The Chief Rabbi on Multi-culturalism, the Union and the dangers of micro-waved pizzas

Sir Jonathan Sachs, the UK’s Chief Rabbi, is one of the very few of our religious leaders worth listening to, so I read with interest his views on the Union, multiculturalism and the Great British Sunday lunch last week in the Sunday Telegraph(summary here).

Got to say though this time I think he’s wrong in quite a few of his assertions:

"I think we are seeing a new intolerance,"
"There is an extravagant over-zealousness in trying not to offend anyone and little do these people realise that other faiths would like Britain to be a Christian country."

I agree that all this Winterval and Baa Baa PC Sheep nonsense has gone quite far enough and following on from that it’s worth repeating (again and again) we live in a modern, liberal, secular democracy where people should be allowed to say and do what they want as long as they stay within the boundaries of the very broadly defined law.
But whilst the UK is a modern, liberal and secular democracy, in my opinion it can no longer be referred to as a "Christian" country.
I'm not even quite sure what defines how "Christian" a country is, anyway- its adherence to the 10 Commandments?
The percentage of the population attending church on a Sunday?
Whether you’re still allowed to call "Christmas" "Christmas"?
If the majority of the population still regularly practised their Christian faith, proven by their attendance at their place of worship on a Sunday, then Britain could be justifiably classified as a Christian country, but they don’t and it isn’t.

"A tolerant society is one that ignores difference and a multicultural one is one that highlights them. It is confidence in your own heritage that allows you to be generous to those of another heritage."

A country is multi-cultural if there is a state of cultural and ethnic diversity within its borders. Whether the Chief Rabbi likes it or not, then the UK is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic nation and there is nothing whatsoever to prevent a multi-cultural society also being a tolerant one. But yes he's right to an extent, for that to happen everyone within that society needs to have the confidence in their own heritage and culture, but, more importantly, they also need to be able to celebrate and feel proud of their own culture. Those that have advocated and instigated official policies of multiculturalism in the UK have too often decreed exactly which heritages and cultures are politically correct and acceptable, thus causing a backlash in many sectors of our society against the very concept of ethnic and faith diversity. But that is not the fault of the multi-cultural society per se; more of those in power who have sought to define too rigidly its cultural and political boundaries.

"I am concerned about the rise in nationalism in England and Scotland," "We have so much history in common, some of it painful, but all of it contributing to this sense of being together. These bonds of belonging are so important, particularly as we have this splitting into ever smaller fragments, an increased tribalism, in this global age."

Well, yes, but doesn’t that sentiment contradict his aversion to the multi-cultural society? He appears to be advocating, at best, assimilationist policies (which haven’t been that great a success in integrating the various 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants in France) and at worst, monoculturalism- and assuming there isn’t going to be a mass deportation of non-conforming immigrants, then both policies would also lead to an "increased tribalism" surely? Selling this concept of "Britishness" shouldn’t be about burying our different cultural, ethnic, even "national" identities, but accommodating them all under one enormous shared catch-all Union Jack umbrella. It should be about proving that you can be English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Asian, Jewish, Muslem etc etc and British simultaneously.

"What we have lost in British culture is Sunday lunch, dedicated family time. How many families sit together around the table to enjoy a meal together? We come in and stick the pizza in the microwave and eat watching television."

I think he’s probably finally got it right there; in the last thirty years,despite all the technological advance what we’ve all lost in western society is "time". The mother simply no longer has the three hours available to slave over the stove on a Sunday, the family simply feels ot no longer has the time to "enjoy" the meal. The question is how in a materialist world do you reclaim that time for the family, you can’t put back the clock, for example, and de-invent TV or the internet. Women today enjoy an equality unimaginable of by their mothers or grandmothers, do we switch back that clock again and tie them to the stove and hoover?
That tends to be the problem religious figure and social commentators are very quick at pointing out these truisms, a lot slower delivering any kind of solution to such easy problems!!!