That seems to be the idea behind forming a council of key policy advisors, whose qualifications seem to be the fervency of their obeisance to an invisible man in the sky.
The move has been criticised by secularists who warned that it represented a worrying development.
However, Mr Denham argued that Christians and Muslims can contribute significant insights on key issues, such as the economy, parenting and tackling climate change.
Oh, really? How? I suppose tithing and refusing to allow money to be lent at interest are a kind of economic strategy…just not a very productive one. And I don’t quite see the point of consulting with a gang of grisly old virgins on parenting, or asking some bearded imam whose chief talent is the memorization of the Koran about what to do about carbon emissions. I wish Mr Denham had gone on with some specifics that he hopes superstition can address.
He does have a few general platitudes.
“Faith is a strong and powerful source of honesty, solidarity, generosity – the very values which are essential to politics, to our economy and our society.”
Ah, I see. I had no idea how different the government of the UK was from the government of the US. Here, honesty and generosity aren’t exactly common currency in government, or at least are in conflict. I suppose one could argue that Washington has been very generous to defense contractors, but they aren’t very forthright about it. I suppose there are principles of solidarity at work, with our most religious party, the Republicans, being monolithic in their opposition to equality, social support, and science, and Democrats straining to achieve some kind of unity — maybe they’d benefit from religious rigidity, too. I suppose if the UK government did model their political system after the Muslims and Christians, they could end up with a nice, pretty political system like ours, with Republicans and Democrats.
Maybe Denham should look more closely at our system. For instance, maybe he could pop over for the Bold Fresh Tour, and see how a couple of paragons of the idea of using religious principles in government represent honesty, solidarity, and generosity.
