...speaks out. Read the speech by the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks in today's press His criticism of moral relativism is timely and trenchant. Wouldn't it be good if we had some Bishops who spoke out like this?
Defending the place of religion in public life, Lord Sacks said : "The place for religion is in civil society, where it achieves many things essential to liberal democratic freedom. It sanctifies marriage and the family and the obligations of parenthood, and it safeguards the non-relativist moral principles on which Western freedom is based.
“It may not be religion that is dying, it may be liberal democratic Europe that is in danger, demographically and in its ability to defend its own values.”
Lord Sacks asked: “Where today in European culture with its consumerism and instant gratification – 'because you’re worth it' – where will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not yet born?"
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2 comments:
The Rabbi speaks a lot of sense.
However, and I've said this before, society always swings from moral laxity to moral severity, often with alarming speed. It is tempting ina time of laxity to consider the proponents of rigour to be "on our side", but they aren't really. God won't be used a means to something else, even if that something else is a worthy goal, like a stable society.
I am so happy to see that someone, anyone, is standing up for the aboslute importance of religion in the public sphere. I am always amazed at people who say--usually politicians--that their religion does not influence them in the public sphere. I am sorely tempted ask them: "Then what good is it?" Most of the anti-religionists seem to equate religion with a hobby that they deem obnoxious, like stamp collecting (?) which should be done in the privacy of one's own home. Any religion which is not central to a person's life must be worthless, however...but what care the brass-knuckles atheists about such thing!
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