Faith in the EU - Even after Brexit?
As a nation, Britain was extremely badly prepared for the referendum on EU membership. There is a longstanding legacy of British neglect of the EU, indeed of all things ‘European’, not least among those who shape public debate in politics and the media.
Unlike many Europeans, few UK citizens master European languages or learn about European history, culture or politics. Even after 40 years of EU membership the UK still remains far more fascinated by American politics than European politics (we might, perhaps, be excused for being so just at the moment, although not for the best of reasons).
Turnout at elections to the European Parliament have been almost as low as at local elections – well below 40%. Little of the vast experience of EU affairs many British politicians have accumulated over decades gets much airing at home. UK politicians never return from EU meetings praising its achievements or informing citizens of its key debates. Notoriously, the new foreign secretary Boris Johnson made his journalistic career in Brussels by sending a constant stream of negative, often misleading and in some cases simply false, messages about the EU, thereby helping to create the very climate of ignorance and suspicion that he then sought to exploit in the campaign.
The result of our longstanding aversion to taking ‘Europe’ seriously is that we faced the most momentous constitutional debate Britain has known for decades utterly ill-equipped to choose wisely. What we needed was something like a royal commission meeting over several years, engaging in extensive consultation and analysis, and then a campaign of intensive citizen education and participation. What we got was an abrupt, narrow-minded and deeply dispiriting contest over the net individual economic benefit of staying or leaving. Remain’s ‘project fear’ could not compete with the simplistic, visceral appeals to ‘taking back control’, although the Leave side failed to spell out what they would do with their newly regained control and how it would shore up a British identity which they also couldn’t define. But on the day, ‘identity trumped economics’.
“The result of our longstanding aversion to taking ‘Europe’ seriously is that we faced the most momentous constitutional debate Britain has known for decades utterly ill-equipped to choose wisely.
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Christian political theologians have been part of this neglect – even though there were valiant last minute efforts by some Christians to remedy the gaping knowledge deficit, such as Reimagining Europe.(1) There isn’t today a single available academic monograph on the EU by a British political theologian – even 60 years after it was created.(2)
But while the future course of events remains very uncertain, we must reckon with the results of a clear democratic vote for Brexit and prepare for an EU without the UK. The questions of whether we can retain faith in ‘the European project’, and what Christianity’s contribution to that project might be, will, however, remain with us even if Brexit happens.
The EU will continue to matter enormously to the UK. We will continue to relate to the EU as our largest neighbouring political institution in multiple ways, and we’ll need to keep clarifying our national attitude to it. This won’t only be a matter for government. Non-government institutions such as churches, universities, NGOs or businesses will need to define how these entities relate to the EU or to the European states that will continue to be shaped by the EU. We may be exiting the political institution called the EU but we will not be leaving ‘Europe’ or European civil society or the European economy. Indeed our relations to ‘Europe’ – at both governmental and nongovernmental levels – will become even more important after Brexit because there will be so much that we can no longer take for granted, so much that will need to be rethought. Perhaps, after all, some good may come of that.
But the EU should continue to matter to us also as Christians and not only as citizens; or, rather, it should matter to us as Christian citizens. We’ll need to define what is our faith perspective on the EU, just as we need to continually define our perspective on our own nation-state and its component parts and to all other international institutions with which we necessarily interact in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world – a world in which, like it or not, we are all global citizens.
Yet most British people, including most Christians, have no idea that most of the key founders of what became the EU were devout Christians who saw the initiative as flowing directly from their faith and, specifically, their rich and deep Christian Democratic commitments to peace, solidarity, subsidiarity, justice and liberty.(3) Most Britons, including most Christians, went to vote on 23 June knowing nothing of this remarkable, transformative political movement or its unique role in the founding and evolution of the EU. But the achievement of these post-war Christian statesmen in creating a historically unique transnational political structure that made lasting European peace, and the prospect of Europe-wide solidarity and justice, possible, was remarkable. Some might think it is now too late to bother to acquaint ourselves with this unique history. On the contrary, as the EU, with or without the UK, faces its greatest threats ever, it becomes even more pressing to do so, especially for Christians with a heart for Europe.
The Christian founders of the EU were far from saints but they brought an inspiring vision of transnational cooperation to their work. We still have much to learn from this vision even as we must critique and reconstruct it for our very different times. Yet on both sides the referendum campaign was almost entirely couched in the insular language of the ‘British national interest’ – as if we knew exactly what we were talking about when we use that phrase and as if it were a self-justifying objective – a kind of argument-clincher. As if British citizens could not be brought to care about the wider interests of Europe at a time of multiple and serious crises, or indeed the interests of those of the wider world in which the EU is major global player and in which the UK could exercise significant leadership if it finally resolved its relationship with the EU.
But almost all political leaders passed by opportunities to ask the searching question that Archbishop Justin Welby admirably did pose in an important interview that was only fleetingly reported: ‘how can Britain best continue to offer its distinctive services to Europe and the wider world?’(4) That is: how can we stand in solidarity with our European neighbours rather than, repeating the UK’s familiar ‘transactional’ mentality, only asking what we can get out of the relationship? (5) That challenging and radical question will remain before us as we negotiate a new and likely difficult relationship with the EU in the unsettling months and years ahead. As we define our answers to that question, we will even more need to join together – after 23 June, with even greater humility – with other Christians across Europe who have been reflecting on the imperatives of European solidarity for many decades.(6) We will most certainly need their help, and they may even need ours.
Jonathan Chaplin
Director, Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics, Cambridge (www.klice.co.uk).
His most recent book, co-edited with Gary Wilton, is God and the EU: Faith in the European Project (Routledge 2016)
This article is based on a paper delivered by Jonathan Chaplin at the Redcliffe College Summer School on 13th July 2016. Those who would like to watch that presentation can do so via the following video link: http://tinyurl.com/jchaplin.
1 See http://www.reimaginingeurope.co.uk/the-eu-and-the-culpable-silence-of-english-speaking-political-theology/. See generally the Reimagining Europe blog hosted by the Church of England and Church of Scotland: http://www.reimaginingeurope.co.uk/ See also the EU referendum, page of the KLICE website: http://klice.co.uk/index.php/eu-referendum-2016
2 But see Jonathan Chaplin and Gary Wilton, eds, God and the EU: Faith in the European Project (London: Routledge, 2016)
3 See Ben Ryan, A Soul for Europe (London: Theos, 2016).
5 See Guy Milton, ‘The outcome of the EU referendum viewed from Brussels’, KLICE Comment July/August 2016, http://klice.co.uk/index.php/news/15/125/KLICE-Comment-July-August-2016
6 See, e.g.: ‘What future for Europe? Reaffirming the European project as building a community of values’. An open letter of CEC to churches and partner organisations in Europe and an invitation to dialogue and consultation (Council of European Churches, 8-10 June, Belgium); and K. Beidenkopf, B. Geremek and K. Michalski, The Spiritual and Cultural Dimension of Europe: Concluding Remarks (Vienna: Institute for Human Sciences/Brussels: European Commission, 2004).