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Europe needs to become more confident in its Christianity

This is what lies at the heart of the speech given to the future Vatican diplomats by the Muslim baroness Sayeeda Warsi, head of the British government delegation

The speech was a passionate defence of Europe’s Christian tradition and above all of the need to hear the voice of faith in a Continent currently under threat from a “deeply intolerant militant secularisation.”

But it was also an invitation to faithful not to ask for ‘privileges’ in order to protect themselves from ‘the enemies’ of modernity, but to proclaim their faith with ‘confidence’ and serenity, knowing that the ‘religious pluralism’ interwoven in the fabric of today’s world makes the voice of religion in society even stronger.

In front of an audience of future Vatican diplomats studying at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi – member of the current Conservative government lead by David Cameron and head of the British delegation visiting the Vatican this week – offered an original and confident interpretation of some of the key subjects of Pope Benedict XVI’s message worldwide such as the indispensable role of faith as the foundation of democratic values, the impossibility to disconnect Europe’s past and future history from Christianity and the concern raised by secularization, which seems to be trying to keep the voice of religion out of the public sphere.

These points were all contained in the speech Pope Benedict XVI delivered in Westminster during his stay in Britain in September 2010; a speech which made a long lasting impression on the British leaders.

The harmony between the opinions held by the Pope and by David Cameron’s government had already emerged back then and it has been reinforced by London’s decision to send a government delegation to strengthen the international cooperation between the United Kingdom and the Holy See in areas such as international development aid, the protection of religious minorities, the environment and culture. “Europe,” Warsi said, “needs to be more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity” because in order to achieve social harmony people “need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds.”

"In practice this means individuals not diluting their faiths and nations not denying their religious heritages." The risk, the baroness warned, is the ‘marginalization’ of faith and religion, which is unfortunately already spreading in the Old Continent.

The baroness did not hide the fact that being open to the opinions of the different religions does not always mean accepting their suggestions, like in the case of the protest of the Anglican Bishops against the welfare reform proposed by Cameron’s government.
“I am not saying that religious leaders should have a monopoly on morality,” she explained. Nor should the leaders of one faith demand an exclusive position, she added with reference to the fact that the British government is in favour of Turkey’s accession to the European Union. “The solution is not to shut the door on people of other faiths, but to strengthen our continent's identity,” she said.
The baroness deems it important that the various faiths should have “the right to bring their views to the table.”

Warsi was born in the United Kingdom to Pakistani parents, she is Muslim, but now serves a Christian country. She has no problems in declaring that Europe’s society, culture and values stem from ‘centuries of Christianity’. The baroness even said she felt that the ‘Christian identity ‘ of the United Kingdom actually helped ‘reinforce her Muslim faith.’ Because of this she chose to send her daughter to an Anglican School, “where the strong Christian faith did not threaten our Muslim identity in any way,” she said.

Speaking for the Cameron government, Warsi had made the controversial statement “We do God” during the Pope's visit to England in 2010.
The Cabinet Office Minister has also described with particular affection her visit to the Karachi Christian community in Pakistan, a visit to fulfil a promise she had made to the late Shahbaz Bhatti who was brutally murdered. “He is not forgotten,” she said. On that occasion Warsi visited a school run by nuns, The Convent of Jesus and Mary, where the former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto,who has also been the first woman to lead a modern Muslim country, once studied.