What secularists must recognise about assisted dying debate

In essence, he argues the reason many politicians oppose assisted dying owe much more to their private religious beliefs than they’ve been prepared to admit in public.

He suggests MPs “should make clear” when their votes have been swayed by these convictions, so the electorate can ­understand the real motives behind their efforts – unsuccessfully in the House of Commons this week – to stymie the reforms proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.

In parallel, Holyrood has now also ­begun taking evidence on the member’s bill ­introduced by Orkney MSP Liam ­McArthur (below) to legalise assisted dying in ­limited ­circumstances. This too seems ­guaranteed to ­surface similar debates about politics, religion, and the proper ­relationship between the two.

(Image: Jane Barlow)

In both parliaments, the issue of assisted dying has been dubbed a conscience vote and will not be whipped along party-political lines. But what kind of reasons should our politicians’ consciences be ­considering? How should religious MPs or MSPs handle the thorny issue of where their faith belongs in the public sphere? How should religious groups present their opposition to legislating for assisted dying? And how should the rest of us react to the arguments they make?

These are profound questions of the ­relationship between not only church and state, but the role of religious ideas in a largely secular state. Treat them seriously.

The first thing to say is – you don’t need to be religious to oppose assisted dying, and I can understand a degree of defensiveness about presenting the issue in these terms. Perhaps the most articulate bloc ­resisting the latest attempts to create a ­limited framework for assisted dying north and south of the Border are disabled ­people’s organisations, representing people of faith and none.

Their arguments are rooted in the ­historic disregard our society has shown ­towards people with physical and ­mental ­impairments. They point out that ­sometimes and even often, intolerable lives are created not by the inevitable impact of living in a dying body or surviving with a terminal condition but by the choices doctors, governments and societies have made, making disabled people’s living ­situations intolerable, under-valued, under-heated, under-resourced.

READ MORE: Clinics stepping in while defence lawyers are being left high and dry

They are concerned that legalising ­assisted dying communicates a clear ­message to the elderly, the terminally ill and the disabled that their lives are not worth living – and that this may have a broader cultural impact, undermining the recognition of dignity and ­humanity ­disabled people’s organisations have fought hard to win over decades. You could be faithless and godless, and feel the power of all of these arguments.

But Goodall is right, I think, to say the role of faith in the public sphere is a ­particularly tense one on issues like this. He argues that “because of Britain’s ­quietly profound secularism, religious MPs’ opposition is rarely articulated in overtly theological terms”.

This might strike you as a curious ­observation in the context of ­mandatory Church of England representation in the House of Lords, King Charles III’s £72 ­million coronation involving the ­Archbishop of Canterbury, endless ­religious oaths, and dipping bits of the ­sovereign in olive oil.

But it comes down to reasons, I ­suppose. Is it a legitimate reason for an MSP to say they are voting according to their ­personal religious beliefs? Should MPs feel self-conscious about the fact that they’re ­applying Catholic or ­Islamic or Sikh ­social teaching in ­reaching ­conclusions on these life-and-death ­issues? And if anyone objects to this, is it fair to characterise this as prejudice or discrimination on religious grounds?

The strong version of the secular argument says – religious reasons should play no role in our public life. Religion should be a purely private matter, a ­matter of ­private choices, and once you step into the public domain – whether as a ­politician or a campaigner – you need to find different arguments to support your position and find a secular case to earn a hearing.

Characteristically, discourses of choice loom large here. If you don’t want to have a gay marriage, an abortion, or to avail yourself of opportunities to die ­lawfully before God gathers you up then that’s wholly a matter for you as a private ­individual. You can live your life according to your religious convictions, but you’ve got no right to force anyone else to.

The problem with this is it doesn’t align with many religious people’s ­understanding of the scope of their ­beliefs. Most religious denominations don’t accept the secular divisions of the modern liberal state. Most don’t accept its attempts to banish religious arguments exclusively to the private sphere.

This summer, Pope Francis told ­Catholics they shouldn’t “be satisfied with a marginal or private faith” and must “have the courage to make ­proposals for justice and peace in the public debate”. There’s also been what one analyst has characterised as the “resurgence of ­religious conservatism as an attempt to close the gap opened up in modernity ­between religion and politics”.

But despite this, liberal arguments for laïcité continue to shape how many ­religious people and religious politicians present their arguments in public. In terms of assisted dying, this is a dynamic we’ve seen before. During the scrutiny of previous assisted dying proposals in ­Holyrood, religious leaders were ­routinely invited to testify.

Their evidence bristled with essentially sociological arguments – that there would be a slippery slope, that this was just the beginning, that other jurisdictions which had legalised assisted dying threw up problematic cases. They supplemented these with the kind of technical objections we’re all going to become familiar with – the language of the bill could clearer, the distinctions sharper, the safeguards safer.

God, Allah or Jehovah didn’t get much of a mention, nor did divine commandments against murder. This has obvious ironies. A panel of witnesses who were only invited to Parliament because of their religious beliefs didn’t feel able to “do God”. If you want to hear the sociological arguments, a minister, a ­bishop or an imam isn’t exactly the obvious ­candidate to hear from. Is this evasive, as Goodall suggests? Arguably. But it’s ­evasive for understandable reasons.

Debate and persuasion are different things. In a debate, formed and sometimes entrenched positions can articulate their differences, exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments advanced by the other side, catching out ­logical ­fallacies, surfacing assumptions, and ­often ending with a clearer mutual recognition that the debaters are approaching the issue from different starting points.

But like it or not, political debates aren’t just abstract philosophical discussions, concluding with a head count to see who wins. Politics is a manipulative ­enterprise. And if you think persuading other people is just about broadcasting your ideals then you aren’t just naïve, but terminally self-involved and sometimes self-defeating.

You need to identify what matters to the audience you hope to persuade, you need to speak to their concerns, using examples, values and principles which will resonate with them. Your need to articulate the truth as you see it is secondary.

So if you’re confronted across the ­chamber with a series of parliamentarians swithering about reforms to assisted dying, without much faith to mobilise or religious conviction to appeal to, calling for them to join you in the name of Christ, Mary and all the Saints would just be squandering the reason God put you on earth with, guaranteeing your defeat, using arguments which could never win the day.

I do understand some of the unease Goodall articulates. The manipulative character of modern politics is one reason folk baulk at it in general. Treating the ­arguments you use as purely instrumental – as tools designed to beguile the guileless and sway the swayable – can turn public debates into a kind of shadow-boxing, where the real reasons and real passions animating the conversation remain plausibly deniable, covertly out of sight.

READ MORE: Snobbery is alive and well at Scottish university

There is something uncomfortable about the idea of faith in the public sphere going about in disguise, doing the Lord’s work in darkness, while the public arguments are all focused on safeguards and reasonable concerns. There’s not much good faith evident in pretending you’re open-minded when your mind is already locked shut – for or against the proposals.

But religious people might ­reasonably reply – I thought you told us not to talk about God? I thought you told us our ­beliefs are strictly a private ­matter, and can’t form part of our common ­public ­reason and public discussion? If ­secularists insist “we don’t do God” in politics, what alternative do religious ­people have, but to identify the best ­practical and social arguments they can muster in defence of their positions?