David Miliband: Future Atheist Prime Minister?

It's been pointed out more than once and by many people that an atheist has no chance of being elected President of the United States any time soon. As a demonstration of just how different America is from Europe, there is a very realistic chance than an atheist could become Britain's next Prime Minister: David Miliband. What would be unthinkable in America seems to be treated as unimportant by most in Britain. It doesn't appear as though many think that being an atheist or a theist is an important question when it comes to politics — and that's as it should be.

At least, that's as it should be in an ideal world, but our world is far from ideal. Because of the extent to which religious privilege continues to pervade politics and culture, there are ways in which an atheist politician can differ substantively from a theist politician — just as female politicians can differ from males and black politicians can differ from whites. The parallel here is that minorities are less likely to accede to, much less expand, traditional privileges enjoyed by majorities. Maybe that's one reason why it's so hard for them to get elected: they can't be trusted to uphold the status quo.

AC Grayling describes the advantages he sees to having an atheist as a prime minister:

Atheist leaders are not going to think they are getting messages from Beyond telling them to go to war. They will not cloak themselves in supernaturalistic justifications, as Blair came perilously close to doing when interviewed about the decision to invade Iraq.

Atheist leaders will be sceptical about the claims of religious groups to be more important than other civil society organisations in doing good, getting public funds, meriting special privileges and exemptions from laws, and having seats in the legislature and legal protection from criticism, satire and challenge.

Atheist leaders are going to be more sceptical about inculcating sectarian beliefs into small children ghettoised into publicly funded faith-based schools, risking social divisiveness and possible future conflict. They will be readier to learn Northern Ireland's bleak lesson in this regard.

Atheist leaders will, by definition, be neutral between the different religious pressure groups in society, and will have no temptation not to be even-handed because of an allegiance to the outlook of just one of those groups.

Atheist leaders are more likely to take a literally down-to-earth view of the needs, interests and circumstances of people in the here and now, and will not be influenced by the belief that present sufferings and inequalities will be compensated in some posthumous dispensation. This is not a trivial point: for most of history those lower down the social ladder have been promised a perch at the top when dead, and kept quiet thereby. The claim that in an imperfect world one's hopes are better fixed on the afterlife than on hopes of earthly paradises is official church doctrine.

Atheist leaders will not be tempted to think they are the messenger of any good news from above, or the agent of any higher purpose on earth. Or at very least, they will not think this literally.

Source: Guardian

Much of what Grayling writes is correct: atheists aren't going to think that that any gods are talking to them, telling them which countries to invade or which policies to adopt. Atheists also aren't like to start out with the assumption that there is something "special" about religious organizations generally which makes them necessarily more important or more deserving of special privileges than comparable secular organizations.

I think that Grayling goes a little too far, though, because atheists aren't necessarily or automatically going to take a "down-to-earth view of the needs, interests and circumstances of people in the here and now." Atheists may be more likely to put the needs and interests of human beings before the needs or interests of any gods — we don't believe in any gods, after all — but this doesn't mean that atheists won't put the alleged needs of some ideology or ideological goal ahead of the immediate and very real needs of real human beings. It's happened before and it could happen again.

An atheist may also not necessarily be completely neutral between religions. In theory they should be, but an atheist who was raised religious may continue to harbor warmer feelings for that religion than for others. Even an atheist who was raised without religion at home but within a pervasively religious society may harbor more unconsciously positive feelings towards that society’s dominant religion than towards minority groups. Hopefully, an atheist who is not a member of any of those groups will have an easier time recognizing such bias and getting past it, but we shouldn't assume that the bias can't exist.

Being an atheist doesn't make a person necessarily more rational or virtuous. While there may be a couple of reasons to think that an atheist as an atheist brings something extra to the political table that is valuable and advantageous, we shouldn't try to stretch this farther than it will go.

On the other hand, the British context does provide one area where an atheist could bring even more than they would elsewhere: they may be less committed to allowing the Church of England to retain it's privileged status as the nation's established religion. Grayling takes this as a given, though I'm less certain about it for reasons outlined above: we shouldn't assume that an atheist can't have some unconscious bias towards a religion they grew up in or surrounded by.

Still, it would be nice if an atheist can adopt a more critical or skeptical perspective on this issue:

This is a matter of importance, for two chief reasons. The first is that the CofE's privileged position gives other religious groups too much incentive to try sharp-elbowing their way into getting similar privileges, such as the ear of ministers, tax exemptions, public funding for their own sect's faith schools, and the big prize of seats in the legislature.

Secondly, the CofE has far too big a footprint in the public domain, out of all proportion to the actual numbers it represents: just 2% of the population go weekly to its churches. Yet it controls the primary school system - 80% of it - and a substantial proportion of the secondary school system, with dozens more academy schools soon due to fall under its control. It is entitled to have 26 bishops sitting in the House of Lords, plus a number more who have been made life peers on retiring; and it has the automatic ear of government - do not suppose that if Rowan Williams phones No 10 he is told no one is at home.

On the other hand, if an atheist is the person who is able to finally achieve disestablishment, don't you think this might make it easier for religious believers to portray disestablishment as anti-religion rather than pro-fairness? This may be a case where being an atheist is actually a hinderance and makes it harder for a person to act as they know they should. Perhaps it will require a person whose Anglican credentials are indisputable to disentangle their church from their government. If only Nixon could go to China, who will be the best person to go to disestablishment?

This same question may also apply to the very positive idea of promoting greater secularization in British life and government:

Having a statedly atheist British prime minister makes it more likely that the functional secularity of British life and politics, the foregoing exceptions noted, will become actual secularity. Secularism means that matters of public policy and government are not under the influence, still less control, of sectarian religious interests. The phrase "separation of church and state" does not quite capture the sense in which a genuinely secular arrangement keeps religious voices on a par with all other non-governmental voices in the public square, and all the non-governmental players in the public square separate from the government itself.

It means that churches and religious movements have to see themselves as civil society organisations like trades unions, political parties, the Scouts, and so on: with every right to exist, and to have their say, but as self-constituted interest groups no more entitled to a bigger share of the public pie of influence, privilege, tax handouts, and legal exemptions than any other self-appointed interest group.

...one result of the removal of privileges and public money might be that the artificial amplification of religious voices and points of view in our society, and the hold that religion can exert on children and the psychologically needy, might become less. Religion flourishes in conditions of active support and active persecution; in a socially and politically liberal climate it diminishes through natural causes. [emphasis added]

I don't for a second question the value or importance of what Grayling writes here. On the contrary, this is an excellent explanation of why secularism is important and why it should be promoted — you should copy it and save it for future use! What I question is how far an atheist can go in promoting secularism before accusations of just being anti-religion become too loud — and, for a politician, too much of a distraction from the real work that needs to be done. Perhaps there is a good way around such problems (like appointing a reliable Anglican to head up the task of disestablishment, or creating a "Commission on Secularization" which includes religious believers who support the overall agenda), but those plans have to be laid out carefully in advance.