MANAGING COMPLEX IDENTITIES: THE MODERN EUROPEAN
I’ll be voting to stay in. I say that to get it out of the way. But I’ve no intention
of using this platform to make the case for staying – although some may
read what I say through that lens.
I don’t think that faith – what some have called ‘bothering God’ – will yield a
single and clear-cut answer. But I do have some sympathy with Bishop Paul
Bayes’ straightforward contention that the key Christian question is not
“what’s best for us and our money?” but “which decision will better serve the
poor?” That sounds like a throwback to the late Bishop David Shepherd’s
view that the gospel has a ‘bias to the poor’. My own view is that the most
obvious faith issue is the extent to which either side in the Referendum
debate is using a ‘project fear’. The negativity of fear instinctively leads to a
small-mindedness which is a poor basis from which to address an important
decision.
I was born in Dublin, grew up in Northern Ireland and was in ministry there
during much of the Troubles. Those years of conflict have left me with a
deep sympathy for the idea that the EU is and remains the foundation of
post-war peace-making in Europe. The EU institutions are as much a
memorial to the suffering and sacrifice of two world wars as the war graves
and the preservation of Auschwitz. That retrospective view is attractive. But
it seems to me that the European ideal needs to continue to adapt if it is to
command the respect of each new generation. The two great challenges to
the European ideal in recent years have been the financial crisis which
began in 2008 and the current refugee and migrant crisis. In neither case, it
seems to me, has Europe been able to find the kind of response which its
founding ideals demand.
At the heart of the current referendum campaign is the question of attitudes
in the UK to the ideal of ‘ever closer union’. The agreement negotiated by
the Prime Minister says that the UK will no longer be part of that journey. Yet
there is a debate going on about the purity of the nation state. I find that my
experience in Ireland has left me cautious about the nationalism which goes
with the nation state. I remember discussion about the search for a ‘postnationalist Ireland’. We learned the painful lesson that there are dangers in
claiming or assuming purity of identity. We gradually began to define
ourselves in dual-identity terms – of which Ulster-Scots is probably the most
common. My own choice is Irish-British. I believe that that honours at least
some of the mixtures in my background, although it failed to honour the
grandmother who I thought was English but turned out to be German!
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