Read the article from The Independent: click HERE!
Questions/to do:
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks: Lack of faith means Britain is
‘losing the plot’
Britain is “losing the plot” because its
increasingly secular society has led to a breakdown of trust
affecting marriage, child poverty and the economy, the outgoing Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, said on
Sunday.
Lord Sacks, who became one of the
country’s highest profile religious commentators in 22 years as Chief Rabbi,
said in an interview that “individualism
is no way to build a society” and
that religious faith helped bolster trust in society as a whole.
However,
the National Secular Society dismissed the suggestion, saying secularism had
led to a fairer, more tolerant society in which people thought for themselves
and were “less obedient” to religions.
Lord
Sacks, speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme, said that the idea of the
“big society” was strongest in the UK’s different religions “because that’s
what we do, we care for one another”.
But,
asked whether Britain was more or less fractured
than it had been, he said: “I think we’re losing the plot actually. I think we
haven’t really noticed what’s happening in Britain.”
Lord
Sacks pointed to the 2008 banking crisis as one example of the problems caused
by a lack of religion. “When you begin to lose faith and society becomes very, very secularised, you first see a
breakdown of institutions, whether they are financial, economic or… marriage is
an institution,” he said.
“And
then you ask why they have broken down and you arrive at one word: trust. Trust means having faith in
somebody else to keep their faith with you, so there’s something about religious faith that undergirds trust
as a whole in society and when trust breaks down you see institutions break
down.
“Individualism
is no way to build a society... if people work for the maximum possible benefit
to themselves, then we will not have trust in industry, economics and financial
institutions, we will not see marriages last.”
He
said some non-religious parents wanted their children to attend faith schools because they recognised
this and wanted their offspring “to
grow up with a strong moral sense”.
Lord
Sacks said politicians were “part of the breakdown
of marriage in the West” over the past 50 years, but he did not blame them or
governments for the general lack of trust. “It’s the fault of what we call culture,
which is society talking to itself,” he said.
“The
truth is that the breakdown of marriage has meant the creation of an entirely
new phenomenon of child poverty affecting three million children in Britain
today that we thought had been eliminated. So children get to be the victims.”
The
Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev Nick Baines, agreed with Lord Sacks. “Having
moved from a generation that put the common
good first, we have now created a culture which puts ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’
first,” he said. “This inevitably has consequences for society and Lord Sacks
is right to reiterate what Christian leaders have been saying for years.”
Keith
Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said
Lord Sacks’ idea that secularisation had led to a decline in trust was
“not surprising” but “unfortunate”.
“I
think a secular society is a fairer society, where everybody is treated
equally, regardless of their beliefs or non-belief,” he said. “I don’t think
that the move away from religion is anything to do with trust in society at
all. Society, as it has become more educated, has become less blindly obedient,
particularly to religion.”
Questions/to do:
- Describe and comment the above photos of the East End of London (how has the photographer depicted the area in his photo essay)?
- Explain the terms in bold in the article above by Ian Johnston.
- Summarise the article from The Independent (in three short sentences at most).
- What do you think of Lord Sacks' analysis of the causes of the UK's present state (is loss of faith/lack of trust the only cause of the apparent decline of British society)?
- From your point of view is a secular society better than a society in which religion plays an important role?
- Do you think French society is also "losing the plot" (why/not)?
- Are YOU more for individualism or more for a strong Welfare State?
2 comments:
Maximilien GIDON from Massillon, in answer to question 6, writes:
I think Saint Etienne, in France, is also losing the plot…
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Saint Etienne was prosperous thanks to the armament industry, the bicycle manufacturers, and coal mining. In the late 20th century, the mines closed down and industry was offshored. The town became very poor and a lot of people left town to try and find a better life. The unemployment rate has been very high for a long time…
What does this city look like today? We can feel the poverty; the buildings and the streets are grey and there are no trees or flowers. There are cracks in the walls, holes in the roads. Everywhere is dirty, and there is ugly graffiti everywhere; some buildings are crumbling but nobody seems to care… However, there are a few areas in the town where there are luxury cars and houses.
I think more and more towns around the world are, like Saint Etienne, also losing the plot. Think of Detroit in America which has gone bankrupt. But in all these cities we can see the division between people who are living in poverty and the people who are living in opulence. This contrast shows the consequences of the rise in individualism in our society.
Lucie Sareti from Massillon writes:
Since the 2008 crisis, France has become weaker and French people are more and more introverted. French society, based on the principles of liberty, equality and brotherhood, has forgotten those values; the people have become particularly individualistic.
Nowadays, people act in a selfish way, only preoccupied by business and money, and don't care about the needy. We can observe a real lack of solidarity, which can't help to resolve the problem of the crisis.
But there are also other things which are very bad for our image: people are more and more intolerant. France was known to be a welcoming country, but now the foreigners are thrown out. There is soaring islamophobia and xenophobia.
Moreover, the disparities between the wealthy and poor people are aggravated by unemployment, the rate of which continues to increase.
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