经济学人:政客与宗教造神风波

Politicians and religion

政客与宗教
Doing God
造神风波
David Cameron's frank Christian talk is more astute than the reaction to it suggests
卡梅伦坦率的复活节讲话与其说是对民众的反应有所企图，不如说是诡计多端
FEW Britons have well-defined religious beliefs, but many have tastes in matters of religion. As with tea, they don't like it too cold or too hot. They seem to want the established religion to be present somewhere in the background, with its village churches, Christmas carols and Remembrance Day services, and they would hate it to vanish altogether; but they would squirm if anyone asked them to accept Jesus as their personal saviour.
具有虔诚宗教信仰的英国人数量虽然微乎其微，但是大多数的英国人都有着良好的宗教品味。譬如喝茶，他们不喜欢茶温过低或过高。英国人似乎只是希望将宗教建立在某些特定环境之中，例如他们的乡村教堂、圣诞颂歌以及国殇日的纪念服务。如果这些都消失不见的话，英国人会十分不悦；但如果有人要求他们将耶稣作为救世主顶礼膜拜他们又会觉得十分别扭。
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It is that sentiment that David Cameron and other senior Tories seemed to be invoking when they marked the Easter season with some firmly (but not too firmly) Christian messages. Having declared at an Easter reception that he was “proud of the fact that we are a Christian country”, the prime minister took to the Church Times, an Anglican weekly, to spell out what he did not mean. He described himself as a “rather classic” member of the Church of England, “not that regular in attendance and a bit vague on some of the more difficult parts of the faith”. Still, he loved old country churches, like the one his parents had laboured to restore, and welcomed the church's role as a moral and pastoral force.

然而在卡梅伦和其他保守党高级官员给复活节打上看似坚定的基督色彩的烙印，似乎祈盼能够唤起民众狂野的宗教热忱。在复活节讲话中公然宣布他“为我们作为基督徒国家而感到骄傲”之后，首相卡梅伦又在英国国教徒周刊《教会时报》上声明他并没有那个意思。他将自己形容成英国国教“不胜虔诚”的一员，“但并不经常参与宗教活动，对某些较难认同的宗教信仰的态度也模棱两可。”同样地，他深爱着这个古老国家的教堂-那些由他的祖祖辈辈耗时耗力修复的教堂，并希望教堂可以作为一种道德与pastoral的力量继续发挥它的功用。
These words, plus a short Easter broadcast noting how “incredibly special” the feast was for many people, have drawn loud complaints from secularists. Dominic Grieve, the attorney-general and an Anglican, defended his boss's views—and was barracked in turn. More than 40 Anglican bishops and 600 clergy issued an implicit rebuke in the form of a letter urging Mr Cameron to focus on food poverty. Keith Hebden, a clergyman, said that the police had prevented him and the bishop of Oxford from delivering a copy to Mr Cameron's constituency office, in an area where lovely old churches abound.
然而对于大多数人，这些话加上复活节广播中传递出的“令人难以置信的特殊存在”，已然在世俗论者中引得嘘声一片。身为总检察长的国教教徒多米尼克·格里夫，为他的顶头上司辩护，却反而被人们声讨。.超过四十名圣公会主教和600名神职人员以书信的形式对卡梅伦发出隐晦的指责，并要求其将重点放在粮食短缺的问题上。牧师基斯·赫布登称，警方阻止他和牛津的主教向卡梅伦的选区办公室递送这一信件的复印本。据悉该选区办公室位于老教堂鳞次栉比之地
Yet Mr Cameron's appeal to warm and fuzzy Anglicanism is politically astute. A recent survey by Theos, a religious think-tank, showed a clear link between being Anglican—practising or otherwise—and voting Conservative. Such voters are Mr Cameron's to lose, and he may lose many of them to the anti-Brussels UK Independence Party if it presses the button of cultural nativism more successfully.
不过卡梅伦对于英国国教热情而暧昧的呼吁不失为一种政治上的明智之举。最近由宗教智库“西奥斯”所做的一项调查显示了民众对国教或者其他宗教的信仰同投票支持保守党之间的明确联系。卡梅伦失去了这些选民的支持，并且如果卡梅伦的此项举动按下了促使英国社会文化异化与分裂的按钮，卡梅伦将会失去更多的选民，并且这些选民最终会投向反欧盟的英国独立党的怀抱。
And as Jonathan Bartley, founder of a more liberal religion-watching outfit called Ekklesia, points out, the proportion of Britons (59%) who call themselves Christian on a census form exceeds by a factor of at least ten the number of regular churchgoers. That implies a large constituency of cultural Christians who are not militant secularists but have no more appetite for “difficult parts of the faith” than Mr Cameron does.
正如自由宗教组织Ekklesia创始人乔纳森·巴特利指出的那样，在人口普查中声称自己是基督徒的人口（高达总人口的59%）超过了定期去做礼拜的人数的十倍。这意味着大多数选区的基督徒并非激进的世俗论者，而是比卡梅伦对那些“较难认同的宗教信仰” 更难接受的人。
For evidence of the continuing role of religion in politics look, too, at Mr Cameron's main rivals. Ed Miliband, Labour's leader, is an atheist who nonetheless aspires to be “the first Jewish prime minister”. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is an atheist too, but he points out that his wife and children are Catholic. Fervent secularism is no more appealing to most Britons than its opposite.
披着政治外衣的宗教所带来的持续影响也是卡梅伦的主要对手之一。工党领导人埃德·米利德班，是一名无论如何都想要成为“第一位犹太人首相”的无神论者。自由民主党的领袖尼克·克莱格也是一名无神论者。但是他指出他的妻子和孩子都是天主教徒。对于大多数英国人来说，狂热的世俗主义除了其对立面之外没有任何可取指出。

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