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What if you started a war and nobody came? Its over half a century since that question, posed by the mother of an activist jailed for resisting the draft, became a rallying cry for the peace movement during the Vietnam war. But lately the idea of refusing to go along with someone elses aggressive agenda has started to take on a rather different meaning in British politics. What if a government with little else to offer angry voters tried to start a culture war, only to find itself having a fight in an empty room?

Downing Streets enthusiasm for getting some arguably any kind of war on the woke going in time to motivate the troops for this springs local and mayoral elections is all too clear. First out of the traps was the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, seizing on a brief lull in pandemic news last month to announce a minor tweak in planning rules dressed up as a crusade to stop historical statues being taken down if they cause contemporary offence. Now the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, who you might have vaguely imagined would be devoting every waking minute to organising the reopening of schools in three weeks time, promises a free speech champion to fight back against the no-platforming of speakers on ideological grounds in British universities.

At the weekend we were told in the Sunday Telegraph that the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, would instruct heritage bodies and museums to defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down, presumably by dragging all the darker aspects of that history out into the light. This briefing seems to have come as something of a surprise to the culture department, which suggested that Dowdens meeting with cultural institutions to discuss retain and explain its strategy of getting museums to keep artefacts connected to slavery or the legacy of empire on show, but put them into a modern context by explaining the debates behind them might be rather less confrontational than it was made to sound. But just in case anyone failed to get the overall message, the home secretary, Priti Patel, declared she had found the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in Britain last summer dreadful.

These attempts to breathe new life into suspiciously old fights arent merely about telling the Tory base what it wants to hear, or distracting Tory backbenchers restless about the lifting of lockdown, although they usefully serve both purposes. Theyre also about trying to dictate the terms on which normal domestic politics might resume, as the pandemic begins to recede.

The last thing Keir Starmer wants ahead of Mays elections is a culture war, dragging him back into the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-dont position of last summer, when there was no conceivable stance on taking the knee or pushing statues into Bristol harbour that could possibly please both millennial Labour voters at ease with contemporary identity politics and older, more socially conservative voters thoroughly exasperated by it. So a culture war is, if the government has anything to do with it, logically what he will get. Half the point of these otherwise empty stunts is to troll Labour into saying whether it supports them or not, knowing that will divide the party regardless of which side it picks.

So far, Starmers response has been to refuse to rise to the bait, and seek instead to push the economic arguments that in turn divide the Tory party. Its a sensible strategy, recognising that the collapse of the so-called red wall in 2019 has left both parties struggling to hold together highly volatile electoral coalitions. If Starmers worst nightmare is being forced to take sides in arguments over whether Winston Churchill was a racist, then Boris Johnsons would be any plan to level up the north that leaves his partys wealthy southern base feeling levelled down in order to pay for it.

The risk for Labour is that there comes a point when the refusal to say something, to rise to the defence of cherished liberal causes under attack, becomes a statement in itself. It can afford to be a conscientious objector in the culture wars only if it has demonstrably bigger battles to fight. Fortunately, this spring that shouldnt be hard.

The problem isnt that there are no concerns about free speech on campus or the limits of political protest. Its that there are a million concerns that had to be parked while the country fought off a pandemic, and that the government could finally start dealing with now the success of the vaccine rollout has given it some breathing space. Picking a fight with the National Trust simply isnt top of most peoples lists, so Labours message to the government should be that fake outrage is no substitute for action.

Save the creative industries now hanging by a thread, after months in which cinemas and theatres and comedy clubs and music festivals sadly had to be mothballed, and then by all means get back to us about what visitors should learn on trips round stately homes. Give us a plan for students stuck at home paying 9,000 a year to watch lectures from their bedrooms while universities struggle to plug the black hole caused by unpaid student rent, and then lets worry about who sits on the panel for all the speaker meetings that arent happening anyway thanks to lockdown. Unravel the damage done to trade by Brexit, and then absolutely lets look at planning guidelines for statues. But dont start a culture war in lieu of having any better ideas. Or if you do, dont be surprised if nobody turns up.

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The Tories want a war on the woke as if there's nothing better to do - The Guardian

Over the weekend, it was revealedthat the Office for Students, a non-departmental public body of the Department for Education, will soon be empowered to fine student bodies for meddling with free speech. A new free speech champion will be appointed by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to oversee on-campus debate and punish universities, unions and societies, which they believe are guilty of no-platforming.

In 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published guidelinesstating that no-platforming is often misunderstood and misreported. It said that, effectively, the government would only consider intervening where there is a clear conflict between two student bodies say, a political society and a students union in which an external speakers invitation has been forcefully blocked.

It would appear that, in the two years since that announcement, the EHRCs advice has been shunted to one side in favour of the governments preferences. The new free speech champion, due to be announced next week, seems to have an alarming amount of discretion over who gets fined and why.

The problem here is that the government is operating according to a narrative which it would very much like to be true, but has no actual basis in fact, no matter how many sensationalist news stories are published on the subject. As I have written before, Tory students like me are not censored on campuses in this country, however convenient it might be if we were.

The government is desperate for Conservative students free speech to be under attack, so it can swoop in and save us. But when asked for examples of no-platforming, the best it can come up with is the Amber Rudd controversy at Oxford, which was not a free speech issue.

As is so often the case, it was a cock-up, not a conspiracy.There was a last-minute panic among organisers that some promotional material might have been misleading. This triggered a hurried cancellation. It was an embarrassing mistake, awkward for everyone involved, but it ought to be clear from the last-minute fumble and subsequent PR disaster for the society involved that this was not a malicious, co-ordinated effort to stop a Conservative from speaking to students.

In fact, a 2018 reportfrom thecross-partyparliamentary human rights committee found that, apart from a few isolated incidents whose causes can be easily traced, there is no problem to be solved here. We did not find the wholesale censorship of debate in universities which media coverage has suggested, it said.

No-platforming is a non-issue. Students, people who speak to students, and indeed everybody else, already have their right to freedom of expression enshrined in the law. What they dont and shouldnt have is the right to a platform. Students like me should be able to invite whoever we like to speak to us at university which we are.

Campus debate is organic, as it should be, and that means it is often messy. Different groups disagree about which events should be held, when, where and with whom. But students are not children. We resolve those disputes when they occur and, for the most part, nobody sues anybody else. Sometimes, we even exercise our right to protest.

None of this is unusual. The only reason this is a news story is because big-name Tories like to leap on any appearance of pushback as evidence of a sophisticated conspiracy to shut them down. Take, for instance, the time an event with Peter Hitchens at the University of Portsmouth was delayed, and Hitchens took to Twitter to complain about being censored by thought police.

The state interfering with perfectly functional campus discourse is not a pro-free speech move.

Alongside paying lip service to the free speech of poor, victimised Conservative students for the purposes of its war on woke, the government is also reportedly telling heritage organisations to defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down. Er... can we openly express our views about British history, or cant we?

This, it seems to me, is the real issue. My generation is critically and loudly engaging with the legacy of the British empire in a way that none has before and many of my peers have reached conclusions that the government doesnt much like.

That leads to ill-thought-out interventions from the top to amplify what it sees as pro-British narratives: traditional, socially conservative worldviews. In the minds of those in government, the fact that so few student voices are rising up to declare that colonialism wasnt so bad after all is a sure sign that their side of the debate is being trampled by censorious lefties.

In addition to its sincere quest to drag thousands of non-existent 19-year-old paleoconservatives out from the shadows, in terms of electability and PR, the government has forgotten how to deal with a Labour leader who isnt Jeremy Corbyn.

Its recent promiseto protect Victorian street names from baying mobs is a great example of that.If there was a widespread, concerted effort to wipe out British culture and heritage, would road names really be the front line of that battle?

The government is trapped within its own culture war discourse. It sees imaginary woke militants everywhere it looks from local councils to students unions. By insisting that universities are controlled by censorious rabbles, it is hurting, not helping, students even Tory ones like me.

Jason Reed is a sociology student at LSE, a member of the Conservative party, and elected treasurer of the LSE Conservative Society

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The governments obsession with provoking culture wars is embarrassing and I say that as a Tory student - The Independent

Only the second Roman Catholic to hold the nations highest office, President Joe Biden has been one of the most pious and faithfully observant Christians in decades, peppering his speeches with quotes from theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, and hymns like On Eagles Wings.

Since the 1960s, liberal Christianity has endured a steady decline, even as conservative congregations around the United States were growing and flourishing. But the remnants of these once-powerful Christian traditions have in many ways sparked back to life over the past few years, including with the elections of President Biden, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Rep. Cori Bush.

A progressive coalition of religious liberals, spearheaded by Black Protestant churches, has reemerged as a political force in Democratic politics, disrupting what had long been the partys more secular ethos. Along with that has come an emphasis on the Social Gospel, which highlights the earthly ministries of Jesus and his commitment to people who are poor and oppressed.

The rejuvenation of liberal Christianity today represents an opportunity for Christian political discourse to move from the culture wars to the Social Gospel, says Mat Schmalz, a professor of religion.

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When Mat Schmalz was coming of age in western Massachusetts decades ago, he took a year to volunteer for a Roman Catholic order in rural Oklahoma, helping to minister to some of the regions poorer and more isolated communities.

It was the first time he spent a significant amount of time away from the rhythms of his Catholic upbringing, and at first he felt a bit unmoored. But then it almost came as a surprise as he grew particularly close to a family of Jehovahs Witnesses, or when he started forming deep friendships with evangelical Protestants, including those from charismatic and Pentecostal traditions.

I mean, in one sense it was liberating, says Mr. Schmalz, now a professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, which he calls the heart of the Catholic left.

Those experiences gave me a sense then, and then throughout my life, that people who I would consider other could teach me something spiritually.

Such openness to other traditions, and even other forms of faith, have long characterized some of the more liberal expressions of American Christianity. Along with an emphasis on the Social Gospel, which highlights the earthly ministries of Jesus and his commitment to the poor and oppressed, these traditions helped ground his Christian faith over the years, Mr. Schmalz says.

Even so, for nearly a half-century liberal Christianity has endured a steady decline. Often in tension with certain Christian teachings and their exclusive claims to truth, its openness may have in fact cut away the distinctiveness of traditional faith, some historians contend. As a cultural and political force, too, its influence has waned since the 1960s, even as conservative congregations around the country were growing and flourishing.

But the remnants of these once-powerful Christian traditions have in many ways sparked back to life over the past few years.

A progressive coalition of religious liberals, spearheaded especiallyby Black Protestant churches, has reemerged as a political force in Democratic politics, disrupting what had long been the partys more secular ethos.

It does seem to me that there has been this resurgence of people who interpret their Christian beliefs as a call to action on behalf of the most vulnerable, says Margaret McGuinness, professor of religion and theology at La Salle University in Philadelphia. And then, all of a sudden, here comes President Joe Biden, who wears his Catholic faith on his sleeve and I mean that in a good way, in a way that a lot of people are noticing.

Only the second Roman Catholic to hold the nations highest office, President Biden has been one of the most pious and faithfully observant Christians in decades, many observers say, peppering his speeches with more than the kind of general religious references politicians often make. Hes quoted theologians such as St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi, and Catholic hymns like On Eagles Wings, a favorite among many liberal Catholics.

Part of this resurgence can be seen as part of a broader reaction against the expressions of Christian nationalism that coalesced around former President Donald Trump, many observers say, who appointed an outsize number of Evangelicals and religious conservatives in his administration.

I think its been an important corrective to how in America, at least, when we hear about religion and politics, its always about the right, says Kraig Beyerlein,directorof the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Theres usually very little discussion about the religious left.

Over the past few years, however, a number of high-profile Democrats including current New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg; and Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush, a pastor from St. Louis have made their faith a centerpiece of their liberal policy positions as churches on the left become more politically active.

Sen. Raphael Warnock talks to a reporter as he leaves the Capitol at the conclusion of the second day of the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 10, 2021.

In a recent study, in fact, Dr. Beyerlein and his colleagues found that a staggering 41% of congregations who identified as politically liberal participated in demonstrations or lobbied elected officials during the presidency of Mr. Trump, compared with only 5% who said they were active during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

Still, according to survey data, there are more than three times the number of self-identifying conservative congregations in the U.S. than liberal churches. Conservatives make up nearly half of the nations churches, while only 15% identify as liberal, he says, with 39% reporting they stand in the middle of the political spectrum.

A liberal Protestant who has attended churches committed to the sanctuary movement, Dr. Beyerlein was also surprised to find that a third of Catholic parishes across the U.S. declared themselves as sanctuaries for unauthorized immigrants during the Trump administration.

But the historic election of the Rev. Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate in January only underscores how much Black Protestants have taken the lead in reviving the liberal traditions of Christianity. As the first African American senator from Georgia, Senator Warnock has maintained his role as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the former congregation of Martin Luther King Jr.

The amazing thing about Raphael Warnocks movement into the U.S. Senate is that it fits perfectly into the trajectory of African American Christianity post slavery, says Willie Jennings, professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

It is a Christianity that aimed from the very beginning to call America to its better angels, its better light, and to try to draw the nation away from hypocrisy and toward living up to the Constitution and the nations founding documents.

But the easy demarcations of liberal and conservative have never really captured the traditions of the Black church, he says. The better word would be biblicist than conservative, which has its strengths and weaknesses.

The central strength of our biblicist tradition is that certain very powerful stories about how life ought to be lived is what guides us, Dr. Jennings continues. So the life of Jesus, the story of healing the sick and feeding the poor and fighting for the orphan and widows and turning to the least of these, has always made us recognize that this is where Gods attention is turned. All of that is crucial to African American Christianity.

But on the other side, which is also problematic, there are certain ways in which the biblical narratives describe the role of women or describe the ideal household in ways that do align with a social conservative vision, he says.

In December, a group of 25 Black pastors wrote an open letter to Senator Warnock urging him to oppose abortion. Many Catholic bishops have raised similar concerns about the abortion-rights stance of President Biden.

Make no mistake, though energized and resurgent, liberal Christianity remains on a relatively small space in the countrys religious landscape.

But its traditional de-emphasis on exclusive doctrines may fit well into the larger social movements in the country right now. Millennials and younger Americans increasingly care little about the exclusive particulars of traditional Christianity, even as Christians on both the left and right see faith as an integral part of political action.

Yet the value of a liberating openness to the other in liberal traditions can be challenging as well, says Mr. Schmalz. When he worked with Catholic converts among those on the bottom rung of Indias caste system, many resisted attempts to develop specifically Indian forms of Catholic worship.

Many of the [lowest caste members] I knew considered that to be a concession to high caste Brahmins, and so they were more comfortable with the traditional aspects of Catholicism, like the old mass when it is sung in Latin and so forth, he says.

And it was really interesting to me how powerful charismatic Catholicism was, continues Mr. Schmalz, talking about a faith that combines Catholic doctrine with evangelical traditions, including the laying on of hands. It was in this context that these people could touch and be touched, and for those whose caste meant that others avoided touching them thats obviously something incredibly meaningful.

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Deeply conservative, both charismatic Catholics and Evangelicals were well represented at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, even as each make up some of the fastest growing movements of Christians on a global scale.

But the rejuvenation of liberal Christianity today represents an opportunity for Christian political discourse to move from the culture wars to the social gospel, Mr. Schmalz says, or offer a chance for the country to gradually shift away from what they call pelvic issues to broader social justice questions, such as the death penalty, immigration, and universal health care.

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Biden, Warnock, and the resurgence of the liberal Christian - The Christian Science Monitor

I felt a very faint twinge of sympathy for Oliver Dowden, I have to confess, when I saw the storm of protest which greeted his request that the heads of the institutions funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport should attend a meeting to discuss how history is represented in public institutions. Keeping any sympathy in check was the governments confrontational means of publicising the meeting: it was trailed in an article in the Sunday Telegraph, announcing that its purpose was to defend our history, amid concern that a noisy minority of activists are trying to do Britain down.

Nevertheless, how museums present and interpret British history is an important, problematic issue about which it is surely totally appropriate for museum directors and the heads of the agencies looking after heritage, including the National Trust and Historic England, to meet. There would be much to be gained from an open discussion about how they are responding to views including, from its own perspective, that of the government that our approach to history should be radically reconstructed.

It has been assumed that the meeting is totally unprecedented. While I was director of the National Gallery, however, it was not so unusual for there to be meetings called by the Department for Culture to discuss issues of common concern although these were certainly not summarised in the national press before they had even taken place. I remember a meeting to discuss how we were all going to deal with the Cultural Olympiad (I remember it because Tim Knox, then director of Sir John Soanes Museum, bravely said that he had no intention of paying any attention to the Olympics). I also remember being summoned to a dingy hotel outside Kingston, just before Christmas, for a series of pep talks by Labour ministers. This was deeply resented but we had no option, because the Department for Culture provides a considerable proportion of the funding of many of these institutions and, it needs to be remembered, is answerable to parliament for public policy. So, it is not unreasonable for the government to be interested in cultural policy.

The key issue is whether the government will use the meeting to explore how institutions have responded to the current demands to reinterpret history, to listen and to share issues of common concern. Or whether it will, instead, use this as an opportunity to try to impose the governments own ideas as to how national history should be presented: in the over-simplified, ahistorical and triumphalist manner that it has pushed in the wake of Brexit. The latter strategy will almost certainly be counterproductive; it will, and should be, resisted by trustee bodies, which have statutory independence.

From my perspective, there is a marked difference in the way institutions have responded to widespread concerns about how history is presented, many of which have been brought into focus by the Black Lives Matter movement. A frank discussion of these responses, and how they have themselves been received, might make for a good use of the advertised meeting.

A new home for Hans Sloane: the bust of the British Museums founder in a display exploring the legacies of empire and slavery. Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

The British Museum, for example, has used lockdown to make a significant modification in the way its collection is presented. In particular, it has chosen to move the bust of Hans Sloane from a commemorative plinth into a display case with accompanying information about his career as a slave owner. Contrary to those newspaper pundits who were appalled by this action, probably without seeing it, I thought it was an entirely appropriate decision that the museum should document its founders actions as a slave owner and draw attention to them, but in a way which was explanatory, rather than overtly condemnatory. It leaves visitors to draw their own conclusions.

The Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum), meanwhile, has had to respond to the demands, most especially from its local community, that it remove the statue of Sir Robert Geffrye from the niche in the facade of the historic almshouses that house its collections. What it did, which was probably a good idea at the time, was to conduct an online survey. But when the great majority of respondents supported the view that the statue should be removed, the trustees, following advice from the Department for Culture, decided not to. Presumably this was partly because the statue belongs to the historic fabric and is protected by legislation (even without the current governments determination to introduce further legislation on the subject of statues).

My regret about the DCMS meeting is not that it is being held, then, but that the nature of the discussion and the conclusions which are reached will not be made public; and that, owing to the rancour of the current culture wars, we are not able to have a proper, balanced and even-handed discussion about how best to represent the British past in all its complexity.

Charles Saumarez Smith was director of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery and is author of The Art Museum in Modern Times(Thames & Hudson).

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The culture minister should take an interest in museums but he can't tell them how to interpret the past - Apollo Magazine

Britain is set to introduce new laws guaranteeing freedom of speech at universities to counteract what the government on Tuesday called unacceptable silencing and censoring on campuses.

As part of the plans, the government is considering appointing a free speech champion to investigate possible breaches of the right to expression, while academics who lose their jobs in similar disputes may be able to claim compensation.

I am deeply worried about the chilling effect on campuses of unacceptable silencing and censoring, saideducationminister Gavin Williamson.

That is why we must strengthen free speech in higher education, by bolstering the existing legal duties and ensuring strong, robust action is taken if these are breached. Prime Minister Boris Johnson later tweeted that freedom of speech is at the very core of our democracy.

It is absolutely right that our great universities the historic centres of free thinking and ideas will now have this freedom protected and bolstered with stronger legal protections, he added.

Williamson said it is important to strengthen freedom of speech in higher education by bolstering the existing legal duties and ensuring strong, robust action is taken if these are breached. Source: Lindsey Parnaby/AFP

However, the government was accused of exploiting culture wars, after itself launching a pushback against the toppling of slavery-era statues and efforts to educate Britons about their colonial past, in the wake of last years Black Lives Matter protests.

Just six events out of almost 10,000 involving an external speaker were cancelled over the speakers views in 2019-20, according to a survey in December by the group Wonkhe, which analyses highereducationpolicy.

The government has tapped into a wider push by conservatives, right-leaning libertarians and classical liberals to combat cancel culture and the supposed woke left agenda that they claim has led to a crisis of free speech in Britain, Australian historian Evan Smith wrote on the Wonkhe site.Smith, who published a book last year about campus free-speech rows,added that similar claims (are) being made in the US, Australia, Canada and France.

The government proposals were slammed by Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, which represents staff in highereducation.

It is extraordinary that in the midst of a global pandemic the government appears more interested in fighting phantom threats to free speech than taking action to contain the real and present danger which the virus poses to staff and students, she said.

But a group of senior academics welcomed the proposals in a letter to The Times.

In recent years, too many academics have been marginalised because they hold unorthodox views on issues like gender, Brexit and the legacy of empire, said the letter, organised by high-profile political commentator Matthew Goodwin.

Speakers to have been no-platformed at universities include Brexit politician Nigel Farage, Canadian academic Jordan Peterson, leading feminists Julie Bindel and Selina Todd, philosopher Roger Scruton and former interior minister Amber Rudd.

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News UK set for new laws to protect freedom of speech on campus Trending - Study International News