Cardinal urges Christians to seek dialogue with atheists
By Simon Caldwell
16 May 2008

Christians must seek to nurture understanding and dialogue with atheists, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales has said.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor argued that God was often misrepresented by prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, the author of the 2006 best-selling polemic The God Delusion.

He said that in reality there was a persistent element of doubt in the convictions of both Christians and atheists which "could become the basis for an open dialogue".

"The line dividing faith from unbelief passes through the heart of each of us," he said in a lecture on "Faith in Britain Today". "I would want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe," he said.

"Believers need to recognise that they have something in common with those who do not believe," he added. "But it is no less true that unbelievers might benefit from recognising that there is something of the believer in every person. Believers and non-believers need to recognise and understand each other better, more accurately, more appreciatively."

The proper "response to God" was faith and not absolute certainty, the Cardinal said, and he invited Christians to examine how they might have given people a misleading view of the mystery of God.

"God does not need polemicists on his behalf, but God needs witnesses and the quality of witness that we give to God is a more effective pointer to God than anything else," he said.

The Cardinal's comments came in the last of a series of six lectures in Westminster Cathedral, London, on the subject of faith in Britain. Previous speakers have included former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Anglican leader Dr Rowan Williams, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, and Rabbi Julia Neuberger, an adviser to Gordon Brown. The Cardinal said the primary purpose of the series was to open religion to the "questions of those who do not believe".

His talk focused on the phenomenon of rising hostility to religion in Britain, which has seen many atheists and agnostics arguing that religion must be solely a private matter and have no role in the public life of the nation. The Cardinal argued that such "privatisation of religion" had created a new "spiritual homelessness" which was impoverishing the country. "Many people have a sense of being in a sort of exile from faith-guided experience," he said. "They think that even if they wanted to believe, faith is no longer an option for them.

"In Britain today, I detect among many people a sense of loss, of not being in touch with living sources that can nourish them," he said. "They want to live by shared values that can sustain our society but do not know where to find them. They want to find a context that can give lives a deep meaning, but, again, are unable to find it."

The Cardinal said that Catholicism was profoundly social. "You cannot banish religion to the church premises and I am unhappy about the various attempts to eliminate the Christian voice from the public forum," the Cardinal said. "Our life together in Britain cannot be a God-free zone and we must not allow Britain to become a world devoid of religious faith and its powerful contribution to the common good."

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said he wanted to challenge the many "new atheists" who, he said, were unable to cope with the notion of an intelligent and reflective Christianity and were seeking to isolate religion from other forms of knowledge and experience in order to marginalise it.