he said that is was "Impossible to privatise religion".
Trick is to "publicise" it without being too cocky.. (Glen has a good post on this)
