The other week I was at a combined service at Preston seated next to a visiting clergyman, and during the singing of ‘Ye Saints Who Toil Below,’ our attention was drawn to a large spider slowly descending on a single strand of silk from the high ceiling above. Afterwards, my friend wondered whether this was the same spider that had descended over the altar whilst he was reading the communion prayers a few weeks earlier.
This reminded me, that last year an Episcopal sermon at Dymock had totally bypassed me because I was absorbed in an epic battle between a woodlouse and a spider, and that in retrospect I had felt somewhat ashamed that the wisdom of the Bishop was lost to me. However, this got me wondering as to why nowadays the general public rarely gets the chance to hear anything from the religious leaders of our country.
Years ago, the man in the street used to listen carefully when the BBC told us what the Archbishop of Canterbury had said, but nowadays any religious leader is lucky to make even the second page of the broadsheets and, so long as he keeps his trousers on, is unlikely ever to appear in the red-tops. There may be many reasons for this lack of interest and probably not a simple explanation.
However, a possible reason came to mind when I was asked recently by the Co-op Bank to choose what ethical issue was the most important to me. This bank has busied itself in recent years identifying issues it considers as ethical, and I was told that my decision would influence the bank’s policies and objectives. The choice was between. Animal Welfare, Climate Change, the Arms Trade and Human Rights. This selection puzzled me until I realised that the Bank had confused ethical issues with moral choices.
I was taught that Ethics is an intellectual framework or model, within which human beings may develop moral behaviour and in this case, the ethical framework used by my mind is different from that implied by the Co-op’s survey. Their options hint at a particular moral behaviour and so I could not prioritise them. What I found interesting however, was that a commercial organisation felt confident about debating ‘ethical’ issues, and more particularly so as it ignored questions about possible marketing benefits for itself.
I suppose that the Co-op now employs people who have time to sit and think about things that excite them, and so come up with ideas that used to be the preserve of their clerical counterparts. What is certain however, is that ethics are of interest to many people in the commercial world, and only a few months ago I attended meetings discussing a World Standard for Corporate Social Responsibility. (CSR)
I must confess myself somewhat sceptical however, when government departments and big business busy themselves with setting ethical frameworks. This is because experience has taught me that the higher the principle pursued by powerful public figures, the lower they will stoop to ensure its implementation. It is as though there is something about the human mind that makes it easy to justify bad or immoral behaviour when it is pursuing some high ethical principle.
I cannot think much good will come of banks setting ethical frameworks, and sooner or later there will be a price to pay. I would rather leave it to those whose sole concern is for the welfare of the whole individual (mind, body & spirit), rather than to a government committee or commercial business.
At least, our ecclesiastical Preston spider was getting its lessons in ethics from a Bishop and not a Bank.
The above article was written prior to Archbishop Rowan Williams remarks about, what he saw as elements of Islamic Sharia Law which might be acceptable to some people in Britain. The furore that followed his speech demonstrated that some things go to the heart of what most of us believe are British values and which, we fear are being lost or overwhelmed.
I hope that those who were aroused by the Archbishop’s remarks might consider how those traditional British values came about, and what might have to be done to ensure that they are carried over to the next generation.
View from the Pew 