The Wake-Up Message to the Head-in-the-Sand Culture-History Warriors…the world has changed and you are left at its margins, raging with no clear intelligence. You have become marginalised in understanding the new world, as you are marginalised in your poverty, both concrete and abstract. That poverty comes from power-brokers who have played you in the ‘divide and rule’ political rhetoric, encouraging you to be warriors.
On Friday 25th August 2023, Chine McDonald, Theos Director, will also be in conversation with Andrew Copson, CEO of Humanists UK, about the future of religion, and the event takes place at the 50th anniversary Greenbelt Festival, Boughton House, near Kettering, North Northamptonshire, United Kingdom.
In this event, we see the breakdown of the hard categorisation of ‘religion’ and ‘secularity’, which has been extraordinary, as it has been broken down in the public square and academic discourse in the last two decades of the new century. Indeed, it builds from a few centuries of philosophical discourses where the categorisation of ‘religion’ and ‘secularity’, and spirituality, has never been an excuse for a culture-history war. Where we have arrived in our situated time and place is peaceful compatibilism, one, which is not homogeneous, but is the civil discourse which acknowledge and respect disagreements. Conflict is pacified to a state of affairs, where all can celebrate what is shared in common, and difference is allow the peaceful space. Evil is that which creates war (unnecessary in any intelligence). The common good is that which removes the conflict and barriers to peace, and that peace is just.
Chine McDonald, Theos Director, background has mainly consisted of journalism, media and fundraising within the faith sector, but with a strong focus on the particular role that theology plays in public life. McDonald was Head of Community Fundraising and Public Engagement at Christian Aid, until she joined the Theos team in January 2022; Theos’ mission is “stimulates the debate about the place of religion in society, challenging and changing ideas through research, commentary and event.”
Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, served for many years as a director and trustee of the Religious Education Council, the Values Education Council, and the National Council for Faiths and Beliefs in Further Education, and the European Humanist Federation. and has advised on humanism for a range of public bodies such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority, the Department for Education, the BBC, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office, and the Office for National Statistics. He was appointed Chief Executive of Humanists UK in 2009, having previously been its Director of Education and Public Affairs. He is also the current President of Humanists International, a position he’s held since 2015. Humanists UK’s mission is “bringing non-religious people together to develop their own views and an understanding of the world around them.”
The event sets a series of important questions for our compatible state of affairs, both in religion and in secularity: how on earth does faith still find itself somehow at the heart of the ways we live together? And, after witnessing the most acutely strange form of established religiosity in the King’s Coronation this year, how realistic is it that religion should continue to play an established and institutional role in our life together?
The call here is for Culture-History Warriors to lay down their metaphoric and literal arms. Finding Peace from the Culture-History War: A Historiographical Message for the Times.
CHINE MCDONALD
https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/01/06/new-director-blog
Featured Image: 2023 50th anniversary Greenbelt Festival video. With the book cover of Charles Strong’s Australian Church: Christian Social Activism, 1885-1917 (2021).
Neville Buch