Introduction

Academics, policy makers and practitioners are grappling with the emphatic return of faith to the public table, and seeking to make sense of its implications. Many have observed a surprising ‘political revitalization of religion at the heart of Western society’ (Habermas, 2007, p 2) and some have expressed concern about the renewed ‘turn to faith’. This book is an attempt to unpack at least some of the ‘grappling’, and to surface the many questions, challenges and controversies it raises.

Such a project must occur at several levels, encompassing a wide range of debates. The place of faith in the public realm has been strongly contested over a long period, involving conflicts that resonate across the spectra of public feeling and thought. Some of these are embodied in the public imagination in events or periods such as the Crusades, the Reformation and the Inquisition, which remain alive for many in a somewhat distant, generalised way as examples of atrocities carried out in the name of religion. Others have far more immediate resonance because of their political and social implications for our own lives, or the lives of those we know. Northern Ireland, Kashmir, Israel–Palestine and Iraq are obvious examples. The so-called ‘war on terror’ (prompted, indeed, by real acts of religiously inspired terrorism) is another conflict that manages to encompass us all, constructing the beginning of a new ‘global history’ in terms of a struggle between Islamic fundamentalism and Western democracy. Like politics, faith is not generally considered a suitable subject for dinner-party conversation. That faith in the public realm is about both religion and politics makes this highly charged territory.

Debates arise also in part because the idea of the public realm is itself contested in Britain, as elsewhere. The UK's particular constitutional arrangements make for especial complexity. In one sense, faith has a very high public profile, with the Monarch as both Head of State and Head of the established Church. Church of England bishops sit in the upper House of Parliament as ‘Lords Spiritual’, a role rooted more in the historical fact of the landed wealth of bishops in the Middle Ages rather than in the direct privileging of one faith group over any other, although it is often argued that the effects are the same.