Trevor Phillips chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on Christian and Muslim integration
After reading headlines such as this one:
Christians are more militant than Muslims, says Government’s equalities boss
I went to all the effort of popping out and spending two quid on a Sunday Telegraph, to read for myself this….
…..wide-ranging intervention into the debate over the role of religion in modern Britain.
Well, I needn’t of bothered. This rather short interview appears online, in its entirety, free of charge, here.
It’s predictable stuff in the main.
Phillips begins with acknowledging that people of faith “feel” under siege because of “fashionable” anti-religious views. This is a nod to clever and vocal atheists, who are making us believers feel silly and inadequate. Naughty atheists!
Phillips assures us that the EHRC is certainly not part of this clever “mocking and knocking” brigade. Perhaps if the EHRC didn’t give the impression that they equate Christian moral views with an infection, I might be more inclined to believe him on this score.
Phillips goes on to assert that the EHRC will indeed support believers who suffer discrimination, but concedes there is a “perception” that it has not done so in the past. Interestingly, he doesn’t cite any examples of the EHRC supporting believers, and I can’t think of any, does anybody have an example, that would bring down this erroneous “perception”?
Phillips makes the statement that charities performing a public service have to toe the line:
“Churches, Mosques, Temples, religious organisations of all kinds have to some extent protection under the law but they also have to obey the law including anti-discrimination law because they are charities, because they offer a public service.
He cites Catholic Care, the Catholic adoption agency that refused to provide adoption services to gay couples, as a prime example of this.
I will say this. I am of the firm belief that if Christian charities accept denari from Caesar, then they should be bound by the rules of Caesar, and not complain when these rules impinge on their conscience.
Interestingly, Phillips then goes on to say that equality laws should not encroach on the ways religious institutions are run. He says:
It seems right that the reach of anti-discriminatory law should stop at the door of the church of mosque.
[....]
I’m not keen on the idea of a Church run by the state. I don’t think the law should run to telling churches how they should conduct their own affairs.
I agree.
Phillips spends a little time ruminating on the recent high profile Christian legal cases that seem to revolve around the issue of homosexuality. He says this is fueled by evangelical activists who seek political influence. He doesn’t give any evidence for this, so presumably this is just his subjective perception. In fact, Phillips notes that it’s Muslims who experience proper discrimination, and evangelicals are prone to feeling “slighted”.
Phillips says that the types of persecution touted by these activists, doesn’t really exist in the UK, and they just a want a fight, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is: “from Satan”.
Strangely, given all the above, the Telegraph notes Phillips comments on Anglican and Catholic growth from those with African and Caribbean backgrounds, as the most likely to cause controversy.
This is, apparently, due to his comments on their “old time” religious views which put them at odds with mainstream Britain.
I suppose Phillips can get away with this sort of comment as he himself is a black man from, “that kind of community”.
Anyway, it’s no big shocker that immigration is boosting Christianity in this nation. But is it not fair to say that we’ve had immigration from those with African and Caribbean backgrounds, holding to “old time” religious beliefs, for generations now? In fact, would it not be fair to say that these same immigrants actually form part of our British mainstream?
Or is it more the case nowadays, that “British mainstream” is whatever the heck some official commission deems it to be?
Apparently, according to Phillips, some of the attitudes towards homosexuality from these “old time” religionist Afro-Caribbeans are “nasty”, and in some cases, “homicidal”.
Personally, I wouldn’t even equate “homicidal” with Christian. Bear in mind that the definition of “homicidal” is “murderous”. That’s a pretty strong and evocative choice of word from Phillips.
Phillips goes on to say that there’s a lot of “noise” emanating from the church about persecution, but this is mainly down to a “revival” caused by believers in this “old time” religion, which in Phillip’s view is:
….incompatible with a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society.
Phillips concludes with letting us know that Muslims are doing their “damnedest” to integrate and mould a new Islam compatible with their mainstream host. Integration is all about compromise and we’re told that Muslims are:
…trying to find ways of being good Muslims in a way that is consistent with the society they are living in.
There is certainly no hate-filled, homophobic, anti-British, Muslim preachers in this country. Oh no sir.
So there you go.
Do you agree with Phillips?
June 19th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
So … to avoid appearing as though he has an anti-Islamic bias, he has to appear not only slightly anti-Christian but racist as well? Good thing Trevor’s not in the American executive branch; the press here would have eaten him for breakfast.
June 19th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
Trevor Phillips from the multicultural to the post-racial society, a gastromancer of the Government’s new prevent policy.
Christians and the free thinking are now branded the enemies within and “incompatible” with British post-racial society.
In their delusional post-racial society the muscular liberals can now flex their muscles and the supremacism of islam can now rise from the cover of multiculturalism.
If the truth be told the gates that were open are now closing against the racism that was never in the keepers of the gates possession.
June 19th, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Perhaps someone should point him in the direction of Tower Hamlets, just for starters, and leave him there on his own outside a mosque on a Friday evening, lol.
June 20th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
I did the same, and went and bought a copy.
Half of it was crocodile tears. The rest was a rant against the Christians, and a rather sinister one once you decode it. I’ll post on that this evening.
But I think it means that, after a pause to see what the change of government meant, that the war on the Christians will now resume. The agents provocateurs are doubtless even now choosing their targets.
I’m sure he was sniggering to himself when he talked about Christians being OK so long as they didn’t venture out beyond the churches. The article above it, on p.2, revealed that the establishment stooges in the CofE were already at work to deal with that — they were going to ordain gay bishops.
June 20th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
It’s kinda funny – in that ironic way – to observe the BHA demanding an apology from Phillips:
http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/833