Tony Blair talks about talking about God. In the course of the article on Blair, the writers say:
However, Mr Blair, who is now a Middle East peace envoy, has been attacked by commentators who say that religion should be separated from politics and by those who feel that many of his decisions betrayed the Christian community.
In other words, some of Mr. Blair's critics think that a politician should somehow separate his policy decisions, which are often moral - approaches to poverty, disaster relief, war, environmental protection, stem cell research, for example - from his deepest convictions about what grounds right and wrong. This would be humorous were the plea to separate the two not so pervasive and those who demand it not so strident.
As it is it's simply fatuous. One can no more separate one's beliefs from the grounds for those beliefs than one can separate one side of a coin from the other.
What those who advocate such a purge of religious values from the public square would do is reduce every public debate to a struggle for power to determine whose tastes, feelings and biases will prevail.
If one person says we should help the poor and another says we shouldn't, how do we decide who is right if we're not permitted to bring our deepest beliefs to bear upon the matter? Indeed, the only person who can answer the question is the religious man. The secularist can give no answer to the question why we should help the poor other than to say that it just seems right to him to do so.
It's not a very compelling reason, but that's really the best the secular man can do, poor chap.
RLC
