Good morning.
Two weeks ago at this very time, just four miles from this studio, three young schoolgirls were on their way to Bethnal Green Academy. This morning they are
thought to be en route to Syria.
Our sympathy and prayers must go out to the family and friends of these three young teenagers. The schoolgirls, for whatever misguided reason, have left
families who have nurtured them, educated them and protected them from birth, to heed a call from a stranger to join a radical group. Estimates suggest over
500 British citizens are already in the ranks of IS and society is inevitably asking questions about what all this means.
But it is not the first time that radical groups have lured away impressionable youth. One just has to think of some of the radical cults (many of them
inspired by mutations of religion), which sprung up in the 60s and 70s across the world.
Commentators are naturally focusing now on what more might have been done to prevent the girls from leaving. But perhaps it is unrealistic to expect
communities, educators, airlines and the police to deal with a symptom, when society has to yet to find a way to deal with the cause.
For some, the cause is a lack of cohesion in British society. The sense of ‘we’ has become diluted and vague. The remedy they suggest is finding an agreed
set of ‘British Values’. But I believe that talk of British values risks confusing laws and values, and the intricate link between the two. States should
be inspired by values, but not be the primary source of them.
While it is true to speak of laws in the context of a state, for me as a Christian, values are much broader, richer, deeper and older than a state or
national narrative. From the sermons and letters of Saints Peter and Paul writing to the early Christians, we have advice on how to live in a pluralist
world. All just societies are founded on some sort of religious or ethical basis – values don’t stem from a neutral foundation.
And yet in the aftermath of World War II, the Human Rights Commission did come up with a set of binding standards which embraced a global diversity of
perspectives, but not by creating new neutral values, but by building on existing traditions. The various secular, pluralist and religious traditions in the
Commission had very different reasons for why the UN Declaration of Human Rights was necessary and valid, but they were unanimous in how it would be taken
forward.
Perhaps in Britain we need to get consensus once more on the How rather than struggle with the Why. Perhaps each generation has to explore and explain afresh
how its values guide the society, while all the time recognising the distinct traditions which feed into those values.